Personal Narrative: Growing Up

Growing Up
My very first memory is of my mom and my brother. My mom, a young mom, a smart mom, was and is an idol to me. She has always carried herself with a composure that is both honorable and mature. My mom, who is currently the most mature person I know, had to have been immature at some point in her life. She grew more mature as she aged, and as I write about myself, and how I have grown up, I hope to see that I have matured too.
My mother, was twenty-two years old with two kids that she was practically raising on her own. My dad, who doesn’t make the best decisions, was in college at around this time and wasn’t the best father figure. My mom was carrying my brother and me in both of her arms. Carrying both of us was a difficult task.

In simple terms, my brother and I were not the skinniest children. She tripped over a rock when she was carrying us, and we went crashing down. All of us were crying. My brother was crying, because he didn’t know what just happened. I was crying, because I scraped my knee. My mom was crying, from what I assume, was frustration. In my mom’s eyes you could see the pain, the frustration, the immaturity that she has had to face by having children at such a young age. She wasn’t completely grown up yet.
Maybe we never completely grow up. Immaturity is a part of growing up, and my mother, who was so young with so many adult responsibilities was forced to grow up fast. I have not been forced to grow up, but throughout this paper I will refer back to the memories that I believe have made me more or less grow up. One moment, that I think made me grow up, was my prom experience my sophomore year.
In movies and TV shows, prom is blown way out of proportion. Whenever I think of prom, I think of 10 Things I Hate about You. In this movie, the ending scene takes place at prom. The lovely prom queen, who went with the disgusting, yet handsome prom king, falls for the geeky boy. They then proceed to dance the night away. My experience at prom was nothing like that. While getting ready for the dance, my friends and I chatted over major issues in our society such as; who was the cutest in our school, who we thought had the prettiest prom dress or how we were going to do our makeup. Now I am ashamed of this, because we were so shallow when we spoke, “She’s not cute. I don’t know how anybody likes her.” One of my friends said. This made me think what if she talks about me this way. I learned from that day on to try my hardest to not bring other people down.
Learning to not bring people down is a part of growing up. To be a mature human being, you have to bring other people up, and that will make you more positive and mature. Another part of growing up is to not be arrogant and selfish. I learned this lesson my freshman year of high school.
My freshmen year of high school was one of the worst years of my life. I was awkward. I didn’t know how to put makeup on properly. I would look like a tiger, because my orange eyeshadow was so intense and went from my eyelid to my eyebrow.
One high-light of my freshmen year, was starting on the varsity volleyball team. I made the mistake of having a cocky attitude.
Volleyball started out fine. I started on varsity. I served on varsity. Life was good. Then the upperclassman, who had a major toll on the coach’s decisions, started to whisper in her ear, “Ciara is mean on the court.”, “Ciara doesn’t listen to our direction.”, “Ciara is just a mean person.”. My coach listened to these upperclassmen because she was scared. It was her first year coaching, and the upperclassmen tried to run everything. They were successful in doing this.
I was benched and heart broken.

I didn’t know how to handle the situation, because I was young and immature. I was angry over all else. Angry that my coach listened to the upperclassmen. Angry that the upperclassmen didn’t like me. Angry with myself for being arrogant and not humble. I took the month of volleyball where I didn’t go in at all, during the game and humbled myself. I encouraged others. I was all around happy for my team’s success, even though I didn’t really contribute to that success.
Now, after two years of humbling myself and trying to be a better person, I am the starting libero for our high school varsity team. The libero of a volleyball team only passes in the back row. We are picked to win state this year. I learned from my freshmen season, to not be arrogant about being picked to win state, but to be humble about it and to work hard for the state championship.
I grew to be a kinder, humble person from my freshmen year volleyball experience. From this experience I also choose to be the best upperclassman I can be, and I treat everyone on my volleyball team as

equals.
Growing up inevitable leads to traumatic experiences, one of my most traumatic experiences happened when I was very young.

When I was seven years old, I had the most traumatic experience of my whole childhood. My friends and I were practicing for our upcoming P.E. class. Now, this is weird, but everyone in my class is super competitive, so we want to be the best at everything. Even if that thing, is dodgeball against the first graders. We were practicing for the obstacle course that, our P.E. teacher, was setting up for us. We set our obstacle course up on this sloped hill, close to the playground of my school. My class and I, were going through the obstacle course, and I was against the fastest boy in the class (because I was the fastest girl in my class). We were going through the obstacle course, when I fell down the hill. I fell, stumbled, and rolled down this hill, and when I tried to get up I

couldn’t.
My legs were numb. I cried, “Help me! Help me! I can’t get up!”, but no one would help me. I don’t blame the kids in my class for not helping me get up that day. We were seven, and most seven-year-old kids, do not respond well to a little girl screaming at them to, “Help her up.” They instantly stepped away from me.
My best-friend then and my best-friend now, Gavin, ran to the teacher for help. While he was doing this, I rolled up my pant leg up, because I felt warm liquid flowing from my knee. When my pant leg was rolled up, I looked down at my knee. Horror! There was a large gash from my knee to my calf. I could see the tissues from my knee, because the cut was so deep. So much blood was flowing down my leg.
Then, I was in the ambulance. The only emotion I could recognize, out of the hundreds of emotions going through my brain, was fear. I looked to the woman who was watching over me, in the ambulance. She was so kind to me. She would tell me, “Everything will be okay sweetie.”, “You will be fine.”, “You are so strong.” These words lightened my fear, and encouraged me to be strong.
That day I received over twenty stitches, and I gained a new respect for my caretakers at school, and on the ambulance. I learned at seven-years-old, that you have to be brave, when something scary comes your way. Life is about experiences, and growing from the good experiences, and the bad experiences. From these experiences, we mature.

In this life, I think that we grow up, and the traumatic, gross and humiliating things that happen to us are a part of our personality. We are molded from experiences. Our character, develops from how we react to these experiences. Whether, we push through trauma or whether, we cower in fear shows what type of human beings we are.
Children, teenagers and young adult’s personalities form through how we are raised. It is all a part of human psychology. When we are young, our brains are like sponges, absorbing everything we see, hear, taste or touch. No matter what situation our subconscious brain remembers and these memories form who we are.
My personal experiences, have molded me into being a humbler person. My childhood traumas, have molded me into being a strong person. The experiences I will face now, and in the future years, I hope, will mold me into a kind, compassionate person, that does well for the world. The way my experience has molded me, are a part of how I have grown up.
Unlike my mother, I didn’t have to grow up fast. The experiences that I have had in my sixteen years of life, have allowed me to grow up slowly, but I still am not completely grown up.