Be proud of family despite faults

I spent a lot of my break being hung over and watching Dragon Ball Z. However, that got boring pretty fast. I decided to take a trip outside of town and go back to Hemingford, otherwise known as the place I grew up.

I’ll admit that I hated living there; small population and small minds. But the main reason I went home was to see family, which I think is pretty ironic.

Growing up, I never felt too close to my family. I never went to my brother’s ball games, never really participated in family events, or anything like that. Hell, even when we went on vacations, I was still bummed out that I had to be around all of them.

But the older I got, the more I regretted not being around them. I realized that my family was the most important thing holding me together. Not only that, but they were the ones inspiring me to actually put effort into the things that I do, but that is only because I don’t want to end up like them.

My parents divorced when I was 13 after my mother’s battle with cancer. Tensions in my family were running high, mostly because my parents used every second available to scream at the other one. They were stuck living together for a few months while they tried to find places to move, and that was probably one of the worst living situations I have ever been in.

People use the term “hell on earth” all the time, but I think this was the closest I’ve been to seeing it make any sense. After they moved their separate ways, I didn’t see my mother for a long time. I had gotten used to living in the town, but she lived in the country. Being a little teenage boy, I was a terrible person and didn’t give much thought about how much she might have missed me. To this day, it still haunts me.

Over time, I started living with her more, but that only lead to fights with my sibling and more yelling. This was also around the same time I started therapy and medication, so it was a very conflicting period of my life.

While all of this was going on, my sisters were busy trying to be adults. They had just graduated high school and were trying to live life to the absolute fullest.

Unfortunately, neither of them went to college, thus continuing the trend of people in my family not getting a higher education.

I was about 16 when all of this was going on, and it was an insane period of my life. Looking back, I really don’t remember a whole lot of it, but that might be for the best.

I know my family doesn’t sound like the Brady Bunch. But you know what? Nobody’s family is the Brady Bunch.

Everybody is going to come from some weird background that they are forced to call their family, even if they really don’t want to. I am proud to be a Heule. Everybody I know in my family has had to deal with a lot of really rough stuff, from my grandfather living on his own at the age of 15, to my deceased grandmother’s battles with breast cancer.

My mother has been my rock throughout these last couple years. Her advice has always been able to give me some form of solace. And my father, no matter what, is probably the greatest man I know. No matter how hard times have gotten for him, he has never given up. My little brother is a teenager from hell, but he’s not the worst teenager ever. And my sisters may be a little crazy, but I love them.

I love all of my family very much, even though I’m not around them a whole lot.

Sometimes, you just have to go home once in a while, but home won’t be Hemingford. For me, home will be wherever my family is.