When the Walls of Responsibility Showed Up in My Life

When the Walls of Responsibility Showed Up In My Life


  Almost a whole life I spent in Yakutsk that is located in Russia. Yakutsk is the capital of the Sakha Republic in Siberia, the coldest area in Russia.
  I was born in New York City, and when I was 3, my mum moved us from New York to Yakutsk and there raised me with my grandma. I am the only child in family, so I get everything that a child could ever need. I didn’t really know what the responsibility is; I didn’t really understand that just because of the excessive love of my parents.
  I was spoiled when I turned 10. I might have had my own thoughts about responsibility, but I couldn’t realize that responsibility is the right thing in life.
  A senior year in high school was so hard and so emotional to everybody including graduates, parents and teachers. It was time to make your own decisions and choices. I knew that I will move to the United States wit my mum, so I was prepared to not be alone in States.
  My mum applied for visa to America, but the council cancelled her application. In the evening after rejection, she sat next to me and started her speech very calm and serious.
  “Jennifer, I’m not going to be there with you, so you have to be prepared to live all alone,” she said. “I wanted you to know that I love you and I will always be thinking about you.”
  I couldn’t find a word to say something, and I just looked in her eyes and started to cry.
  “Don’t cry, sweetheart, everything’s going to be ok. So, the first thing you have to remember that you’ll do everything in your own. You will live by yourself; you will work and study hard to get everything to live a good life, you have to be responsible, ok?”
I nodded.
After a long conversation with my mum I couldn’t fall asleep whole night. I asked myself: “Why is happening to me? Why I can’t live with my mum there? Why is so hard?”
  A first year in America was hard enough for me, who was always close to the family. I felt so...