RealTalkAJ

Growing up in Waukegan and Zion showed me that people you call family can be the group that motivates and even deflates your image on personal character.

I’ll start with saying that both areas host a melting pot of different personalities. With that adds a bunch of color to a world that gets presented as a black and white world. I grew up with people that came from much different backgrounds from my own, but meeting them at the point in my life I did put us on the same ground.

You can gain a sense of confidence just by being around these people, at least that’s how it appears. You call these people family eventually because you see these people every day. You develop a loyalty to these people just through association. Then life develops even further and you’re forced to constantly reaffirm your belief in these people or even change it if you’re not on the same program. It can be a shell-shock of an experience because you’re not running with them anymore. This is just my experience again, it could be different with others from the area.

I’ll add that the same people from here are some of the most unique people you will ever meet. But that doesn’t always translate to positive experiences. You’re simply experiencing something rare. That means you’re just going to go through intense emotions as a result while coexisting with them.

I saw myself as an ambitious person for most of my life, but in this reflection alone it proved to me that my own perception of myself would change growing up here, for better and worse. People that I grew up with would grow to be their own person (and that’s a great thing, more power to them) but it showed me that I’d have to figure myself out too. I’m still on my personal growth journey, but the lessons I acquired through it all was incredibly valuable to say the least.