A Gift and a Curse [free write]

Christina Berthaud
10:30 Class

                There are only a couple instances in my life where I can say I was truly suffering. My senior year of high school and freshmen year of college may have been some of the most stressful and a tragic year of my life but at one point was euphoric.

                October 31, 2008, one of my cousins Marvin, passed away. His death was totally random and unexpected. In the papers, it was deemed a suicide, but I refuse to call it so. The story was that he was under the influence of something and was involved in unfamiliar activity with strange behavior. This being the first death this close to my heart took a great toll on me. It took me months to almost a year to cope and seal my heart back up. Later in my senior year, January 30^th 2009 my maternal grandmother passed away of congested heart failure.  I was especially hurt, I felt like a piece of me was taken,  because she lived in my house and I shared a room with her, so every day I woke up she was the first person I saw in the morning and the last person I saw at night. At times I would forget she was gone and enter my room to greet and kiss her cheek.  I felt as if each member of my family was being picked off. And for months I cried. Each time I cried for her, I began to think on the past and cried for him. The loss of both these members of my family put me in a brief depression, I didn’t want to speak to anyone, I didn’t want to go to school, I didn’t want to eat, I just wanted to sleep. Because when I slept I didn’t feel anything.  I had fears of who would be next and if I could endure anymore of such pain.

                As I began to feel that things were getting better, the winters break (January 1^st) of my freshmen year at St. John’s another one of my close cousins, Roshah, passed away in a car accident. At that point I was broken. I didn’t know what to do. In my mind all I can think was “Why me?!” I felt as if someone kept ripping open the same wound just to watch me bleed. Shortly after the passing of Roshah, I came back to New York to spend time with my father’s side of the family in Brooklyn to take a break from tragedy. When I thought things could not get any worse, I got a call from my roommate yelling through my phone in panic “Have you spoken to your mother?!”  I asked why, and she responded, repressing tears, that Haiti had endured a 7.0 magnitude earthquake. My knees instantly buckled, I became weak and nearly hit the ground, unable to speak and get myself together, and I began to tear up. All could think was “My goodness, my mother is dead, who else is going to be taken from me?” I was on edge, in tears, going through sleepless nights. A part of me knew she was okay, but the rest of me was preparing to cope for tragedy. It was like I was cursed.

                They always say with every cloud there is a silver lining. My silver lining may have been really thin and my cloud one of the darkest, but it was enough for me to come back to my normal self. I am entirely too happy to cry anymore, I hated weeping like a banshee. I am entirely too happy, to be held down by tragedy that long. Towards the end of all this I began to feel happy, free from the binding of tragedy. This series of events brought my family A LOT closer. We were close before, but now we speak nearly every week, whether it’s on the phone, through, text or facebook.  My last state of euphoria came when I got word that my mother was alive and well and on her way home almost a whole two months later. My family means everything to me and without them I’d be without a backbone.  I was told to keep my family close, because without them, you are nothing. Those who endure the most pain are blessed. I guess it’s a gift and a curse.