In the wake of the New Year, many young adults are looking forward to a new semester of college, but there are many people who are looking forward to becoming a whole new person. I swore to myself at the start of this new year that I would try to love all that I am and stop letting others control me.
The year of 2016 was the worst year of my life. As a senior in high school, I was completely happy. I was involved in many clubs, and I excelled in academics; I lived with my mom and two brothers; I had just been accepted to Eastern, and I could not wait to be in college.
But on the morning of March 8, I woke up to the worst day of the worst year of my life. I did not know what was going on. I got up around seven in the morning and found my brothers in the hallway crying. I looked past them to see my mom, lifeless. I ripped away from my siblings’ attempt to block me from the horror and went to my mom’s bedside. She was so cold. I began to shake her. I yelled at her to wake up. I called the ambulance and was instructed to give my own mom CPR. The tragedy was that I could not save her. She never woke up. I went from the aspiring high school senior to a teenager raising herself.
The rest of my year went downhill from there. I lost my older brother after he expressed that living with me and our other sibling was too hard for him. After going to college, I allowed my eldest brother to control everything I did. I allowed him to bully me because I did not want to lose another piece of my family. My submission to the abuse was a result of my not having my mom to protect me—I was protecting myself.
After my mom’s passing, I felt as though I died as well. The nine months remaining in 2016 were brutal to get through. I was constantly trying to pull myself out of the hole that I had dug for myself. I was confused as to why I was being treated so poorly by the people I had been raised with. I questioned why I was living. I questioned why God took my mom instead of me. I thought that me being gone would have been easier. These thoughts consumed my year. Even when I was being honored or I received a phenomenal grade on a test, I still felt like I was failing. I still thought that I did not deserve to live.
However, I saw a small light at the end of my seemingly never-ending tunnel. It was over winter break when I realized that I had a lot in my life. Although I had lost the majority of my family, I began to realize that family can be chosen. I spent all of the holidays with my friend from high school. I participated in her holiday traditions and had a new will to live. I began to see that I was becoming a different person, but I was a person I could get used to. I was still loved by so many people. These are the people who loved me when I did not love myself.
In a sense, 2017 served as a wake-up call. I know now that trying to hold on to the Kelsey that was present on March 7, 2016 is not something that I or anyone else can do. The true art of new beginnings is that they can happen whenever you see fit. My new beginning happened when I was eating lasagna (my friend’s family tradition), surrounded by a family who had taken me in. New beginnings have the power to change you or to simply give you the space to accept the you that has changed.
Josh Steen 
Grace Nealy 
Ethan Goonewardene