My story

Welcome to my space! I am going to do my very best to unravel everything that I know and everything that encompasses me. All the pieces of the puzzle should make sense in the grand scheme of things. There will be many posts and there will be some side tracks but I will do my very best to guide you, my readers, into the journey that I am currently venturing. What I hope is that you will be able to understand where I come from, how I came to be and how God is working through my life. In the end I hope my experiences can illuminate some things that you might wonder why I do what I do or why do some people do what they do.

Here are some of the facts of the case that should be help you understand as thing are unravelling themselves.

Timeline

1) Born in Hornchurch, Essex, United Kingdom

2) Moved to Richmond Hill, Toronto, Canada

3) Elementary school

4) High school

5) College

6) U.K

7) Tennis journey

8) Tennis Academy (Barcelona)

9) Back to U.K

10) Now Currently in Toronto at the University of Toronto

11) What I am doing and trying to achieve

Facts

1) If I did not embark on this Journey with God, I would have led a life of crime or I might have committed suicide. Indefinitely the rage would have consumed me and I would be truly acting out.

2) The life I currently lead, the piano and the tennis has completed the self-confident image that God was forming me to become.

The story begins.

At age 6 or 7 I moved from the U.K to live in Toronto. It is through this time that my life was filled with so many issues. I have two brothers, one sister and I am the youngest in my family. There were many fights that occurred that left big rifts in our relationships. I have really bad memories of the past because what happened during the elementary school years changed me and my life forever. This is what happened during that phase:

1) I repeated grade three

2) I was fighting against all my brothers and sister.

3) Repeating grade three caused me to lose all my friends that I initially made and I was forced to run away from them because I was embarrassed and angry at myself.

4) My current classmates ridiculed me because I repeated grade three.

5) My hatred toward my mum grew and never really went away because she told the teacher to hold me back. I generally had hatred towards my parents because they themselves were not good parents or good models because they did not fight to protect strong family values.

Transitioning from elementary to high school I was still clueless as to what I wanted to do and what I really liked about school. This was a time I truly hit rock bottom. I went to a church in Richmond Hill because conditions at my home were so bad and I was socially alone and depressed. These are the facts of the case:

1) I failed high school. I didn’t drop out but I quietly went to college after spending 5 years in high school. It was a repeat of a traumatic event that happened in elementary school that happened again in high school. All my friends moving ahead of me and me being left behind.

2) Before I failed high school actually all my supposed friends abandoned me in grade 10. They simply cut me off and I was just trying to do whatever I can to survive in high school. I was alone in the house because my dad was working in the UK at the time to provide for the family, my mother moved downtown to take care of my older siblings when they were attending university and also because her job was also downtown. For 4 years since I was in grade 10 I was truly alone both socially and physically. No friends and horrible relationships within my family. All I really had was just anime, video games and my piano.

3) When I went to the church in Richmond hill I was given a place to go to have fun and have people I can somewhat consider as friends. Even to this day I live with the rage and sadness that is my past, however, what God has done for me is strengthen my philosophy. It is only up until this point now that the philosophy has fully matured into something that has allowed me to draw strength from my situation. But, my journey as a Christian took me more than a decade to realise the why things happen the way they do.

Transitioning from High school to College I still didn’t know what I wanted to do but I had no choice but to go because of pride and many other reasons that I cannot really think about at this time. I went to George Brown College in the HVAC (Heating Ventilation Air conditioning) program because it was the only choice I had that was relatively interesting. I did ok for the first semester but then everything went downhill when I failed the second semester. These are the facts of the case:

1) I failed College and I went to the UK for the summer holiday but what was initially supposed to be a summer holiday became seven years later. I basically started a new life in the UK unexpectedly.

2) This was a time when everything started to change for the better. I was still angry at a lot of things but it was this journey in the UK that God was with me. When I was living in Toronto I was very introverted and I was always alone. So what did God do for me was He helped develop the skills to survive on my own mentally and emotionally. Furthermore, God saved my life by showing me what was necessary to learn from piano and from being a tennis player.

3) It was being a tennis player that I was able to bring back to myself a bit of self-confidence to know the fact that if I was able to apply myself and given the correct teacher that I was able to achieve something truly amazing. I learned how to be a better man and person because of my tennis coach named Eduardo Caffarena. He taught me how I can use my intelligence to become that better person. It was also at that time I realised that it was God who has placed strategically these events and these people at the right time when I truly needed it to become that person that God wishes me to become.

4) It was being a tennis coach that I was able to learn how to talk to people a little bit better and to try to understand people of all kinds of age. In short being a tennis coach taught me extroverted skills to be able to be a part of the world and eventually led me all the way back to Toronto where I try to find the true purpose why God made me go through this very confusing journey around the world.

Transitioning from tennis player to tennis coach to university student. I still have many flaws that need to be fixed but God has left nothing to waste and used all of my horrible experiences to create me to be somewhat mentally and emotionally strong. My time in the tennis academy in Barcelona taught me the difference between sportsmen and normal people. We may live in the same world but the difference in mentality differentiates us from normal people who take the normal route of high school, university and then go to work. We were players who committed our lives to the game to become something truly special. I did travel a little bit around UK to play at tennis tournaments. I didn’t win any tournaments but I did play really well that I could have won some tournaments. I played well and I knew that I could have been a tennis professional– but the problem is that there were too many obstacles both financially and mentally.

It did not help me to know that no one in my family did not believe that I had what it takes to be a tennis professional.

Even now, I still believe that I can be a tennis professional because I have the skills and mind to become one the greatest but I am realistic knowing that until these obstacles are gone, I will never be able to achieve it because the environment in which I live in is toxic.

I came to university to not only find a new purpose in life but I also to see what is it that God is trying to show me. I have to believe that God is with me and that there is something divine pushing me towards different directions because at any point during this entire journey I could have simply gave it all up and turn towards a life of crime if it meant that I can be “rich and successful”. The fact that I stand before you typing my story must mean something.

It is fair to assume that even without a belief in God that all these things that I have experienced is just apart of the learning experience but something that is undeniable is that my personal philosophy has been built on the foundations that is said in the Bible.

One of those philosophies that I have done my best to remember is 1 Corinthians 13 which is the definition of love and how it is fundamental to building strong relationships with anyone.

What would you do if you have experienced a life quite like mine?

I have more to write about many different things so please look forward to my next post!! Also, if you have questions for me please send them over and I will do my very best to answer them.