To live with no struggle is to never have lived at all...

In the great narrative of the human experience, struggle is a chapter (or 2, or 3, or 12 chapters) that we can all relate to. If you have lived a complete life without ever meeting with struggle, if you've never met a boundary or hurdle that seemed impossible- then you have never actually lived.
But once you start examining your own struggles in the broader scope of comparison, you might begin to rethink, as I have, what struggle really means.

Growing up without a father, now that is difficult. Having a kid when you yourself are a young teenager whose still trying to figure themself out, that shit is difficult. Trying to compete with fellow peers when you have a disability or don't learn the way the majority of the world does is hard as hell. And being raised in a less-than-fortunate household and watching all your friends get what they want when they want it is hard, too.

But despite these hurdles and difficulties that my friends and I must deal with in our lives, we are also very fortunate. We live in a wealthy country, we're (for the most part) surrounded by friends and family, and we all have a warm spot to call "home". We have a good chance of going to school or getting a job and overcoming some of these hurdles.

But what about people who don't have these kinds of opportunities. I can barely manage the thought of waking up everyday without greeting my mom and dad, much less never having known what it means to have a family. Hell, the very thought of growing up freaks me out. So what if one day those were factors I really did have to face? What if I was born with a fatal illness, a crippling disability, or an un-mendable broken heart?

Would I then understand what struggle is?....