Imagine waking up every single day and looking at yourself in the mirror and feeling disgusted or embarrassed with the person you are looking at, or how about looking at a family picture you are in and not recognizing the person you see. People hit rock bottom sometimes, trust me, it sucks. Sometimes life lessons are learned the hard way. We will get knocked down multiple times but it’s always important to remember that we have the chance to stand back up, brush ourselves off, and keep on pushing. A word of advice from someone who has been there, we need to cherish the life we are living because we are still living and the great thing about being alive means there is still time for change.

January 11, 2014: the start of the 11 month downward spiral of my life.

I was at work when I got two texts from my best friend Omar. The first one was an expected, “Yo” but the text that followed would change my life from that moment on.

It said, “Julia died.”

I couldn’t believe it. I told my friend to cut the s*** then I went to Instagram, quickly I scrolled down my feed and right in front of my eyes were photos with captions that shattered my heart into a million bits and pieces. My mind was racing I had no idea how one is supposed to cope with the feeling of a friend dying. I never thought I would experience that at the age of 17, losing a friend who was only 16 at the time. We were just juniors, we were still kids. I kicked it with her multiple times over that winter vacation too. I even snuck out my house at midnight to hangout with her and our other friend, Huy, too.

I met Julia my freshman year and I will forever be grateful that I knew such an all around amazing person. Julia and Huy both had experience with their parents being divorced, so when my parents split my freshman year of high school those two were my shoulders to lean on, my only comfort at the time.

On January 10 we had Marine Biology last period of the day and I dapped her up as we were leaving at 2:15, and that was the last time I saw her.

People claim life sucks, truth be told death sucks. What makes death even worse is the fact that it is inevitable. I was lost for a long time after losing that friend and I had three horrible ways to deal with the death: drinking, smoking, and the one I did the most-- Eating. My whole life I was always in a fight with my weight. There was never a time in my life that I was not chubby or  overweight. It was around November of 2014 when I had reached the lowest of lows in my life. At that time I weighed 240 and enough was enough. I took a picture with my three younger siblings and they jokingly said I looked adopted and I didn’t really think much of it because I always said I was better looking than them all anyways, yet we all look alike.

One day in December I was ready for change and I started working out. From Thanksgiving of my senior year to Thanksgiving of my freshman year of college I had dropped a total of 60 pounds and learned the biggest lesson of my life.

“Motivation” is key and being determined helps a lot too. The great thing about life is the ability to change. If you really want to make a change, you can. Reflecting on that year I learned a lot. Little changes count. During the beginning of senior year I always drank a Mountain Dew bottle at lunch with two slices of buffalo chicken pizza from New York Pizza across the street from Malden High because that was the place most seniors ate lunch. I also drank an iced coffee every morning, obviously because “America runs on Dunkin’.” Once I started working out I only drank water and chocolate milk, then for lunch everyday I ate a salad.The weight started dropping fast when I worked out because all I did was strictly cardio. Another lesson learned is to not be afraid of change because sometimes change is good. If you were to tell me a year and a half ago that I would be weighing 177 pounds, I could not imagine it in a million years. You never know if you’re going to like the new thing you try, but you won’t know until you try it. Since I started going to the gym and working out, I can’t imagine my life without exercise. Once you set your mind to a goal, keep a determined mindset, and keep grinding through it because “Anything is possible” word to Kevin Garnett.