Here we go again, Mom is complaining about my B+ in English. I'm at 89%, that's almost an A.

Almost doesn't fly in my home, and it shouldn't in anyone else's.

For years I've been confused on why my Dad is so hard on me and why my sister likes to critique every outfit I put on my Snapchat, but recently I've understood why. Everything truly does start at home, even if that's a pain.

Your first tear wasn't shed in the arms of your sand-box buddy John, but in your Mom's arms directly after your born. It's the same way when you die, your friends will attend the funeral but who's going to be there to shed the last tear? Your family.

Over different stages in my life, I've physically said out of my mouth that I hated my parents or my siblings, but I was unaware that everything they were putting me through in our household was going to prepare me for what the world surrounding us has in store for me.

For example, my sister is a huge believer that our family is all we truly have in this world and they'll be the ones who'll be there for us at the end of the day, literally.

Concluding a hard day of heartache and pain, at around 2 a.m. I gave her a ring and expected no answer until I heard her infamous sniffle prior to saying hello. Without any regard to what class she had in the morning, she spent an hour on my phone reassuring me that I was being a baby and overreacting. Obviously at the time, I didn't want to hear ANY of that, especially from her who I suspected would console me during this hard time, but months later I realized how right she was about me wasting my energy on something I could not control.

That's what the lesson truly is:

The people you expect the most out of are the ones who expect the same out of you, so they tell you how they feel in the "raw".

In all honesty, sometimes I still get pissed off at my parents for being so damn harsh but it takes me real time to figure out that my "friends" aren't willing to critique me because they don't care as much.

(Shoutout to my brothers Allen & Donovan though, nothing but love!)

I value all the late nights when I debated running away from my parents because they were so tough and the fist fights with my brother and sisters because they molded me into the thick-skinned person I am today against the monsters of this 'real world.'

As much as they make your skin crawl, your family truly does know what's best for you because they were there to watch you grow from your infancy to your young adulthood.

Your dad may actually be convinced you're an irresponsible, trainwreck of a child, but he knows that he made this trainwreck and is willing to do everything in his power to keep it from wrecking even more.