Power wanted yet never received
People all around the world usually crave power. Do you? When you want power, you usually want respect and recognition, right? That’s what I wanted. I wanted respect and to be noticed as an independent individual. Gaining respect is challenging and what makes it challenging is getting that respect from your parents, family, and friends.
It’s hard when I get mad art my parents. I always tell myself, “I’m never speaking to them ever again.” However, that’s not even true, it’s more like a reflex from getting so angry. I always think to myself, “how come when my parents get mad they yell, say what they feel and walk away. But when I get mad and I yell, say what I feel and walk away, I am then told to be quiet and respect them. where’s their respect towards me? We’re all human and like them, I’m a grown too. Why is gaining my parents respect so difficult? Is it because they don’t want to see me grow up too fast? Either way, my parents aren’t the only ones I didn’t receive respect from, but also some of my family member like my cousins.
My cousins and I are all around the same age. We all grew up together and use to go the park on those nice sunny days where the sun will be in your face all day but the breeze was nice. We would stop by the deli and buy “Big Juice” in advance. The park is not only where we ran around to just have fun, but to compete and have fun. We competed in who can go the fastest on the monkey bars and who can run from the slide to the swings the quickest. Then came to the time when wen we will go to their home and they will pick on me. It was three cousins against one. Imagine how that went. There were times they wouldn’t let me play out of spite. I never did that to them when they came to my home. I would show them everything I had for them to play with. Why you may ask, “why, if they treated you so wrong?” It was because I had respect for them. I knew that picking on me didn’t make them nice. I knew what respect was. The challenge is getting them to respect now at this age. However, what I noticed was I will never get their full respect (even though I give them mine) because they have no respect. How can someone like me, want their respect when they won’t respect anyone else? Dealing with family is hard. It’s a lot more personal and it definitely turns into a family feud. What doesn’t really get to me, but somehow matters at the moment is respect from friends.
Friends are like an escape to whole other world. I can act a certain way with them I cant with family. It’s a little liberating. First you start off as complete strangers. Then you begin to like one about each other and then another. Next thing you know you’re telling each other things we want no one else to know and so on. Getting respect from friends is hard because they are almost the same person like me, which brings me to a story of two friends. I had a group of friends during my freshman year of high school. I was REALLY close to two girls named Khyrissa and Gabby. At one point, in my junior year, Khyrissa stopped coming to school. I started to get worried, so is spoke to her. Turns out she was too busy hanging out with the wrong crowd and smoking weed. She dint know how to separate the two from school. I had a conversation with her one day telling her if she wants to hang out and smoke weed, to do it after school hours. Her response was “you do you and I do me.” How can someone have respect for you if they wont even have respect for the care you give them? I don’t have to care for her but I did because we were friends. Now she just saved me time. Another friend was gabby and the way I didn’t get respect from her was by her talking to me wrong and treating me wrong. She would yell at me and talk to me wrong in front of people, which by all means gave her the feeling of power. I had respect for her. I’ve been there when she cried because she was in a tough situation. After that one day she spoke to me wrong I knew she would never have that respect towards me like how I wanted or how it should be. I said goodbye.
Gaining respect isn’t easy especially when you want it most from the people close to you like your parents, family, and friends. Gaining respect is harder then lack of respect. It’s easy to disrespect someone, but the challenge that comes with gaining respect is the hardest thing to go through. Its still a challenge I yet haven’t overcome and I believe I never will.
