Am I Truly Awake To Life?

My personal story to my life.

Nicholas Gavalek Awake to life paper Indiana University of Pennsylvania May 2, y

Nicholas Gavalek email: TTRS@iup.edu Indiana University Of Pennsylvania

Am I Truly Awake To Life?

A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same...

Life is made up of so many wonderful stories (classmate) Life is all about making the most out of every single life moment. Youll never be fully alive, and fully awake to life if you dont just go out and live. By getting up and out into the world, you learn so much more than just sitting inside. Yeah life isnt all happy moments and butterflies. Sometimes life isnt all about the happy times, your life can also be measured by the hard times in life and how you react to them and/or bounce back from these experiences. Stories of life. That is all we need. What is life without stories? A pretty boring life that is what! That is why i try to live my life by admiring everything around me. Every sight, every smell, every single moment. We pass by so many different people each and every day. Each person we see tells a different story and each story is very personal and unique to the individual. Who knows what their background was like, it couldve been terrible or it couldve been a fairytale, the only way we can understand is if we get to know each person individually.

This is my story. This is the story that makes me awake to my own life...

Chapter 1. Family...
I grew up in a family in which we learned about trust, character, motivation, and life. I was taught to treat my elders with respect, and treat everyone the same way i would like to be treated. Their wasnt much greater advice than that. I grew up with the greatest family i could have ever asked for. We didnt have much money, hell, we still dont have money but we do have love for each other.. Even though we dont spend the holidays all together anymore, or spend countless hours together on random days we understand we love each other. The earlier part of my life i wasnt able to fully understand how family could just disappear. I never understood why family got so angry with each other. My family was just like any other ordinary family. We got along just fine. Cookouts all the time, all the family members would get together for birthday partys. You know, the usual family things. It wasnt till in the last decade where my family started to slowly fall apart. I feel as though it just happened so fast. I feel like a whole part of my life just slowly left me here to question why I feel so alone. You see, i live with my grandparents and i can tell you their is no greater love than a man has for their grandparents. These two have showed me path, hell, they have put me on paths in my life that i would have never been able to see or take if it wasnt for them. Let me take a minute and just describe to you the type of woman my grandmother is. She is the kind, gentle, older woman who couldnt hurt a fly. She is always asking Nick are you hungry, your looking pretty thin i think you should eat something! She is someone who is always trying to help. I remember when i was younger and something new came out that i wanted, she was always the first person i would run to. She was the one who spoiled me. But ask any of my friends in my childhood; She would do anything for any of them. And dont even get me started with my grandfather. This man is one of the most intellectual human beings i have ever known. He is also one of the funniest (in his own sick way) people i know as well. There is not one single thing this man wouldnt do for me and i couldnt repay him enough for what he has done and shown for me. Im sure he remembers but one of the greatest memories i have with him was him just taking me to the zoo and teaching me and showing me everything i know about life. He taught me the simple things. How to throw a frisbee, how to drive a car. I dont like to think of him as my grandpa. I like to think of him more as my father. He has been more of a father to me than any other man in my life. This is why i cant thank him enough. I can only wish i could be half the man he is when i am his age. But where would i be without my mother. She was always there for me through everything even when i drove her up a wall! I never lived with her but i know she still cared. It never was about the distance for her or I, We were still close to each other. Anything i needed to talk about, she was there. Anything i ever needed, whether it was food, clothes, or anything else i needed, she was there. We also have a kind of mother-son relationship unlike any other. She is my greatest friend. I can tell her anything without having to feel like i would be judged. She understands who i am and lets me live my life.

Chapter 2. Friends...
To make a chapter for my friends and to make a chapter for my family was one of the harder parts of my book. Like i was saying in the previous chapters, my family has grown apart. We are still close but not as close as we once were. Some people even in my extended people dont have a clue what i grew up to look like. But that is okay, They are still family. The predicament i have come across was whether or not my friends should be put into my chapter about family. To be honest; My friends are just as close to me and have such a great impact on my life that they deserve a better title than just friends. From observing in this bruces class i have come to realize not everyone was as fortunate as I. I take for granted sometimes when i have fights with my sometimes thick headed friends that they are still there for me. Like i said, friends is a word that doesnt describe them enough. We might not be blood, but we are damn well close to it. The thing is I dont believe people in this world have enough friends like I do. And i dont mean enough as in a quantity of friends because i feel the more friends you have the more problems that occur. We are car people, we always will be. Its funny how such simple things in life bring each other together. My love for cars has brought a few of us together to share more than a common interest, but a common love. To those of you who share this experience with myself, you know who you are. The friends that i have made will be the friends that i forever will share apart of my life with. We have all grown into individuals with very different stories. But in each of our chapters of our lives, we are intertwined into each other's plots of one anothers stories. To say you can only love one individual or only have one best friend might be one of the dumbest things i have ever heard. Because for myself, i have many. To be honest; if i ever do get married, it is going to be very hard to pick a best man. I have shared moments with each one of these people that i will cherish to the graves. Pj, Costa, Mikey, Sean, Jarred, Steve, Anthony, Brian, you guys have showed me what it is like to always be there for each other. Weve been there for each other to help when people start problems, we have been there to help each other build our cars, we have been there to share a beer or two. I look forward to sharing much more memories with each other.

Chapter 3. Love...
I was also one of the lucky ones that were able to be able to feel love at such a young age. My ex girlfriend was one who i strongly cared about, but she ripped my heart out. I never felt a pain like i had felt when she had left. It kind of made a void in my heart for quite a long time. In a way, this kind of helped me find out who i am today. This love i had for this girl was to the point where i lost a lot of my good friends at the time because it was always her, or them. I believe the end of this strong love i felt for her is the reason i fell in love with something much greater than a love for a girl. My love for cars. (But ill get into that in a later chapter) I was alone, besides my family i literally felt like i was by myself. I quickly learned that some of my friends were still around and i started to gain some of the greatest friends i have ever had.

Then she came into the picture. Marissa Barlow. The one girl who is COMPLETE opposite of myself but still came so naturally to love her. Shes a cute smaller brunette girl with the most adorable dimples this world has ever seen. Shes one of those goofy, funny, dorky girls that seems to always have a bubbly aura about her. Shes never one to start a fight, and always avoids conflict. Even when she does get miserable, it doesnt take her long to bounce back. She is defiantly the opposite of myself. How she can find love in someone of the likes of me is hard to believe. She was always the one who are truly there for me, even after i always seem to mess up. I never thought i could love someone so much again as i did with my ex. It took a few years to get back from my depressed state, but i finally jumped back in. We have more of a mature relationship. We help each out financially and if we ever need anything we are always there to help. Hell, id say i dont know where she would be without me but she could say the same thing about myself! The greatest part of our relationship is she understands me. She understood how hurt i was and how depressed i was when i got out of that relationship. But after all of our fights, and after everything i have put her through she still tries to stop us from ever becoming something other than a couple. The crazy apart about it is, Bruce awakened my heart to feel stronger for others around me. Just by us writing and expressing ourselves onto paper helped a extreme amount. That is why he had us write sonnets about love.

My Sonnet Of Love...
Love of past and present By: Nicholas Gavalek So who is it now who holds my heart? Is it my love thats past, or of the present? The one whose dumping me was not so smart. Or she i have no reason to resent? Why does my heart throb so god damn hard. For someone who no longer does exist? When Ive someone whose love for me is not marred By fickleness? Whose heart does not resent? Am I to live my whole life being torn Between someone whos truly there for me And another whose integritys forlorn And who Ive no desire to ever see? On my girlfriend now, my life id bet My ex Id give a million to forget... To write a poem about anything in my opinion is one hard task that not myself and many others can accomplish. To figure out what you want to write about and how to start is always the hardest part. I have been in love two separate times in my life, and I believe each one was a different kind of love. Instead of writing my poem about just one

single love I had in my life like everyone else has been doing in the classroom, I choose to do mine on both my ex-girlfriend Christina, and my girlfriend now, Marissa. The love I felt for Christina was storybook love. We met each other through friends at school and ended up texting and falling for each other pretty quick. I felt as though I felt more for her than she did for me. I was also more mature and was older than her by two years. And in high school, thats a huge difference. Christina and I dated for roughly about one year and six months. Until everything came crashing down when others interfered in our business and spread rumors. We ended our relationship not long after. I cant put into words how our relationship was, but I can say our love we felt for each other was rather, immature. Kind of based off a high school sexual level, if that. We were kids then, with no worries in the world besides that moment in time. The love I have now, who means the world to me, is my girlfriend now, Marissa. Marissa is a wonderful girl, and a beautiful one at that. We laugh, share stories, and can always talk. Shes lovely and full of energy and very rarely is ever mad or upset. To top it off, she is there for me. She is there for me through everything. And I seriously doubt she will ever leave. I kind of feel like the Christina in this relationship because I feel as though I dont love her as much as she loves me. I feel sometimes like she is just to good for me. The thing is, I would never go back to Christina. My ex-girlfriend, you see has changed since she went to college. She is a totally different person than the person with whom i feel in love with years ago. Its been four years since we have broken up. Marissa, on the other hand, I feel like we have a more of a mature relationship. something stable, something worth fighting for to keep alive. We are there for each other. In love, spirit, financially, and physically. Its a 50/50 relationship that my ex and I have never seen. This is why we are together and I am not with my ex-girlfriend. My ex and i never really did have closure in our relationship. With this sonnet it closes up our relationship and bring to light the one I am in now. As for the way the writing process worked out, I was just laying in bed thinking about the paper should be about. I love a lot of things, My family, my girlfriend, my pets, and my friends. But the only one that really stuck out to me was my girlfriend. I wrote my own sonnet down myself. It was not much of a sonnet considering it wasnt in a sonnet form. It had mostly just ideas written down but hell, as long as something was written down i was okay with it! I then went to my professor Bruce Novak for help on the sonnet. We sat down and i told him all about my life. About my family, friends, and my love life with my girlfriends. So we went from there. Basically he helped me rewrite my sentences down in poetic form, and with some much better vocabulary to spice it up a bit. After it was all said and done with some more brainstorming we came up with a nice sonnet. This sonnet has affected me in a good way. It helped me understand my love for my ex has been over. She is completely different person now and was not the one I fell in love with. This sonnet made me realize my heart belongs with the women who has been there for me for the past eight months and will continue to be there for me in any way possible for the rest of my life.

I never understood how writing my feelings down on a piece of paper and turning it into something much more beautiful would actually help me. It helps out in so many ways because you are expressing your feelings and emotions down on something physical. With your thoughts being bottles up inside of your head, it doesnt help that you keep them to yourself. When you write them down you kind of are releasing all of your hidden secrets down onto paper. Whether they are for your own eyes to see, or for others, they are at least written down. I am glad we did these sonnets because it has also shown me true beauty in many other things in life. Just by expressing my way in a different way was a great assignment.

Chapter 4. Depression...
It was right before high school ended. I was 18 years old and I was jumped a party. I was beat without any mercy for reasons i never will know. I was scared. The friends I thought i had werent really there for me. I was alone. I was torn apart. There was nothing i could do to a person who was double my size and the star wrestler on his high school team. That night after i got jumped by the kid, i was filled with anger and confusion. Why did he do this? Why would he do this to me? To this day i have not one idea why.. I didnt think at that moment if this could have any affect on my life years down the road. I should have had counseling over this, but what did i know. I thought i was just a normal 18 year old kid that was just having some rough times. I am twenty-two years old now and there isnt a week that i dont think about everything that happened to me that night. My face was caved in, my pride was hurt, and my emotions were running crazy. Not much later my friend died in a car accident. I was left behind. I grew up with this kid my whole life and in a blink of a eye, a single phone text later, he was gone. There isnt a day i dont miss him. Not soon after my girlfriend broke up with me. I had not one place to turn. I soon met new friends, good friends. Hell, i might even be able to call them family. It took some time but I learned to cope. I am still timid and frightened when around others during parties but I still surround myself with only the greatest people. I have learned to love again and be there for Marissa as well. For she is my world and I found a new strength. A strength of protection and love over her. I would do almost anything for her and never give up on her.

Chapter 5. Passion...
What do you have passion for? Is it basketball? Is it football? Ive never felt so close to the earth as I do when I am in a high horse-powered car. I know ive talked about this in my past journals but I can honestly say that there is no greater feeling of being alive than going down the parkway shifting from second gear, spiking full boost, into 3rd and just going in and out of traffic. Yah we all know it is dangerous, and we all know we could hurt ourselves or others, but how am I to tell you this doesnt make me feel alive.

And of course, i know it is irresponsible and childish of me to not care about others safety but the journal is suppose to be about myself connecting with life. Is it not? Every single day that i get behind the wheel of my race car I feel myself connecting with life and every single other persons who feel the same as I. We all feel it. It is more than just some stupid car that we put 10s of thousands of dollars into. It is our lifestyle. It is our addiction, whether your car is built to drag, drift, go fast around turn, or just be stupid love. It is still a connection within all of us. That single moment in time when we open that car door on the first nice day of the season and we sit down in that seat; We feel it. We turn the key to on, we hear and remember those tones our car sings to us. We feel it. The roar our engines make as we turn the car over for the first time after that long winter. We feel it. Many of you play sports, many of you have hobbies, But many of you don't understand my obsession with my sport. My sport involves hundreds of people, hundreds of friends. It involves items you might not have ever picked up before. tools. My tools, my cars, speed. Its an addiction that each one of you never will understand especially from the passenger seat. To say my addiction is stupid because it doesn't involve throwing a ball around, or acquiring some sort of "skill" that doesn't include fixing something is childish. Just remember, each time one of us go out and hit wide open throttle, whether something goes completely wrong, we all understand our consequences, but we feel much more awake to life than any of you do at that very moment. Yeah there is competition in this sport. There is always someone that wants to be faster, or someone who wants to be lower. But you cant take away from myself or anyone else how much we love the lifestyle. If i can take away anything from this experience, it is the amount of great friends i have come to meet. I guess you could say i was born with these genetics to want to go fast and build cars. It is in the family. But i never knew it was until i was 16. Thats another story for another chapter. My cars have literally been the only thing that have kept me sane, and insane at the same time. They kind been the balance in my life.

Chapter 6. Trust and Pain...

I was sixteen years old when a girl found me on myspace and told me she was related to me. Like anyone else would do, one questions what the hell she is talking about. Apparently she was my cousin. And the man who i thought was my father was really my step-father. She said my birth father was named steve. The only man i ever knew my mother was married to was Jim. I never thought anything of it for sixteen years till my cousin contacted me and told me this information that was never wanted in the first place. I felt alone again at another point in my life. Nothing made sense anymore after this point. How could my family hide this from me for sixteen years? I was hurt. I never ran away before or stayed with another else, but at this point in my life i felt like i had too. So i left, i was crushed. I felt like i had to meet him. I felt like it was my time to finally understand things in my life that i never did understand before. So that is actually what i did. After meeting him he didnt seem like such a terrible person like my family made him out to be. He

helped me finish building my first car, and i thanked him for that. But i felt like he owed me a lot. I felt like just because he helped finish my car that wasnt enough for leaving me for those years of my life then finally coming back into it. It turns out that all the things my family and mother said about him was the truth. But the truth was I am a lot alike him. I have his physical features, his attitude, and his love for cars. After a while he tried acting like a father figure to me, but what he didnt understand is my step dad and my grandfather filled the father figure position quite well. This is when his attitude problems came back out. Just like my mom warned me about. I tried to let him into my life, i really did. It just never worked out. I had room for friends in my life at the time, not someone who after sixteen years wanted to finally grow up and have his son in his life. My family never left me like he did. This is why if I was to ever have a kid, i would never leave his side. I would be there for him from the moment he is born to the moment I die. That is love. I cant stress enough how much i love my family for never leaving my side.

Chapter 7. America...
America has been a lie since the beginning of time. We are governed by corrupt men who are only about themselves and no one else. They say they are for the people but they really only care about the now. 100 years from now, no one would know the difference. (Mr. Smith) Why dont you tell the people the truth! (Mr. Smith) Truth has been hidden from the people forever now. Itll never change. Just like in the Mr. Smith movie, He never understood how corrupt the government was until he was in it. He use to believe that the government will make everything better in the end. Boy was he wrong, especially when he found out his partner wasnt really a true hero at all. America in the past was the land of opportunity and it was the land in which you have faith in something bigger. (Mr. Smith) Mr. Smith believed that anything can happen here in America. America was brought together for the people who wanted to make something from nothing. At the end of the movie, he finally won. His partner shattered the plans they had and Mr. Smith was given the respect he deserved.

Chapter 8. Reflection...
From the very first class we were welcomed with a very warm hearted professor. He genuinely walked around to each one of us and stuck his hand out and said Hi, you can call me bruce. (Bruce) Most professors have their students call them by Professor so and so but not our professor. He chose for all of us to call him by his first name because I feel as though we are equals at this college. (Bruce) Bruce then started to tell us about his life and how he became the man who he is today. He has came from a rough past and has seen and done a lot of things in his life, many of which most of us may never see or do. After this part of the first class, Bruce went over the syllabus with us. This class is not terribly difficult. (Bruce) The work doesn't seem that difficult, but there seems to be a bit much considering we have to do a

journal each day. But from what bruce says, itll make us better students/people at the end of the semester and we will take a lot out from the class after we do this project. I wont lie, Bruce preached to us about how this paper at the end of the year would make us a better student in the end. It would make us open up more and become more awake to our lives. All year long i got more and more annoyed with hearing the fact that we had this project coming. I never thought these things i wrote down would actually matter in the end. Now i cant help but finding myself typing everything that comes to my mind down. Each journal we wrote, each paper we typed, allowed me to come more awake to life. I never thought i would say it, but bruce was right. This project has made taken a lot of weight off my chest. I felt like i couldnt tell any one these personal things. Now they are out, and they are out for everyone to see. I would like to thank everyone though. Everyone in this class has opened my eyes to not take anything for granted. I learned that my life really isnt as bad as some. It could be worse. The people in my life now are the ones i would love to share many more memories with. I love each and every one of them.

My Story will continue, and my memories will never fade...