Never take your family for granted

Anne Marie Henick

We’re back at school, ready for a new semester and filled to the brim with our youthful freedom. We can say “goodbye” to the month-long curfews we had to endure and we can gladly say “goodbye” to home and welcome back our true independence as studious college students.

However, as I drove back up to school last week, I couldn’t help but shed some tears. It seems the older I get, the more I miss home and its different facets. And the family I once ran away from back as a freshman has lately been a source of refuge rather than horror.

The horror I once experienced with my family became especially apparent as I entered high school and began my early stages of independence. The more that I attempted to get away from them, the more they tried to hold me and slow me down. I felt suffocated. It was a horrible experience, or so I thought.

I ran to college with open arms, excited to live without restriction. We didn’t talk much, maybe once every few weeks. What an exhilarating feeling to know I survived adolescence with my family. But after a while something started to change.

They didn’t seem so suffocating to me. I began to miss everything about them. I’m not sure if I was too immature to realize it, but I had a family who loved me. I selfishly never took the time to appreciate this love and ended up doing something much worse with it. I took it for granted.

Everything they have ever done for me was all out of love and I ignored it. But thankfully I see now how blind I was. I know that the kind of love our parents give us isn’t something that can be replaced.

I know that everyone has a different relationship with their parents. Maybe you do truly hate them and what I have just said doesn’t pertain to your situation. But are you sure it’s hate? Or is it simply the fact that you haven’t realized the love they have for you?

Last week I cried when I left home. But there was once a point in my life when I thought it would be the last day on earth before I shed those kind of tears. Thank God, I now have them.

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Anne Marie Henick can be reached at: [email protected]

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