2025 Chance Myers Spanish Fork HS

On The Upswing

Sob stories piss me off and I tend to avoid talking about mine, not because it upsets me but because I’m worried I’ll tell the wrong person or they might have it worse than me. Understanding that others struggle too is something I try to be mindful of not just for them but for myself as well. I often wonder about my situation because the time has passed me with no warning or regard for how I felt, I still want to know how I got such a hand dealt to me. Sure, my parents probably shouldn’t have had kids with the way life was going for them but they wanted kids. It was already a risk for my mom with MS to have kids and my dad was working all the time. I still came to be and life was just okay the first few years but quickly began spiraling out of control by the time I was 8, my dad kept getting sick and eventually started to look like he had a whole collection that was just piling on him and the rest of our family too. Living off social security checks and both parents disabled from working by 9, my younger brother begins developing mental disorders and getting into trouble with juvenile corrections and truancy, we lost our car, at several points nearly lost our home because of late rent and bills, cut groceries down to afford prescriptions, had to ask help from our church several times to help with bills, ask for rides to and from school, attended the “Feed Utah Food Drive” Texas branch every Saturday for help, and family members were passing with about 2 or 3 a year, nearly all of my dad’s side of the family were passed by the time I turned 13. These weren’t exactly the hard parts growing up because I genuinely didn’t know that it wasn’t normal and it’s not like my parents hid the fact we were pretty much always in a hole; they actually had me help them a lot with running out bill payments, prescriptions, and as much as I could do at the time. I had been recited as a “better home health nurse than the actual one that rarely came by”. They were both in and out of the hospital in the more recent years, especially my dad, he tried hard to not end up there because it took time away from us and cost money. He hated the hospital, being there made him scared and uneasy for numerous reasons. I had even somehow achieved the process of cardioversion on my dad one of the times he had a seizure, I hit his chest as hard as I could when I stopped seeing it rise, they ran tests after he was taken in by ambulance and they showed he had at one point lost cardiac rhythm and stopped beating. That was his favorite thing to brag about that I miss seeing on his face as he told everyone about me and how I saved his life. The only thing that bugs me is that I don’t remember much of these experiences or much of my childhood. My sister told me it’s a trauma response which she might be right about. Following these times of my life, at almost 15 when Covid was a huge thing still and really hurt my family, with both Covid and Pneumonia on top of his list of problems, it was too much and I lost him the start of my freshman year in the great state of Texas as he and I both made sure to emphasize to others. With the rest of the problems my family had, my dad’s will had said custody of me and my brother go to our older half sister who I live with now. Sadly my brother kept getting into trouble and was a ward of Texas and couldn’t leave with us, haven’t seen him since. I sometimes think about him and how my mom misses him and I, because she can’t medically or legally take care of us so she lives in a home in Riverton. I struggled for almost the first two years I was upset and missed my family, especially my dad. I thank my sister and a few close friends who changed me for the better and helped me become who I am now, ask for help and you can lean on others with gratitude, you’ll be okay.