The Happiness Project, M K [books to read to be successful .TXT] 📗

Bad experiences can teach us just as much as good ones, because we learn from feeling certain emotions and we learn from our reactions of things. I remember watching my father toss Eileen across the living room, and we were three still. I watched her body roll and smash into piles of toys and shoes that had cluttered the living room from our play time that afternoon. I remember feeling disturbed and scared as I watched her began to wail in pain and sorrow. It was around the same time when Victoria had been thrown out of the door also. I guess our father thought that he could get rid of his problems, by throwing them away. I had watched my twin sister and my younger sister get hurt in my childhood and I am glad that I never saw our youngest sister get hurt. I wish that I would have taken their places. I am the oldest and I wish I could have protected them. I wonder why I was never a target of his anger. Maybe I have distanced myself from our father, even as a child. I wasn't in arms reach, so I never got hurt. 

After five years of marriage and too many chances given, my mother left our father. It was a very exciting and scary day, because I remember it perfectly. Our mother had just picked us up from the local pre-school and as soon as we walked into our house, our mother told us to get anything we wanted from the house, any toys or books, because we were leaving and not coming back. I didn't understand why we were leaving, but I really didn't want to leave behind any toys. So, me and my sisters scrambled to get anything we wanted and then we rushed out of the house and were buckled safely into the car. As we drove away, I looked at the big yellow house and watched our father scream at our mother from the driveway. He did not follow us, but he was holding a picture that Eillen had drawn. For Eileens age, she was a surprisingly wonderful artist and she had drawn our family, smiling and together. Just before we pulled onto the road and drifted away, he ripped the picture down the middle and screamed: "THIS IS WHAT YOUR DOING TO OUR FAMILY!"  It was a disturbing sight, but I didn't understand why he was angry. We always went places, so I thought that we would be back. My mother had told the truth when she said that we were leaving and we have never looked back at the yellow house. I would miss the coyotes, the trees, the billions of blinking stars that can only be appriciated in the darkness of the country, and I would even miss the one blue christmas light that hung on the side of the house. Despite the strange things that happened during my time there, it was my first home and I loved it. Who can forget the place where they learned to laugh and love. Even if I learned to cry there too, I don't regret anything and I wouldn't want anything to change. Even though bad things happened, I wouldn't be who I am today if everything had gone according to plan. 2nd step to happiness; Accept the past, because we can not go back and change the events that transpired. It is better to accept the future you have and to make a life for yourself, without striving to change what will never be again. I am going to learn that, I MUST learn that. You can learn it with me too. 

 

Bullies~

Step number 3, to being happy: Pity the bullies in your life.

What a strange word that is, Bullies, it is a word that means nothing to someone who has never been hurt because of the cruel actions of another. If you have experienced this before, then you know that pain behind the word. I am telling you another thing about myself and if you have not noticed yet, I dwell on things that cause me pain. I do not dwell because I can not move forward, but because by speaking about it, I can begin to move forward without thinking about it at all. I was not bullied much as a child, but as an adult I learned that I could be disliked, for being myself. Isn't that how all of these situations can be defined? Bullies prey on those that they believe are weaker. It is up to you, the victim, to show these people that you are not as they define. You are stronger then you believe and that you will not let them harm you. 

Before I can tell you about the Bullies in my life, I must tell you about the love of my life. His name is Erick and we met in middle school. We met under the strangest circumstances and I am embarrased to admit how it all happened. On my first day of the 7th grade, me and my friend were wandering the new middle school and Lilly decided that it would be fun to play a prank on someone. I decided that I would follow her lead and have some fun. Being as young as we were, we didn't understand how foolish we were or that we might hurt someone's feelings. I volunteered to play this innocent prank and I searched the swarm of students for a victim. Being forever the coward, I wanted to choose someone that didn't look mean.

Out of the hundred of people in the crowd, I spotted one boy with a bright blue silk shirt, with my favorite super hero spider man plastered across it. I did not know this boy and his face gave me no sign that he was unkind or would become aggressive if I offended him, so I took a chance and played my prank. Again, remember that we were 11 years old and pathedically ridiculous things are hillarious in that exact moment in history. I ran up to the boy and shouted: "There is poop on your shoe!" The boy looked down expectantly at his shoe, and as he soon as he noticed there was nothing there, I finished off my wonderful prank by saying: "Oh, It must have hopped off!" I wish I could go back in time and tell Lilly, that this joke did not make sense and that I would be embarassed to write about it later. While me and Lilly were laughing as hard as we could about our successful prank, the boy had turned bright red. He put down his foot angrily and gave us a heart stopping glare that I would never forget. Our laughter dissapeared as soon as he stared at us in that way and I believed that I had chosen the wrong person to play a prank on. The boy walked away quickly and dissapeared into the crowd. The bell rang for our first class and we were happy with ourselves, despite his reaction. I didn't think I would ever see him again, but I was wrong. 

 I found out later that his name was Erick and he was 13 and I was 11. We had a history class together and I never noticed him, until a girl from my church group introduced us. He had told me later that he had thought I was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen and that he wished he had been brave enough to introduce himself. He had been the one to ask my friend to introduce us and I did not know this for a long time.  In my eyes, I have never been beautiful. If I had ever liked a boy, they had never noticed me and if they did, it was because I was sitting next to the girl that they had a crush on. I wasn't slender and I could not afford fashionable clothes. Overall, I wasn't like the girls in my school or in my life, that I had always strived to be like. I  thought that I was ugly, because I was not noticed. I had never felt beautiful, until Erick told me that I was attactive just the way I was. I had never imagined that he would like my inner beauty, just as much as my outer. I had been the defintion of "awkward looking teenager." But, doesn't every normal teenger go through this phase? At the time, I felt as if no one looked strange but me. 

If you have ever felt that you didn't belong, then we are one in the same. I always felt as if I never fit anywhere. I wasn't like other people at my school. I didn't dress the same, talk the same or look the same. I wanted to blend in, but I always stood out. Why I strived to be the same, I will never know. If I had been like all the rest, then Erick may have never noticed me. Meeting Erick was also the first time that I realized that people were bullied, even in middle school. We were once walking around the field, as usual and a group of five or six boys started to follow us. I knew one of them, because we had went to elementary with me. He was an identical twin, but his brother wasn't with him today. The boys were laughing and joking, when suddenly one of them said: "HEY LOOK! Its Erick, the faggot. Why are you walking with a girl?" When I heard one of them say this, I was furious. I looked at Erick and watched him stare straight ahead and his gaze was fearless. They continued on with there teasing, but Erick never said a thing. I used to have a bad temper and I wasn't patient, so after about fifthteen minutes of this, I proceeded to swear like a sailor, in Ericks honor. They eventually got tired of hearing me swear and Erick not rsponding, so they just left. I was a little angry that Erick didn't stand up for himself, so I asked him why he didn't. 

He looked deeply into my eyes and didn't smile as he said, "I've had enough bullies in my life to care about them. They are all cowards and liars." Then, he looked away from me and stared after the boys who had tried to bully him and said,  "Why should I be upset, when I'm walking next to you?" My skin began to crawl when he spoke. I was surprised in a good way and that was when I began to notice that I like him. He was very different than anyone I had ever met.  Erick wasn't a coward, he just didn't care about others opinions. I liked that a lot, because I cared too much about everyone elses opinions. I smiled and we kept on walking, in a peaceful silence, before starting up on a new conversation and have another great time.