I don't even know...

I can't begin to count how many times I've started this post over and over again. So many feelings rush through my heart, and so many thoughts are stuck in my overwhelmed brain.

The past few weeks have been hard. I chose to work as hard as possible to make the money to go to Europe. It's something I've wanted for years. I've wanted to travel the world, meet new people, learn about new cultures, and better myself and others through positive examples.

At times the day seemed to hard to finish. I cried, I laughed, I ranted, and I even blew up at my boss. I wanted so badly to find a remote like the one in click just so I could fast forward through the bad and get to the good.

It wasn't until I came home from work one night that I realized that fast forwarding time doesn't get you through the bad. It won't fix things, and that for something to be worth it you have to go on the journey, and find the inner strength you posses.

I came home from work one day to find my dad sitting at his computer, and an overwhelming sense of tension in the air. The words he said are ingrained in my mind.

"I have some bad news. Your Uncle Tom passed away." It didn't hit me. Even walking into the kitchen and seeing my moms eyes filled with tears didn't process. It wasn't until I was eating a bowl of fruit salad on the couch that the tears came.

The only memories of my Uncle were the ones of him taking my siblings and I upstairs to a room stacked high with memorabilia he collected in hopes of striking it rich. If something wasn't valuable he gave it to us.

I never knew my Grandpa since he died while I was only a baby, and my Grandma had had multiple strokes in life leading her to be disabled, and leaving a shell of a person. I was so scared of her when I visited. She sat with her caretaker at the kitchen table while my Uncle Tom made us hot cocoa and insisted on refilling the whip cream whenever what we had melted. He'd order Chinese food, and as a child I viewed him as one of the only connections to extended family on my dad's side.

It wasn't until my Grandma died that I began to see his true personality. He selfishly let my father pay for the entire funeral. He sold the half million dollar home and gambled away the money that should have been shared between him and my dad. The calls on our birthdays stopped, and I only talked to him once or twice after all of this happened.

I grew to resent him. I grew to hate him for his selfishness, and his inability to involve his nieces and nephew in his life. I felt so conflicted because I wanted to have him in my life, but I was scared he'd take advantage of me just as he'd done to my dad.

When I heard the news that he'd died I was sad. I felt terrible for not trying hard to mend the riff in our relationship. I felt like a terrible niece for not thinking positively about him. But worst of all I was mad at him. He didn't leave behind anything but trouble.

He told friends he had no family. He wanted pity from fellow church members, and because of it it caused more problems than needed. The one thing that made me the most upset was that instead of trying to talk to his family, he lied, he gambled, he abandoned us.

It was through this experience that I've come to realize that the end of something isn't always good. I had the chance to make the journey my Uncle and I shared into a positive one. I could have called him. When he called I could have tried to share my life with him instead of trying to pass him off over to my siblings.

I guess what I'm saying is, don't let the journey pass you by. Sometimes it may be hard, but if you get through those hard times the finish line is so much better than if you drifted through the race. If you don't enjoy each moment you won't realize you've missed those good moments.

I just wish I cherished those moments with my Uncle. If I had, I wouldn't have viewed his life so negatively. Maybe things would have been better, and maybe I wouldn't have ended up holding a grudge towards my Uncle Tom.