Right now this essay is 780 words, and I'm trying to find ways to condense it atleast to 750 words.
UC Prompt #1: Describe the world you come from - for example, your family, community or school - and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.
Although Charlie Chaplin was a major comedic film star during the silent film era, his words are what have affected me the most. The opening lines of his song "Smile" advises "Smile though your heart is aching; smile even though it's breaking; when there are clouds in the sky, you'll get by..." The word smile is repeated ten times throughout the song, yet whenever I hear it I begin to tear up. The song reminds me of my older brother Kamau. He has the uncanny ability to smile and laugh in almost any situation, no matter how inappropriate the situation may be. Nonetheless, my brother exudes happiness, and his joy is like the flu, where once he starts smiling you will smile too. I regret taking his smile for granted because now, whenever I want to see his smile, I have to lie down and close my eyes because the chance of seeing my brother smile are far and in between.
I recall one situation where we were preparing to fly to Kenya to visit family, so we needed Tetanus shots. I am not a huge fan of needles; actually to be honest, I hate them. So one can imagine how I felt as an eight-year-old sitting in a doctor's chair facing an intimidating woman with an even more intimidating needle in her hand. I eventually began to cry, so my brother courageously volunteered to go before me. What happened after that is hard to explain, but I will remember it forever. The nurse had my brother sit down, roll up his sleeves, and proceeded to wipe the area on my brother's arm where she was to insert the needle with alcohol. He was fine through the 'preparation period'. However, when she pulled out the needle, and Kamau realized exactly where the very sharp tip of the needle was headed, the smirk on his face was wiped clean off, and that was all I needed. I began to laugh uncontrollably. So uncontrollably, in fact, that by the time it was my turn for the shot, I did not feel the needle enter or leave my skin (to be honest I was still laughing in the car). Whether Kamau knew it or not, he gave me the strength to overcome something, my fear of needles, and he gave me a new coping mechanism, "laugh until it doesn't hurt".
That was the summer of 2003. Six short years later on Thanksgiving Day, my brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia. There is no rulebook on how to react when a loved one is diagnosed with not only a mental disorder, but also one without a cure. To come home every day and have to witness my brother's degradation in to a shut in is the toughest thing I have ever had to do in my entire life, and initially, I had no idea how to cope with it. At school I would act as if everything is fine and remark on how beautiful life is, trying to hide my pain. But, as soon as I stepped into my house, anything and everything positive in me evaporated. I became an angry child. I took my frustration over the unfairness of the world out on the people who deserved it least, my family.
So overcome with grief over my brother's illness, I made the entire situation about me selfishly thinking only of the pain I was feeling. During a time when I should have been looking to my family for support, I pushed them away. Unfortunately, my wakeup call did not come until earlier this year when my brother was admitted into the ER after suffering a seizure. He had gone off his medication because, as he put it, "He was tired of being sick." It took my brother having a seizure to finally realize that I am not the one that is sick. I have no reason to mope around the house acting as if I was the world had turned against me. I do not have the right to place all the blame on the people I care about for my brother's illness, something they had, and still have, no control over.
I still have a viable chance of "making it", and I should not waste it feeling sorry for my brother, I should use it to help him. Helping my brother does not only mean finding a cure for his disease; it can also mean reminding him of something he loved to do, of what he has helped so many others to do, smile.
