Essay On Childhood Ignorance

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Most people spend their entire youth wishing to be older, dreaming of the privileges that come with age. While it is true that privileges often do increase with age, so does responsibility, knowledge, and understanding. In one 's youth they are often extremely ignorant to the problems in the world unless they affect them directly, and it is no coincidence that childhood is often the happiest time of life. The world is a full of pain and misery, this is the way it always has been. This is the way it always will be. While it is certainly possible to have periods of individual happiness, adult society as a whole is unhappy. The youthful cravings of adulthood are quickly replaced with longings for the childhood ignorance we once all had. There is a time in everyone 's life where the darkness of the world shines brighter than the dying sun of their childhood. Unfortunately reality hit me harder and earlier than it does for most. I was only ten years old when I was thrown out of the comfortable garden of my childhood. It was a beautiful, sunny day in April and I had just walked home with my brother as I always did. There were white flowers on all the trees, and a pleasant aroma drifted through the air. We stepped through our front door smiling, giddy to tell our parents every event that happened that day as preschoolers often do. They were already sitting in the living room waiting for us. We heard the ever dreaded “we need to talk” and that is when they told us our mom had been diagnosed with breast cancer. While it was treatable, I was convinced at the time I was going to lose my mom. Two months later, just a week into our summer they told us they were getting divorced. A long time coming apparently, but well hidden from my brother and I. Before these two months my largest problem was getting a note home from my teacher about bad behavior. This had happened twice before; both times I faked being sick and went home before she could give me the paper. Now however, I was faced with two problems I could no longer run away from. These things, along with the growing sense of my own mortality, really damaged what was supposed to be the easiest part of my life. Now, years later and closer to adulthood than childhood, I have come to the conclusion that this crucial time of development is to blame for my cynical, often less than optimistic world view. My mom’s childhood was also less than satisfactory. …show more content…
Her father moved to California from Portugal when he was 19, knowing very little english. He found a job as a construction worker and got married at the age of 25 to another Portuguese immigrant. When my mom was born she had to learn both English and Portuguese as her father and mother rarely spoke English in the house. Money was always an issue, with the small family of three barely scraping by. Both my mom’s dad and mother smoked heavily, and she was just 9 years old her mother died of lung cancer.
Things only got worse from there, her dad smoked more than ever, and went into a dark place after his wife 's death. He often missed days of work just to lay in bed all day. After sometime he was fired from his job, and they were forced to move. This cycle continued for an extensive amount of time, and by the time my mom was 18 she had attended 4 different high schools.
Her dad drifted deeper into his depression. The light had gone from his eyes, and what should have been the biggest source of joy in his life caused him the most pain. My mom would try to interact with him, but her attempts were all in vain. In a drunken rage late in her elementary years he screamed at her that he hated her, all because she reminded him too much of her mother. As if the emotional distress he caused her wasn 't enough, he started beating her. Not on a regular basis, but it was not a rare occurrence. Me and my mother both had difficult childhoods, hers far more rough than mine. She however, is much stronger than I will ever be. The

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