I'll get right to it today....
I'm often bitter of people that don't have to "pay their dues". This sentiment is born out of a resentment that I have since I didn't have parents that could provide me with the opportunities that others seem to have. Mommy and daddy weren’t able to take care of me during my college years. Quite frankly, I had to eat shit for a while before I could get to a place where I was relatively comfortable in life. I can say with a certain sense of pride that everything I have now, for better or worse, was earned, literally, through much blood, sweat and tears. Please don’t think this is something I want others to experience because I don’t. But it annoys me when others have the support that I didn't have whether it is financial, emotional, or academic. It's been a long road but I am beginning to feel a sense of fulfillment now that I haven't had before.
It all started when my parents separated when I was in high school. I won’t go into the details as to why they separated or why my mother, my sister, and I moved out of our apartment. During my senior year, the three of us lived in a room that we rented on a weekly basis. Yes... you read that correctly. It was a single room where we somehow managed to set up two twin sized beds with the rest of our stuff carefully arranged in the remaining space. The kitchen and bathroom was shared with other renters and it was a miserable experience. But it kept us away from the dangerous man I used to refer to as “Dad”.
My senior year at Bronx Science, arguably the most important of the 4 HS years, was spent with more pressure than any teen should ever experience. The academic and social pressures of taking the SATs, applying for colleges, going to the prom, etc. were compounded with the worry of what we would be eating each night for dinner or managing my personal spending to make sure I didn’t put any financial pressure on my mom. I still wonder how we survived those years. I remember many days that I went without eating lunch. I would mooch off of friends to survive the day. I was really skinny back then. I was an active kid (handball during free periods, soccer on the quad during lunch) but the main reason I was thin was because I didn’t eat.
Fast forward to the first year out of high school when I was in my second semester at NYU. I had done pretty terribly in my first semester because I wasn’t really focused on my studies. I had a job at an electronics store and knew that I needed to work more hours to be able to help my mom out with the expenses. We had moved into an actual apartment by this time (a basement in a private house a block away). I ended up dropping out of NYU during that second semester. I hated to do it but I needed the money more than I needed the education.
I hated dropping out of NYU for several reasons. For one, I feel like I cheated myself out of a chance to get a degree from a well known school. Secondly, I hated giving up on college only because I needed to work and earn money to live. It’s one thing to have a part time job to cover frivolous expenses. But I had to work to help pay the rent, to have food in the fridge, to help my mom in any way I could since she now had two children in college each with their own expenses. I had very little financial aid and had a lot to pay back in student loans, with nothing to show for it. I managed to pay off my NYU student loan several years ago and even paid the last 1/3 of the parent loan my mom took out for me as well. I felt guilty that she put had to her name and credit on the line for a kid who, essentially, wasted his time while in NYU. She worked long hours sometimes 6 days a week to get us to where we were. She dealt with the aggravation of talking to my father, who tried to exploit the fact that he was helping to pay for my sister’s college expenses as a way to be a part of all our lives again. [Side note: By this time, I had stopped speaking to him and didn’t want anything to do with him. I certainly wasn’t going to take his money thus giving him an excuse to get back into my life.]
To be continued next time, faithful reader......
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