Life isn’t perfect and neither are the people in our lives that we love and care about. We all make mistakes and sometimes those mistakes hurt those people that we love. Sometimes it’s our parents who we love that make these mistakes or even our grandparents. I strongly believe in giving everyone a second chance and what they do with that second chance shows you whether this person that you love and care about is worth it.
When I was in elementary school I was living with my mother, brother and my mother’s alcoholic boyfriend. This man was extremely abusive but not physical; no, he would attack your insecurities and berate you whenever he had the chance. I received the worse part of all his attacks because I was easy to target and everyone was afraid to stand up to him so he was free to do what he liked. I believe one of the reasons he attacked me as much as he did was because I wasn’t afraid to stand up to him. What hurt the most with everything that was happening was that my own mother wasn’t there for me when I needed her.
I had found happiness with my grandmother while everything at home was happening and I would constantly go to her house whenever I could. I spent holidays, summers, weekends, and days of from school spending time with my grandmother at her house. If there was a chance for me to get away from home, I took it without a second thought. My grandma was my rock; I loved her more than anything in this world and being around her made me happy.
Life always seems to hit you in the face when you’re at your happiest. When I was twelve, my cousin's parents passed away and because he was so close to my family, he requested to live with my grandmother instead of one of his other relatives. I was so young and I didn’t understand what it meant to lose someone so close to you. I had only ever lost my grandfather, but I was too young to remember much about him. I was thrilled about my cousin moving in with my grandmother, we got along really well and we’d get to spend more time together. That initial thrill slowly went away as time went on.
Slowly, it felt like everything I loved was being taken away from and as the days went on my cousin and I started to fight for my grandmother’s affection. It started small with my grandma giving my cousin the room I had ever since they built the house, even though they already had a spare room. After a while, she stopped letting me come up to her house on weekends and wouldn’t come get me. If I went to my friend’s house, I wasn’t allowed to go unless he was invited as well. I would get in trouble for things I didn’t do because my cousin was always right and I was wrong. I still remember it like it was yesterday, the day my grandma told me that “she couldn’t show me love anymore’’ because my cousin deserved it all. I had never been so devastated in my entire life, it had felt like I was alone and I wasn’t loved. For a while I was lost, miserable, unhappy and I honestly didn’t know what to do. I relied on my grandmother for everything: to be there for me when I needed someone, to care about me and treat me well, to love me when I didn’t feel loved at home.
Something horrible always seems to happen before we’re allowed to experience something great. All though I experienced so much pain and was devastated, I thank God everyday that I went through that period in my life. My mother saw that I was broken, she saw me cry everyday because my grandmother didn’t love me anymore and she saw that I needed someone. My mother became the mom I needed, she become the person she needed when she was little. She changed her whole life around so I could have a better one. I am forever grateful for my mother because if it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t have the life I have today.
Everyone makes mistakes, but it takes take a strong person to admit their mistakes and try to work and mend what has been done after those mistakes are made. Second chances don’t always seem like the right thing to give but you never know if someone will change or not. You should at least give them the chance to try and change. You never know, these people you’re giving second chances to could actually surprise you.
