I was mad, upset, angry, confused, hurt, and most of all I didn’t know what to do. Losing a family member can really hurt badly. The first time I lost a close family member was the worst. I've had many family members pass away in my life; my aunt Cheryl, my cousin Erin Jade, but the one that affected me the most was my Uncle Paulie.

When I was younger my Uncle passed. To me, my Uncle was everything. He was model and the reason I wanted to be good at everything was to impress him. I didn’t only lose my Uncle but I lost my mind. After he left I started to lose interest in the things I loved the hobbies I had, the friends I had. I hated everything and befriended no one. In my mind nothing would ever make me better. In school my attendance began to plummet, my grades began to steadily fall, and my interest in school was destroyed. My idea was “Why go to school? I'm just going to die. It wasn’t worth it.”

He always pushed me to be the best I could be. Whenever I felt any negativity about anything, I'd go to him. He always helped me with girls, school, class, problems at home. He was always there. Without him things were hard. My dad was never really there for me his drug habits kind of over took his life. He was arrested three times with me in the car. How’s that for family time?

So without him there, it made me realize how grateful I was to have him and, thinking about that, would make me hurt even more. Without him I felt destroyed. Thinking about it at that time was brutal. He was dead; Not sleeping or on a far trip, well for what some people say he could be but, to me he was gone. I proceeded to think about it. To me there was no one to go to. My mom asked that I try counseling. That really turned out to be a bad idea when I just happened to get the wrong counselor. The counselor ended up telling me that my uncle is dead and the first step is getting over it. I cried and screamed and ran to my mom. It was like no one could fix the damage, it was Permanente. I was to mad to listen. I didn't want to believe it, nor was I going to. Every time I thought about it things just got worse; I'd break myself down till there was nothing left. It hurt, and because it did, I acted badly because of it. I stopped doing things I was good at and messed a lot of things up. I just had bad streak after bad streak that lasted until ninth grade. I just couldn’t stop myself and I hated the world. I started hanging with the wrong crowd and started messing up my life and the standards my parents and family had for me were destroyed. There were no longer boundaries I was reckless and dumb.

It was my first time loosing someone that meant everything to me. Losing him hurt the worst. It is something that has always affected me and something I believe always will. I learned that even though he’s gone, there’s still so much I could do for him and this world. Also, I know my whole family needs me to do my best and that I should want to do the things I’m good at, like school. Losing somebody can really hurt and sometimes I guess you really don’t realize what you have, until it’s gone. But the lesson I really learned most of all is that is that even though someone is gone it doesn’t mean you can’t still try to impress them and also that even though they are gone doesn’t mean you can’t listen to what they’ve said.