13. You’ve just written a 300-page autobiography. Send us page 217. (University of Pennsylvania)
After I told her what had happened, I started to cry. I hadn't known that this simple incident had had such a pathetic influence on me. Just because of a few words and acts, I was acting like a cry baby. I cried and cried, while I hugged her. She comforted me.
She said that I shouldn't give into my feelings too much, that I shouldn't take everything at heart. She said if I did this, I wouldn't be able to survive life. There were going to be many other stones and obstructions in my way, and if I reacted like this every time, then I wouldn't be able to go very far. She said that friends will come and go. Some will leave a good impression while others will be different from what you expect. However, soon, I will be going off to college, and who knows, I might meet some really great people there and make some friends who will last me a lifetime. If things aren't so well right now, they would get better. And I told myself that and slept the headache off. I had listened and I understood.
However, there was one thing I didn't tell her, and that was that this was not the first time somebody had said something mean and I had started crying. I mean, you would expect the crying to stop after you had turned 13 or something. You would expect a soon-to-be-adult to handle these kinds of experiences maturely. You would just turn away, forget about it, and go on into things that mattered more. Of course, I wasn't like that. If something bothered me, I couldn't shrug it off and move on. Instead, I gave in to my emotions, whether it be anger or frustration or feeling pathetic. Childish as it may seem, it is much easier than ignoring it altogether.
However, when I did got off to college, things changed...
