Construction 101, Cassidy Shay [unputdownable books TXT] 📗

reading her mail and trying to seem calm, like this happened every day. The dishwasher gargled and spat, disrupting the quiet. Cars teases us as they drove by, giving us false hope that our parents had arrived. Because of this, it seemed almost too good to be true when the black Dodge Caliber eased into the driveway and slowed to a stop.
“They’re here!” one of us shouted, and we jumped off the counter. Before we were able to tear the door from its hinges, Grandma came over to calm us down.
“There’s no use in scaring him to death on his first day home,” she said, guiding us through the kitchen and into the family room. She sat us all down on the couch and left to help my mom and dad.
After my mom showed him to us, she explained how we had to hold him and why we were supposed to hold him like that. As I held my fragile baby brother, I felt triumphant. I had remained strong throughout the two-month period. I had helped my mom out as much as possible, and I had prayed every night, but there had also been a lot of worrying. I sent up a silent prayer of thanks because I knew that the worrying was over.
This two month period did not have any one big impact on my, but it had several little ones that add up to make a big difference in who I am today. After realizing how fragile and delicate a life can be, I am extra protective over my brother. If anything has a remote chance of turning dangerous, it is automatically off limits. My view on hospitals was also changed by this event. To some people, a hospital is like the second coming of Christ. Miracles occur every day, and peoples’ lives are changed forever. For me, though, a hospital means months of waiting, worrying, and hoping. It means schedules are altered and friendships disappear.
Another thing that changed was my view on life. Throughout a lifetime, any given person will go through countless bad times, from bad hair days to deaths in the family. But no matter how bad things get, they will always get better in the end. This incident put into perspective how easily changed life really is. One minute, everything is normal and perfectly fine, and the next thing you know, you have been tossed into a whirlwind of if’s, or’s, what’s, and why’s. Because of all these changes in my life, the greatest impact has been that I have developed a higher appreciation those that I love and for every day that I have been granted to share with them.
Strong for others

Pretty good essay, right? I was pretty proud of it. I only got marked down for that passive voice there at the end.
So that was the beginning. When Lawson was in the NICU, my mom was almost always at the hospital, and we were either in the waiting room (we became good friends with most of the hospital staff on Floor 2, which is the NICU and delivery and... I can't remember that word. Oh well), or at my grandma's house. The constant change wasn't too hard on me. I just figured that it was a way of life. But I know that it was hard on Shelsey. That's kind of when she stopped.
Mentally, emotionally, and maturity-wise, Shelsey stopped growing when she was seven. And still, to this day, even though she's twelve, she is seven. And when Lawson was in the hospital, I had to be strong for her.
But being strong for someone every day for that long, when you're only ten... You develop a way of being there without the constant hugs and "Do you want to talk about it?" You develop a way that sticks with you.
And here's how I'm strong for others:

________________________________________________________________________________

I won’t tell you
“I’m so sorry.”
It won’t ease your pain,
Won’t make it okay.

I won’t give you
A great, long hug.
It won’t make up
For their lost arms.

I won’t try to
Understand how it feels
It won’t give you
Your healing time.

I won’t try to get
You to talk about it.
That’ll just make you
Want to break down.

I won’t walk on my toes
To make sure you’re not hurt.
It will just bring attention
To what makes you cry.

But I will…

Sit quietly.
Listening.
Learning.
Be by your side.
Protecting.
Watching.
Pray loudly.
Wishing.
Hoping.
Be there.
For.
You.

Gotta Learn First

Most of the time, when you do something, you have to learn first. You know? It's just kinda something that you accept as a part of life. But how do you learn to be strong for everyone else?
For me, it happened a couple of different ways. Part of how I'm so good at this is that I've been doing it for a long time. I was sort of just forced into it. Experience is the best way to learn. But I've also had people teach me. They didn't sit down and say, "This is what you gotta do." But by watching their examples, I learned.
Right now, I'm talking about a couple people. They're all guys, and they all came into my life, one by one, after the divorce.
Here's the story of James, the unintentional torture. Brian, the depressed optimist. Bo, with the well-known secret. JimBob, with his arrogantly humble airs. Rick, and his trivial importance. Ken, alone with my mom. And then there's Bob, the one who's permanently temporary.
Here's a story of an inconsistently constant relationship, a single mom in a relationship, and a small eternity.
This is my story, a real-life oxymoron.

________________________________________________________________________________

Some things make you weak. They empty you out, so you’re hollow. Just a shell. Weak, empty, helpless. Your whole works turns inside out, upside down, flips you backwards. You wade into the darkness, unable to see, unable to predict what comes next.

Some things break you, toss you around and slam you into the ground. And after they break you, they put you back together, only so they can break you once again. After each rebuild, you are even weaker than you were before.

When I was little, my dad was the only one. He might not have always been there. But he was the only way. For most of my childhood, my dad was the only man in my life, the only man in my mom’s. I never imagined that it would be any other way. I took that time for granted. Dad came home from work for dinner each night, we prayed, we ate, he went to work in the morning and we did the same thing over and over again. The consistency was healthy, made us all happy.

So when I heard about James, things in my head, my view on life, shifted. My mom called us into her room and told us that her and my dad were separated. I wasn’t sure how to react. I just hoped and prayed that I’d be able to adjust. That my siblings would come out okay. James was in the Air Force, and he lived in Wyoming. My mom had been talking to him since the beginning of the problems with my dad. He’d been there through everything, and my mom told me that she loved him. As I was only twelve at the time, I didn’t quite understand this. How can you love someone who you’ve never met? How can you be married, and love another?

After my parents announced their divorce, James was there. Not physically, of course. To this day (four years later), my mom hasn’t actually met this man in person. But he was there, the constant subject of conversation. Always on our minds, always in my mom’s heart. For a long time, my mom wasn’t in a relationship with anyone here. She kept faithful to James, a man who she had never met. They talked every day, but still he never came.

It was an evil teaser that consumed our lives. Many mornings, I woke up, hoping that that would be the day that James showed up on our doorstep, ready to meet the family that he had grown to know so well, but only over chat messages on yahoo. I went to bed hoping that maybe he’d call the next day, telling my mom that he’d bought a plane ticket and needed her to pick him up from the airport. For a year, it was an unintentional torture tactic, picking away at our lives.

In a way, James has been there the entire time, even up until today. He’s my mom’s friend, her counselor, and the man she really wants to be with. In between all the others, there has been James. Inconsistently constant, the relationship between my mom and James has taught me to believe that, no matter how much you love someone, love just isn’t enough.

My seventh grade year held four guys. There was James, the summer before. Brian in the fall, Bo in the winter. As Arizona spring came, so did JimBob. The ups and downs were, to say the least, confusing. But I accepted it, I adapted, I moved on when they left.

If you ask my mom, Brian was never her boyfriend. If you were to track down Brian, he’d tell you that they were madly in love. Yeah… not the best thing to have in a relationship, whether it’s a romantic relationship or not. I never really considered Brian as her boyfriend, but more of a friend with benefits. These benefits were not just sex and games. One of the benefits that Brian got was that he got to know us kids, and he always talked about how