After reading some of the blogs about my classmates' suffering, I'm horrified at what these people have experienced, and how all of that suffering has been masked by their composure in class, but hidden behind everyone's untelling faces is a story waiting to be told. Admittedly, I feel like I haven't suffered much in my 18 years compared to others, but I do have a few tales. Like many people, I've experienced the death of a pet. I had a bird who went blind and died, a guinea pig who had to have an eye removed and then died, and my most traumatic death of my dalmation named Sally. Sally's death was very sudden and unexpected. She was 11 years old, and full of energy. She could chase her tennis ball without stopping for what seemed like hours on end. However, a couple summers ago, within a few days her back legs began to give out, and she had a hard time chasing her ball. Soon, she was unable to walk. We lifted her in the back of our suburban, took her to the vet, and found out that she had cancer. The cancer was too far along to be cured. We took her home and those next few days were terrible. She could barely move, so she spent most of the time on the floor of our house with either me, my sister, mom or dad beside her. Most of the time, we would lay beside her, stroking her. The nights were the worst. She'd wake up in the middle of the night yelping and whining for hours, and our whole family got little sleep. Finally, the morning of the 4th of July, we called the vet to our house and put Sally to sleep on the living room floor ( I watched the life drain out of her eyes as her head lay in my lap), and buried her with her tennis ball in the backyard.

Another sad story is when at age 18, my cousin got in a head-on car wreck with a semi. Both her and the little boy she was babysitting at the time died on impact. I've never been to a sadder funeral. Her mother didn't even come to the funeral because she was a meth dealer, and ended up going to jail for meth a few months later.

A few years ago, my family and I went to see my great-grandma in her coffin for the viewing at the funeral home. It was the first time I've ever seen my uncles and dad cry.

Another time that was traumatic was when my dad was sick with thyroid disease, and it was discovered and treated just in time- only a few days or weeks before he would've died in his sleep.

Also, I've seen things that affect the people around me and my community. A month before graduation, a classmate of mine attempted suicide, and I've never seen my whole senior class so sad and quiet at the news. Freshman year in high school, two senior boys were killed in a car crash on 19th, and it was another one of the first times I've seen my whole school community in such a dismal mood. Something else I've noticed is that we always seem to remember in detail specific moments when tragedy occurs. For example, I believe many of us know exactly what they were doing when they found out about 9/11. Even though I was only in 5th grade, I can tell you exactly where I was and what I was doing. no matter how tragic these moments are, the undoubtedly stick with us and we can reflect on them, learn from them, and become a better person because of them.