Dealing With a crisis. How I dealt with facing my fear of Being away from home. "IT ALWAYS SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE UNTIL ITS DONE." ~NELSON MANDELA

The idea of me surviving at a sleep away camp seems impossible. Especially when starting out as a 9 year old. It always seemed impossible until I went to sleep away camp and faced my fear of being away from home. It all started about 6 months before that very summer. A family who we know very well recommended that my twin sister and I go to camp cody. They said that their kids went there and they loved it. Our parents didn't think this was such a good idea for us at first because they didn't think we could handle being away from them for two weeks. I didn't think that I could handle it either. My sister thought that she could handle going. She looked at the website and saw all these pictures of camp cody's fabulous facilities. My parents liked the facilities but they still didn't think that we could  handle being away for two weeks. However, after asking other families about camp cody, they learned that camp cody is great for first time sleep away campers so they told us that we could go. My sister said right away that she wanted to go. After looking at the facilities, I decided to go because I thought that the facilities were one of a kind. I saw this as an opportunity that I shouldn't pass up. At that time I didn't think about what it would be like to be stuck in a cabin without my parents for two weeks. My mom signed us up right after we said we would go so their was no going back. I was fine with going to camp cody until the day came where my mom was driving us up to camp cody in Freedom, NH. In the car I was flipping out yelling at my mom to turn the car around and go back home. "I can't do this" I kept shouting. My mom told me that I would make it through the two weeks easily. She told me that I wouldn't even know that she was gone because I would be too busy having fun. She told me that my dad and her would write to me too. After that I calmed down. I survived the two weeks at sleep away camp and I ended up going back the next two years. During sleep away camp I missed my parents but I had fu and I made a lot of friends. Looking back I don't regret for a moment deciding to go to sleep away camp. I didn't think I could make it through until the day my parents picked me up and I realized I had indeed made it through. I learned a lot from this experience. I learned that when a new opportunity comes, it's a bad idea to pass it up. If I don't like what I did, I never have to do it again. If I like what I did I can do it again and again. But if I never face my fear, I won't know what I could be missing out on.