My Average Life

I cannot say that I have had defining moments in my life, or big realizations that have been completely life-changing, because I feel as if I have led the perfectly average life, and the accumulation of those very average events have essentially made me who I am today. There have always been things important to me, and the major one was my family, which is so completely normal that it made my life exactly what it is now.

I grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin with my parents and my one brother, Kyle. But, the closeness that my family has extends out farther into my grandparents and aunts and uncles. I was raised in a way where we all ate dinner together every day and got together at holidays, which really made me a strong person overall. I always knew that any member of my family would be there for me if I truly needed it, which I appreciated so much. Having such a support system was extremely important in my life, and it was such a positive influence. I had so many people that I could potentially turn to if I needed advice or someone to listen to me, so from that I learned how to both be there for someone else and how to rely on others when I truly need it. I feel as if I am a very loyal friend and would do anything to help someone out, and I believe that growing up in the environment that I did caused me to be that way, mostly because I never knew anything else.

I was also raised in a very relaxed household with very few rules. My parents never forced me to do anything that I didn’t want to do, and they never enforced many rules (besides the obvious no drugs kind of thing.) I never had the privilege of having a curfew, and I always got to make my own choices, which in a way made me so much more responsible as a person. They employed the idea that “you can do what you want until you screw up,” which, thankfully, I never did. There is a great amount of trust within my family that I will make good decisions and learn from any mistakes that I made. Both my parents and I believe that I have good judgment, and it is for that reason that I am allowed to be so independent. That trust is something I value, and it keeps me from making poor decisions in my life. I am very dependable and calculated in everything I do, making sure to take into account the consequences of my actions, and it is because of the trust that I was allowed to have that I do so. It made me such a more responsible person than if I had been without trust for most of my teenage years. It also made me more independent, more capable of making choices for myself without others’ involvement, which set me up well for college after I was forced to do that very thing.

So, essentially, there is nothing completely extraordinary about my family other than the closeness that they instill upon me. I grew up being completely trusted and learning from my own mistakes, which doesn’t make for the most interesting story, but it is truly the reason that I am the person I am today.