Family

I come from a family of all girls, well— there is my dad of course.  Despite my dad’s dream of always having a son, he became stuck with 3 girls. I guess it’s a joke, but dad always says, “If I had a son, unlike you four, he would be able to help me carry around furniture.” In my opinion, he should be glad he has four daughters who are calm and quiet instead of four boys who would probably be running around the house like pack dogs. I know for a fact that mom is glad she had daughters instead of sons. 

My oldest sister Jessica is the talented one in the family. She has the voice of an angel, and she’s artistic. I don’t know how she can be the only one in my family who is good at singing.  Next, there’s Taylor, my younger sister. Taylor could potentially be the golden child, but her personality comes in the way. She is naturally smart, athletic, artistic, and tall as well. She has so many good traits but they’re all clouded by her personality, which is a little mean. Taylor has a pretty bad reputation of getting in arguments with people. Lastly, we have my baby sister, Maddy, the favored one. All I can really say about her is that she is sassy and a kiss up. My parents favor her so much. Probably because she’s the youngest – and I guess the cutest. All of our different traits and personalities are what ties us together, and despite our differences, we are nothing less than a family nor does that change how much we all love each other.

Sisters

I have 3 sisters, and that may sound nice because we would all relate to each other and you’d probably think that we would get along more. However, it’s quite the opposite actually. Now don’t get me wrong, despite everything I say, at the end of the day, I love my sisters. Living in a house of mostly girls, can be nice at times but majority of the time there’s a lot of fighting because of clothes, jealousy, etc. We all borrow each other’s clothes which is completely fine, but when the person doesn’t put it back or loses it, it’s so frustrating and annoying. You generously let them borrow your stuff and in return they lose it. My oldest sister is especially guilty of this. Because of her irresponsibility, half of my closet is gone, and she never learns from her mistakes. 

My sisters losing my stuff isn’t my main problem with having sisters, but my jealousy against them is what brings my dark side out. I have always been competitive and determined. When I have a goal, I work my hardest to achieve it. If it weren’t for my work ethics I would probably get nowhere in life. My two sisters Jessica and Taylor are naturally good at things, whereas I have to work hard and be patient in order to be good at something. Anytime they achieve something, I try to be happy for them, but it’s just so hard too, especially knowing that they did not have to go to such lengths as I most likely would have had too.

Just keep swimming

As a kid, my parents would put me in swim lessons on and off. I was never consistent because I dreaded swimming and everyone knew it. It was until I joined the NOVA swim team that I started to have more motivation to go. Till this day I do not know whether I truly grew a love for swimming, I liked the group of friends I made, or I just did it for my own pride. I definitely did not enjoy the amount of effort and time I had to put into swimming, but I did enjoy the feeling of accomplishment after everyday I practiced. On some days when I felt like quitting, I would try to remind myself how good it would feel in the long term. I wouldn’t say I’m slow, but I’m not the fastest either. I’m a quick learner and an average swimmer. I worked hard everyday in swimming and when the time came for a meet, I would never perform as I hoped too. These meets always brought my confidence down so over time I started to go less to avoid that feeling of disappointment and emptiness. I stopped going to meets for an entire half year. My coach noticed and brought it up to me, my excuse always was that I was busy with a family event. I knew this excuse could only be valid for so long, but I had no other ideas in mind. 

Anxious

I just recently quit nova swimming last month and have been doing high school swimming. Two weeks ago there were FVHS swim tryouts and I was so confident that I had made varsity. I practiced extra hard, ate healthy, and tried to get enough sleep on the days leading up to tryouts. After trying out I felt relieved and a bit of happiness because I felt like I did well. I would constantly check my phone to see if the coaches sent out the teams during the 4th period. Time was ticking, the teacher had finished his lecture, and still, not a single notification. There is now only 5 minutes left of class and I started to become anxious. I started to think about how amazing it would be if I were in varsity. I would get to participate in travel meets, challenge myself, and make a lot of new friends. As wonderful as all these things would be, the main reason why I wanted to make it into varsity was so that I could go home and tell my family and past coaches that I made it. A part of me just wanted their validation but the majority of it was to make them proud. I wanted my parents to be so proud of me and tell all my cousins, uncles, and aunts like how they would anytime my sister Jessica performed for choir, or when my other sister Taylor would score really high on a test. My parents are pretty lenient and if I didn’t make it into varsity they would probably tell me it’s ok and I would make it in the next year, but I myself just wanted to feel like I accomplished something, or I did the impossible. I wanted to know what it felt like to be proud of yourself and to  know that all my hardwork would be worth it. DINGGG…. “REMIND: swim teams….”

Drowning

“Varsity: Phoebe Munholland, Cassidy Dang, Emme Nguyen….” I look at the list once more thinking there’s something wrong, my name still wasn’t there. I glance over to the Jv list, and there it is, “Allyson Le”. My heart instantly dropped, it felt like an anchor pulling me down to the bottom of an ocean. I was drowning. At the time I was in 4th period, the period right before lunch. I didn’t know what to do or how to react, It was like time had just froze and no one was moving. The world around me was a blur, I was in a state of shock, and I didn’t know how to process everything. “RING RING” Class was over and everything started to process in my mind. I immediately rush out of class and run straight to the restroom. I find an empty stall and right away I get a notification. “Mom: what team did you get into?” The moment I saw that message I couldn’t hold it in anymore, I started to burst into tears. As water goes through my mask, I hold my breath trying to not make a lot of noise and cause a scene. Unfortunately, that did not work because when I walked out of the stall, it was like statues looking straight at me. I walk to the sink, rinse my face and walk out hoping to act like nothing happened.

The Aftermath  

2 weeks have gone by since I got my tryout results. For 2 weeks, I had absolutely no motivation to swim or work hard in school either. I just gave up. Nothing anyone said or did at the time would make me want to go to practice. Unfortunately, I had to because attendance was my grade. When I was at practice I never tried. I would swim slowly and my technique was horrible. One day I was talking to a friend who had been in a similar situation as me. He too had not made the team, but him still being able to go to practice and work hard inspired me to do the same. I thought: “If he could do it, so can I.” I started to try harder in practice, workout on my own time, and get my life back on track. Anytime the thought of not making it into varsity came into my mind, instead of moping around, I would turn it into motivation and make myself work harder. Opening my eyes and seeing the bigger picture is what helped me move on from what felt like a hole in my life.

Future is a Mystery  

I have always wondered how one could easily determine what their future would be like, what they wanted to do, who they wanted to be with. I mean, is that easy? I have absolutely no idea what I want to do when I grow up. As a kid I always told my family and friends that I would become a pharmacist, but if I’m being completely honest, pharmacy sounds so boring. My school has a day where we meet with our counselors and they talk about our future and upcoming class enrollments. My counselor asked my table to write down what were three things we wanted to major in, and I just sat there blankly staring at the sheet of paper. That night I went home and pondered over my future. Do I want to do something in the future that involves math?? No. Science–No, English–No… WHAT ELSE IS THERE??? At this point, mine as well will be the target cashier. Everyone says I’ll figure it out one day and that I have so much time, but do I really? Lots of people my age already know what they want to do. My future is a complete mystery to me, and probably will be for a while. I am slowly growing to learn to not stress too much about the future but to enjoy the present.

Prince & babysitting

Everyone in my family loves dogs except me. I wouldn’t say I hate dogs, but I definitely am afraid of them. Once I was so afraid that I outran a bulldog in the park. I like lazy, fat, and calm dogs, but when a dog gets really close to me everything around me goes on pause and all I focus on is the dog. My first instinct is to run away, but people always tell me that if you run from a dog they will think you want to play with them so they chase after you. This is probably true, however, no matter how hard I try not to, my legs just start running. The ironic thing is that my family used to have a dog. His name was Prince and he was so hyper and not trained.. at all. I don’t even know how I would get through the day, everything from that time period is just a blur to me now. I do remember Prince peeing and pooping everywhere. I would wake up in the morning to find dog poop in my shoe. I think my parents started to go crazy, it was like they were having a 5th child to take care of. My family went on a trip to mammoth one weekend and had to find someone to watch Prince. He is definitely a handful so I don’t know who would want to watch him. Somehow my mom was able to get her co-worker to watch Prince for the weekend. After about 2 weeks after the trip it started to occur to me that our dog was still babysitting. I never questioned or complained though, in fact—no one did. As bad as it sounds, Prince has been babysitting for over 3 years now. I’m pretty sure everyone knows what really happened, but no one wants to admit it. I, for one, am happy. Call me evil, heartless, whatever else there is to be said, but my life is a lot less stressful knowing I can walk downstairs without constantly checking my surroundings, or high surfaces I can run to without the dog being able to reach.