I lost it. I can’t calm down and I definitely cannot think. All I can do is what we are programmed to do. Survive. Everything around me, chaotic. Someone shot a bullet.

I try frantically to calm down and speak clearly to the skytrain operator. A woman cries next to me, my mother and sister are clouded with shock, and I am completely dumbfounded. I crouch down to hide behind the dirty blue seats,  not able to calm down. The next thing I know is a warm hand pulling me up and wrapping me into a safe haven. Everything’s all right. Everything will be okay. A honey tea voice soothes the horrors I know that will never leave me. As the tears pool over my face, I realize even though nothing will never be the same, I am alright, my mother is alright, and my sister is too. The last thing I remember before falling asleep into a bundle of comforting arms, sticky tears, and my mother’s perfume is a quick peck on my cheek and then a bloodcurdling scream. bang.

Life goes on, just like it always does. When someone dies, when someone breaks up with you, or when you fail your most important exam. It’s just what life does best, it moves on without you, especially when you can’t help but replay whatever moment you can’t get rid of. So after how I almost died, or more importantly how my family *almost* died ,  I still went to school and did everything a fourteen year old did.  I didn’t brag about how I was a “survivor,” nor did I become an introvert. I was still me but something inside me just clicked. I told a few people around me, well actually I did a speech about it i front of like three hundred people, not the point. Anyways I realized that I began to look at things in a new light. If that day I got shot or my mother got shot, I would not have been satisfied with myself. Not even close. There were so many things that I had taken for granted without taking a second glance and I would have totally regretted too many things if I had died that day. Even when I say this, I know it’s cheesy, it’s like that saying, ” Live each day like it’s you last day.” Literally I needed to do that. I could not stand the fact anymore that if I died today for instance that I would really regret not being nicer, or a better friend, student, daughter, you get the picture the list goes on. Seriously crawl in my skin, imagine if you almost died, and you weren’t able to apologize to the one you love, or not admitting the truth to someone, or not talking to your friend because of a long fight. All these things are surrounded with regret, and sadly a lot of people, too many people, leave this world not fulfilling their purpose or whatever they are supposed to do for the world. It saddens my heart, which is why recently I have been spreading my story to others and to really open their eyes to the reality; you never know when it’s going to happen. For myself, I am extremely lucky because my mother nor I died that day. But for many people not many….get a second chance like me. A second chance to ask others to forgive them, or a second chance to apologize for their mistakes.

That morning my mother got mad at me for some little small thing that I did and I got angry. I keep my anger in, which leaves me not talking to any of my family members. I gave them the silent treatment all day and I was soooo angered at the fact that my mother always picked out my flaws and never really focused on my attributes. It was an ” in the heat of the moment,” spur that totally wasn’t worth it when I look back at it.