Death/ Rebirth

The past two reading assignments in our class were definitely my favorite ("The Red Convertible" and "No Denials from Him" ) I guess both stories made me realize how many "deaths and rebirths" we all go through in our lifetime. Or at least the ones that I've been through in mind. In "The Red Convertible" the older brother had one experience that changed him drastically for the rest of his life, this reminds me of the first time I ever went backpacking. I was with my camp and we had to be separated on the backpacking voyage into two groups; boys and girls. Everyone that was on the trip had been apart of the camp with me since summer before eight grade (this trip was summer before sophmore year in high school). So we were all pretty familiar with each other - this definitely did not mean that we liked eachother at all. So there you had it, I was stuck in this group of catty girls for like a two week period outdoors! I didn't think that I was going to make it, but it took that extreme situation of constant hiking and being out of my "natural element" for me to learn so much about myself. Many of the life lessons and mottos that I carry with me now came from that one experience. It is definitely not as intense as fighting in the Vietnam war but that summer I experienced a rebirth.
"No Denials from Him" is an incredible short story, usually when I like short stories I want them to be longer but this story worked nicely and I was able to relate to it on so many different levels. On a personal level the first person I was ever "in love with" cheated on me, I know that betrayal is not the same as that of someone you've promised to spend the rest of your life with but either way it hurts. After going through something like that, I definitely felt like no one understood what I was going through and I turned to music, just like the lady in the story (I'm not sure if the lady within the story is Lucy Tapahonso or not). But, to wrap this up, when I was cheated on I felt like a part of me died as morbid as that is, that is exactly how I felt at that moment in my life. So, I completely understand every aspect of "No Denails from Him" because it mirrors my life so closely. I still consider music such a huge part of my life today because of all that it did for me when I went through this "dark" period - it showed me that I wasn't the only person that had ever felt that kind of deep pain and that I wasn't as "alone" as I thought I was.