Two years ago, my mom was arrested and incarcerated for a year. My mom is my best friend, we lived alone just the two of us till I was about seven and then she married my stepdad and I moved to Texas. Losing her made me go through a very dark time in my life. There were many times where I just couldn’t take the loneliness, and the frustration, and anger that I had, not towards her, but the situation. Through that year I had to learn that things happen for a reason I had to realize that the feeling of uncertainty it is normal and is okay to feel that way.

           Loneliness is a very complex and hard emotion to deal with especially when you are younger. The emotion of never feeling like you can get close to someone and that everyone is out to get you can take a major toll on your overall well-being. I had a constant feeling that people was just there for me because they pitied my situation. Therefore, I never really let people in because of the fear that they would leave me once everything calmed down. My mom got arrested during the second semester of my 8th-grade year, but before the official arrest we went through months of hiding which was the start of me “losing” my friends and the start of me pushing them away. I pushed away people that I cared about because I never felt like they were with me because they were worried about me. A consequence of that, they worried even more. The feeling of not having anyone made me metaphorically crack. It was the first step of me breaking in half. I held in so many emotions because I felt like I could not tell anyone. I felt like it was supposed to be a secret that absolutely no one could know about.

           Anger is a strong feeling of annoyance, displeasure, and hostility. I feel like anger is one of the most misinterpreted feelings as far as people reading it. In my personal opinion anger does not necessarily mean you are mad but I take it as being a frustration with a person, situation, or even yourself. The first few months that my mom was gone were tough on my emotions and my mental health. I spent every breath and thought thinking I had trying to prove that it wasn’t her fault, and I told myself that everything escalated because we had missed something. I felt so angry at everything that was happening in my life that I put up a mental wall. I wouldn’t talk about it or even sometimes about her because I just didn’t know what to say. There were many times that the anger I had built up to where I would explode and whoever was around me felt it. The feeling of being angry with myself and being angry at even God took a toll on my mental health and left me in some very dark places. Some of those dark places were so bad that it was hard for me to be around anyone that knew about the situation that’s why I pushed so many people away. It left me wondering why I was still here. It left me having those dark thoughts, and it had me thinking about running away from everyone and everything I knew.

           Sadness was probably the second hardest emotion that I had to deal with because it required a lot of learning. Before everything that happened, I had a tendency to keep my emotions in. I never talked about them, I never expressed them, I never even cried. I used to see crying as a weakness and I was embarrassed if I was caught crying. Thus, I just made it a point not to do it. When everything started going downhill, I was thrown a learning curve because all of a sudden, I wasn’t able to hold my emotions in. I had to learn how to cope with the things that I feel, and I am still learning how to do that along with calmly expressing my feelings. I would say that sadness is a general emotion, but for me, at that time, I didn’t consider it general. Everyone can say, “Oh I’m sad,” but the difference that I saw between me and other people is when I said I was sad (which I never did) I meant it. I did not just say it because I was feeling “off” or “different”. I can say now that all the fake smiles and trying to forget about what was happening behind the scenes killed me inside because it left me in a place where even now, I still hide everything and feel like everything is above my feelings and thoughts. I will forever deal with and cope with the feeling like I can’t speak up about things that go through my head.

            The process of grieving is often associated with a death of a person, but really grieving can happen after anything you personally consider impactful on your life. I never completely went through the “steps of grieving” but along the way I found things that made me happy. When my mom got arrested, she was pregnant with my little sister. She had my little sister two months into her incarceration and I can say that she was and is a huge light in my life. She distracted me from what was really happening because I had to focus on taking care of her while my dad was working a second job to pay the bills.

           Everything in life has an effect no matter how big or how small. Sometimes the effect is physical but most of the time when something happens there is an emotional response. Dealing with the loneliness, anger, and sadness was and is one of the hardest things that I will deal with throughout the rest of my life. But I have come to realize those things are what made me who I am today and dealing with them is how I am here today.