My Childhood and Motivation to Succeed

Strength, independence, and perseverance are some of the positive traits my father taught me along with several negative traits such as anger, distrust for others, and hatred toward men. My mom was a single mother from the start. As she delivered me, he sat inside of a jail cell. When he was out of the penitentiary, he would run away from his family to do drugs and meet women. He would often walk out on us without any warning and return at any time. I did not understand, especially as a child, how significant of an impact his vanishing act would bestow upon me. I grew to be distrusting of others, because if my dad would let me down, then so would everyone else. I became bitter at the world and everyone it encompassed. I blamed my father’s mistakes on the world and believed that the world’s influence made my father do drugs, prefer all of the other women to my mom, and spend more time in jail than he did in his own home. Being neglected by my father, seeing how his bad decisions not only hurt him but also his loved ones around him, and witnessing my mother struggle to raise my brother and me caused me to mature at an early age, and shaped my belief that I could not depend on anyone but myself in order to live a happy life.

I was a game to my father; he wanted to see how long it would take for me to forgive him and allow him back into my world. He won on every occasion; he could vanish for years, but once I saw him I opened my loving heart and let him in. I could not wait for our family to be normal again. He could do no wrong in my eyes. He loved me the best he could, but that was not good enough; I did not understand that he was an addict or what that entailed. He was unreliable and could not be expected to properly raise a fam...

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... well, helped me realize that even though life was hard, we still survived thirteen years without him, and we could actually live lives independent from him without the burden of his mistakes. By not letting him hold me back by dwelling on negative feelings he evoked inside of me, I grew, and realized that I had the power to make myself happy because my happiness is ultimately determined by me and my actions. I promised myself that no other person would control my feelings the way he did and that I would work hard so that I would not have to go through the same trials my mother went through. I grew up in a broken household, but I do not let that keep me from being successful. My mom did her best to push me, and instilled in me that I need to be an achiever. These memories of my childhood have remained in my head for years and have served as my motivation to succeed.