When coming in to college I expected to meet people with all different backgrounds and all different stories. I expected to meet people who were having the time of their lives and I expected to meet people who maybe weren’t so happy. My freshman year I meet one of my best friends, Samantha. Inside and out she is one of the happiest and most energetic person I know. I never imagined there was something a part of her past that could have ever been a tragedy because of how happy she was all the time. Later I found out that, it wasn’t the case. Sam however isn’t like normal people. In the face of adversity she chooses to see the light of things and to take a good lesson out of every bad situation. When I finally found out how strong of a person she really was and why, we decided it needed to be shared. Samantha has written down for you her story and how the lessons she has taken from it affect her everyday life and maybe how they can affect yours.
“Be somebody” is a saying that is drilled through my head. It was May 18 when my life changed forever. A friend died, not only a friend but a best friend. A friend that is almost like family, someone I called a sibling even though I biologically had none. It was a cold rainy Saturday morning in Georgia and it was the first day of summer vacation when everyone was supposed to be full of life and joy, but no one was. I saw mournful faces that greeted me as I came to the school. No one could have seen this coming, because it happened in an instant. Friday he hugged me after school saying “be safe I will see you soon” and the next thing I know I would never see his smiling face again. No one would hear his goofy laugh, or get a huge bear hug from him after the football team won a game. While driving too fast on a wet curvy road it was a car crash that took his life. This tragedy made me realize that life can change in an instant, one second you can be living and breathing and the next second you could be dead.
What I learned from his death is that life is not a race, it is not about seeing who gets to the finish line first or comes out on top. Life needs to be about living and finding who you are. Today people forget who they are and just care about the hustle and bustle of life. I would give anything to get picked on by him one more time, but we can’t turn back time we can only move forward. Life is about living to the fullest and seeing the little things. I want to live every day, as it was my last. Everybody has a story similar to mine with different circumstances in different cities, but we have to take the bad experience and change it to something positive. We need to live for the people who can’t have that chance anymore. We should not feel guilty or ashamed that we are still here, we should take this opportunity and grab it and hold it for all its worth. Try to make a stranger’s day happy or a friend you haven’t heard from in months. Regret is a painful thing people go through on a daily basis, so reach out to people before it is too late. The little things in life do count more than people even realize.”
Samantha’s story is an inspiration to me because I know that she truly lives her life to the fullest. I know that she’s doing it not only to make everyone proud but to honestly make her life worth living and to make others’ lives better in every way that she can. We all face adversity but we all face it differently. Maybe with the help of Sam’s story we can all make light of our adversity and learn from them.
Samantha Sims
