The question I asked was based on a topic I had while writing my Senior Journal in high school, any other Vidalia graduates remember this? One of the topics I chose to write on was "My Most Unforgettable Character," it came from an old article that ran in Reader's Digest. 10 years ago it was fun to write, and surprisingly today I thought I was going to write about the same person, but on my way home today I changed my mind.
I once thought the most unforgettable character I had ever met was a girl from Centrifuge when I went ages ago. Her mom had been raped and she was the product of that event. She was insanely happy and positive, and it shocked me as a young high schooler to meet someone who had every reason to be so unhappy, yet they were so elated to be alive.
Today though I realized my most unforgettable character is now someone else, it's a story I've mentally threatened to share a few times and haven't ever dared. But today, I'm going to.
My most unforgettable character is a guy I know who has overcome quite a lot in his life, things I'm not so sure I would have overcome the same way.
As a baby, or more like a fetus he overcame things that blow my mind. His mom had actually scheduled to have an abortion, at the last minute though she backed out of the appointment. That wasn't going to be her first one either. She was involved in a terrible drug lifestyle and didn't have room for a baby in it. She openly talked with us once about the drugs she did, even while pregnant with that baby. That baby though, I'm convinced, ended up saving her life. When he was born she decided she couldn't raise a child the way things were going and found herself in a church.
When the little boy was a year old his mother was actually saved, she met his soon to be father (he never met his biological father) and married him soon there after.
Life went on like most normal families for the next 16 years until his parents divorced. The kids had been home schooled and the boy was now ending his junior year of high school and was obligated to order books, take on the responsibilities as a teacher to his two younger siblings, and teach himself so that he could graduate on time. With his parents divorced and father on the road as a truck driver he was responsible for groceries, cleaning, paying bills, and taking care of his siblings.
After all of that he moved out.
On his own he worked and lived all over while he figured out how he could go to college. He had never even heard of the A.C.T., but after a few years managed to find himself working on his BA.
After a few years of college I met him, and married him. Now he is about to graduate with a Specialist in School Psychology.
He is the first person to graduate high school, much less college in his family, and had everything on earth going against him. There are a million more stories within this story, but this just hits the high points.
This.
This is why I am not impressed with the fact that he wore matching socks one day, or can tie an tie. I'm proud of him because he overcame things long before he knew he was overcoming anything.
What I'm most impressed with though, is his attitude.
Like the girl I wrote about in high school, Jeremy is extremely positive. He can always find the bright side to anything and is always confident in whatever he does. I haven't seen him fail at anything he has cared about, he has a odd inner drive I am not graced with.
It really wouldn't matter what he went though if he wasn't the person he is today. He could be in and out of jail and on drugs, and it would all totally be expected. But nope, he has done more mission work that I could ever shake a stick at, he is a youth minister, working on a specialist, extremely well thought out, and much more rational than I am. This isn't something you will likely hear him talk about in passing, I rarely hear of it. If I had run into Jeremy at Centrifuge and heard this story and never saw him again I promise you I'd be sitting here now typing out the same story.
It doesn't so much matter what you go though, but who you are on the other side.
He is definitely an unforgettable person who I very much look up to.
