One of the first things I did growing up, as far as I can remember, is work. And I don’t mean actually going to work, but more like going with my mom and aunt to clean. Both women have been house cleaners my whole life. When I was younger I would go “help them clean,” especially with my mother. Which in all honestly meant going to dust anything I could reach with her following behind me to make sure it was cleaned to her standards, which also meant she would waste even more time whenever I went. But even if I would just make her work twice as much she would still give me about ten dollars a day. That amount may not sound like a lot, but to that little six year old it was a hundred years of work. I remember my mom always telling me, “this is why you need to get an education, so you won’t have to be cleaning toilets like me.” That has always stuck to me. But at the same time I did not understand it because I always felt like that was a normal job, maybe not a nine to five but it still paid the bills.
I have always been working. Maybe not at a formal business getting taxed by the Internal Revenue Service, but I have worked. I got my first job at fifteen and that was a whole experience in itself. I worked at a run down restaurant that paid me seven dollars and seventy five cents an hour for a whole year exactly. After that as soon as I turned 16, I started to work at Whataburger, which is where I am at now. And that is how most of the people at my school are. We work, and have been working for our whole lives; it is all we know. But we do it to be able to survive. Which most people who have not had to struggle will not understand. They see our school and only see a bad school, choosing not to see the hard workers in it. Especially last year while we had remote learning. Absences did not count for anyone because the administrators understood that a lot of people here have to work to pay the bills, or just to help their parents.
Like yesterday, my family used me as an example as someone who is in high school and has a job. They were comparing someone who has had to work for everything they have had and who has been through a lot of traumatic things, to someone who had everything and more, but felt suicidal. The truth is I am honestly probably the most drained, tired, and mentally unwell person I know. I am just good at hiding it. Which I can say the same for most of the teenagers at my school. We are all going through things, whether it be missing a parent or having to prepare to have a kid, but half the time we feel alone.
One of my best friends who I have known for three years had a kid in eighth grade, and I just found out about her daughter this year. She has to work as a single mother, trying to graduate and go to college so she can take care of her daughter. Up to this point she never shared her struggles with me, and knowing the bubbly personality she has always had, no one would ever think she had a child. It made me appreciate her even more because regardless of what she has to go through with her life, she has never regretted having her baby girl.
Everyone is probably wondering what I am going on and on about. But I just want people to realize we are all human. If you see someone counting pocket change to buy something, or if you even see a fast food worker struggling with the lunch or dinner rush, be considerate. Because they may have something going on that you could just make worse, and even make them go off and do something that could harm themselves. We all have feelings, thoughts, and different lives. Each and every one of the 7.8 billion people in this world. It does not matter if you graduated from Harvard, or just barely got your high school diploma, if you are the richest person alive, or have to beg for food. Because in the end we are all the same.
This essay was inspired by a conversation I had with my family, and from what I see in the world. I wrote a lot on my phone while I had time to think. Later I just connected all of my points together. I used some real life examples from myself and other people to show how different we all are.