My Snake Teammate
I had a teammate on my old basketball team who always told me what to do. It was like I was her personal helper and it really started to bother me.
Her name was May. May would tell me to get her water for her, bring this for me, bring that for me. I never wanted to lose her though, she was my only friend on the team. She would make me buy things for her and use me as a backup when she had nobody else to hang around with at practice. May always told me who I should like and shouldn’t like on my team and why she had something against them.
All throughout this, I often referred to her as a snake because of these comments, but I had no reason to disagree with her opinions because I wasn’t close to any of them. I always believed that she knew what was best. She always trash-talked my teammates and told me about all of their cons, but I did those things too. . . yet I still didn’t want to lose her. May was my only friend on my team.

Family Is Not Always Blood

Going through the effects of my parents’ divorce I experienced massive waves of sadness. My friends felt a decline in my motivation and overall happiness and I never wanted to do anything anymore. My grades started slipping, and I never really interacted with anyone at school because my mind focused only on one thing. My parents were so busy trying to finalize stuff and figure everything out that they never really asked my sisters and me how we felt about this entire situation.
The news quickly spread among my mom’s family and friends and I didn’t know how to respond when people would ask me about it. My main supporter through this whole situation was one of my mom’s best friends. We refer to her as my aunt, even though she isn’t blood, and she has always been here for my family.
She would send gifts to us occasionally and this brought joy to me and acted as a small distraction. She gave my sisters and me $100 gift cards and often asked to see us and to drop off food for us. My aunt knew when the time was appropriate to ask us questions about our family, and if she saw that we were down she wouldn’t bother. She has always been an extremely generous person even before this, but moments like these, I will never forget.
Everyone needs someone like her in their life whether they are going through something emotional or not.