November 17, 2008

Dear Friend,

I was thinking back to when I had bad times in my life (I won’t get into details on them though). But I thought about what I did in order to deal with them. Whenever I’m feeling sad and lonely, I think bacl to the day that my little brother was born. I was only seven years old, but I remember it like it happened yesterday. My dad and other brother picked me up from school and told me that my mom was in labor and she was having him. I was so excited; I love kids so much, even though I was a kid myself. I just thought of all the fun me and my other brother had and I how that would double now that I had two brothers. We get to the hospital and there he was, lying in the big see-through plastic thing just wiggling around with his eyes closed. I had never seen a newborn baby so I expected him to be bigger than he actually was. My mom was all emotional and my dad was happy about the new edition to the family. My parents even let me hold him (of course with their help). Now whenever something stops me from feeling happy, I just think of this and a smile comes on my face.

Talking about this does bring back memories. I remember my childhood friend who lived up the street from me. We had gone to the same school and our moms even worked together. We hung out almost every day and even spent the nights at each other house whenever our moms would let us. One day, it was like when we were 5, I taught Lisa how to ride a bike. Up until then, she never learned. She was always too scared of falling off or skinning her knee like her brother always did. After a long day of trying, she finally was able to ride the bike and balance it herself without my help. We were so excited and felt really accomplished. Our moms even took us out for ice cream because of it. That day makes me smile too.

Sometimes thinking of good memories aren’t enough to get through the bad times. I had to find another way to cope with things. Some people turn to drugs, alcohol or sex but I turned to sleep. If something bothered me, then I would sleep sleep sleep. This gave me time to relax my mind and not stress out. I stress really easily so taking a nap really helped me calm down and get into my right state of mind. I still do it to this day too, because it truly works. I don’t know if you have a way to cope with things but if you don’t, then maybe you should think of getting something positive that works for you. I don’t know, it’s just a suggestion.

Forever,

Vanessa