What Defines a Person

A person is defined by the past events and people in his or her life. My personality has been shaped by the experiences I’ve had and the individuals involved with my life. Certain events in my life, such as my parents’ divorce, and the move that followed have helped me develop certain personality traits that I may not have acquired otherwise. When my parents divorced, I felt helpless and everything came falling down. My grades started to suffer substantially, I began to see a therapist, and it was not long until the financial problems started resulting in the moving out of our home. I needed to adapt to these considerable changes in my life. My parents’ divorce hit me really hard. I was only ten-years-old at the time, but it filled me with so much anger and depression that I had to see a therapist to discuss how I felt. I kept fantasizing about my parents getting back together, even though I knew that that was not even a mere possibility. Everything seemed to be going wrong in my life. I was getting worse and worse grades as time passed and I lacked the motivation to improve them. Things only got worse when I found out that my mom met another man and was planning to marry him. I was far from ready to have another man in our house that was not my dad. During the first few months of him living with us, I completely ignored him. But I eventually learned that he was here to stay and that I should learn to accept him. I learned that some things are simply out of your control and you must adapt to them. Since then, my grades have progressed greatly and I have become a significantly better student. From these unforeseen circumstances, I had gained the ability to adapt to things when they don't go as planned, a trait that I have found to be very valuable in life.
My ability to adapt to these changing circumstances developed when an even more drastic change took place. When I learned that we had to move out of the house that my father left my mother, I was devastated. We