Metaphor Madness by Brittany Atkin

My life is a roller coaster, it has its ups and downs, twists and turns and loopty-loops. Sometimes it can be exciting and make you want to scream and laugh, or it can have the loopty-loop that just sickens you and you just feel like you’re going to throw up. The thing is with roller coasters is it is life, you say to the conductor “let me off” but he cant stop the ride for only one person and ruin the ride for everyone else just because you are sick of it. No matter how much you want to they can’t stop the ride for you, just like life. It must keep going on even if you don’t like it. In my life I’ve had my roller coaster moments. I’ve been through those ups and downs and loopty-loops. And just before I thought it was over, it goes for another round. You don’t know when the ride will stop, only fate determines that, but if you do get sick of it don’t be that one person that has to stop the ride for their own fun.
It was Easter morning, beautiful, bright, birds chirping and everything seemed right…until my dad woke me up. You see, my grandma had been dealing with bone cancer for a while and she seemed as healthy as ever and lively until a few weeks ago. That’s when she got really sick. She got to the point where she couldn’t even talk because of the cancer in her jaw and the pain, but she never complained. That morning, Easter morning was different from any other ones because she had died just an hour before I woke up. The second my dad told me that, I didn’t really believe him. I kept denying that she was really gone. It took me about ten minutes to snap out of it and realize that it was true. This was my big downfall, the scary, unreal part. This whole time had been hard for me and my family, my mom was never home because she spent the past few months up at her parent’s house helping them.
I rarely ever saw my mom except for a few minutes in the morning but during those minutes she was sleeping, so we never talked. My dad I rarely saw either, he was working overtime to ear some extra money since my mom didn’t work at all. It was just me and my older and younger brother (Jordan and Brady) at the house. My dad normally got home at nine but my mom got home at one a.m. mostly. Jordan wasn’t much of a help though with watching my little brother, he was always with friends or wandering around somewhere just to get away. With him gone, I was stressed. My grades started dropping and my parents were worried. Since we never talked they always thought something was wrong with me, which they questioned. And of course that just made me mad, I don’t think we went more than one day without fighting. This was my loopty-loop. The part that just sickened me so much I felt as if I was going to throw up. The only place where I found at least some peace was at school. There I didn’t have to worry about what I should feed my little brother every night or if my mom were to come home or not. There I could just have fun with friends and hang out. I looked happy, always smiling and laughing, just a normal person. But I wasn’t, I was different, I always found myself depressed or about to cry and not knowing why. I felt as if I was yelling at the conductor to get me off and he was just standing there looking at me, with a blank face, laughing and taunting me.
After about a month and a half or dealing with this, it stopped. This was my great finale, the ending, the “up”. My mom came home and my dad takes off work sometimes to make up all the lost time with us. My mom still has to work overtime though to make up the work she missed. Things started to slowly get better, my grades got back up but my parents and I still fought over everything but rarely anymore. My mom doesn’t look as sad anymore and neither do I, but I still see my mom cry sometimes. As for me I’m just fine, better than ever, although I know things will never be the same.
I think what kept me going and to get me through it and not be the one person that ruins the ride for anything, is knowing that it would all be over soon. Every day I thought to myself “don’t worry it will be over soon” and sure enough it was. I still find myself sad sometimes but not all the time. So finally, my biggest pain and worries were all over, the conductor let me off, and surprisingly I didn’t choke, freak out, or throw up. Life is a roller coaster, no matter what twists and turns come in our way; we can handle it and make it off in one piece.