The Life and Times part 1

It all started with my birth. My name is Heesham Naji, but need I really rewind so far back. I wish to entertain you with my successes and accomplishments. Sadly life didn’t go well for me until a year and a half ago. Around the age of four, I moved from Olathe, Kansas to Tallahassee, Florida. My father and mother had no choice but to move due to the economical issues they dealt with. From there, things only seemed to spiral downwards. Another move four years later coerced me into a stressful mind state, leaving my siblings and I confused. Confusion can come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. My sibling’s experiences with confusion were unlike mine exponentially. I felt depressed and alone, while my brother and sister faced anxiety and attachment issues. Moving from one school to another left all of us bewildered. At the moment confusion even seemed like a blur, but today I recognize it as strength. This misfortune left me stronger and more mature than many other kids my age. I saw the world differently and I excelled beyond my years. Some teachers thought I was brilliant and had potential, in my eyes this only meant success. After this we moved once again, from Tallahassee, Florida all the way to Anaheim, California. This move only seemed to worsen for me, yet alone my siblings. The home that we moved into, or should I say a two-bedroom apartment, was beyond what I imagined. A family of four cramming into a two-bedroom apartment is bad enough, but with an addition of one more family member things seemed hopeless. The constant housing of our grandparents, who would come all the way from Syria, only seemed to make it worse. With all my heart I love those two and may god rest the soul of my grandpa, but a family of seven could and would verily fall apart in this raunchy home. My brother and I would sleep on the couch and I vividly remember my grandfather struggling to get across the living room, with the help of my grandmother, to use the bathroom. A couple years back my grandfather had been diagnosed with a type of disease known as type 2 diabetes. To me though that disease, that indigenous species to his body, should never have existed. Even though I was ignorant at that age, there was one fact that I could not get over; this was the fact that my grandfather had his left leg amputated. This brings me to my point; we are no more than humans trying to portray the natural course of life, to the best of our abilities, without falling to death. Death sadly though is part of this insidious portrayal of nature and we must face it like the men or women we are.