The Life Lesson of Escaping the Problem is Not the Best Solution

When I opened my eyes, it was only 3:00 AM. Regardless of winter or summer, all nights are short when we have school in the morning. However, there was one night which seemed very long to me and I couldn’t wait until the morning. 12 years old of me was so excited about the 1st plane journey which was in 11:30 A.M at October 3rd 2011. My life was going like every other people in my country until that specific day when I heard the news of getting the USA visa after came from school. The sad part was only me and my mom who got it, but my dad and brother got temporarily rejected. Until that time I had never seen my life living and growing up in a country other than my country. Because however there wasn’t any possibility of that. Going through an unexpected life transition taught me so many things and make me very strong that I could ever be.

“Wake up we have to get ready” said my mom. I slowly open my eyes. The sun has risen already but it was dark outside because of the clouds. The day didn’t look happy as it was supposed to be. It wasn’t a shiny bright morning like my other mornings when I had to go to school with a big sad face. The weather that day didn’t reflect my happy mood. Anyways, I went to the living room to see what my other family members were doing. The first thing I saw was my dad crying quietly sitting in the sofa. I didn’t talk to him since the day before because he didn’t let me have a final visit with my friends. He thought what if something bad happen to me before I arrived in the America. To my family, coming to the USA was a blessing thing that one could ever have because of the jobs and educational opportunities.

For me, it was just having a fun plane journey and visiting my first foreign country. My other siblings were sad too but it didn’t show much because they were busy to packing up for me and for my mother. All my siblings are much older than I am. The age difference with my youngest siblings and I was 13 years. They would always take care of me. I was feeling slightly bad for them but mostly happy without thinking about the hard reality I would face later.

Next, it was time for me and my mom to leave the house. It takes 3 hours to go to airport from my home. My dad and my brother also came with us. It was raining when we were on the way to airport. “Out of all these days why it has to be rain today?” I was thinking in my mind. If it was a regular day like other day, I would be taking a rain shower with my sisters, my nieces and nephews. That was something that we used to do when it would rain. “What else I might have done if I wasn’t coming to the airport?” I asked myself when I was watching rain through the car window. I would probably hang out with my neighborhood friends and play cricket or hide and seek in the jungle. The place I used to grown up was a very rural place. The life in the urban place was always attractive to me. That’s why I was so excited to come in New York.

Finally, we arrived to the airport. I didn’t even realize when three hours passed because I was deeply thinking about my childhood and things that I did throughout my 12 years of my life. Not just three hours but three day pass in the blink of an eye and I realized that when I open my eyes first day in the morning. The two days long a plane journey made me extremely tired. I didn’t have as much fun as I thought I would have. We stayed at my uncle’s home and I wasn’t excited anymore. I was stunned of everything I saw.

After one week left it was time for me to start a new school. Everything about the school was new for me, including the language and type of people around me. The school was approximately 10 times bigger than the school in my country. If not more. Every day I would be marked late to the classes because it was hard for me to find the classes quickly. Because of having limited amount of English knowledge, gave me hard time to understand anything in the class. So, if the teacher would tell us you have test tomorrow I wouldn’t understand and during the test day I would be unprepared and lose lot of points like that. I wouldn’t notice it until the report card come. So, when it’s time for me to show my report card to my uncle I would feel embarrassed because my cousin on the other hand would have perfect scores in her all subjects.

All of a sudden, I started missing my country. I missed having fun with my friends in school during the lunch time. The lunch break in my country was way different than here. There wasn’t any cafeteria. It was more like just a break rather than lunch break. We could go on the field and play. In the cafeteria, I would think about all these sitting alone. In that whole cafeteria, I was probably the only person sitting alone without talking to anyone. The other students would give me weird look which was really confusing to me. Sometimes, I would think that sending me in America was the worst decision that my parents ever made because for me it was like someone left me in the other planet to see if I can survive. One night when I was sleeping with my mom I asked her “Mom can we go back home”.

My mom didn’t ask me back “why” because I guess she understood what was going on with me. “When you see the cloud in the sky do you just move them to see the sunlight?” asked my mom. “No, it just goes away by itself after while” I answered. “Our lives are just like the cloud and the sun. Not all problems stay forever. You just have to wait patiently” said my mom. After that night, I didn’t feel depressed anymore. I would treat those depressing day as a cloudy day in my life. My mom was right everything was getting better after few months left. I started to understand my class lesson and get good grades on my tests. After one year of my middle school, I moved to the high school. I was doing well on my studies and got honor roll every year. Those days were sunshine for me.

Throughout this transition in my life I learned one lesson that getting away from the problem is never a solution but getting through is. You will never get to learn if you don’t go through a problem. I also learned there is always two solution to a problem, which are time and patience. So, whenever I must face difficulty or hardship instead of getting disappoint and make wrong decision I just wait patiently and that’s really solve all my problems.