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My life is falling apart..... I finally had figured everything out. What I wanted to do. Found a true best friend, not some fake person that I found myself believing to be my best friend only to have them walk away a year later.... I was finally happy. Finally. It took me so long to get to that place... Too long... And now it's all going to Hell...
My father was laid off from his work. Because of this he's moving the entire family to Idaho of all places... It's not a bad place Idaho...not to visit at least... But having grown up and lived my entire life in California.......it's very different. But that wasn't so bad. We went. We found a house. Put up with it for a week (longest week of my life I might add - there's just NOTHING to do there....).... But like I said, that was all fine. I had finally come to terms with it. In fact, I had been ready to move for a while. Just never expected it to happen like this....... But it was going to be ok. I'd only be there for maybe two weeks or so, then I'd be off to my new college in Wisconsin. And I was SO excited about it....
But then the money fell through.... After this amazing scholarship and financial aid packet I got, I still didn't have half the money I needed to be able to go to school. I tried the scholarship thing, but that's like fishing for trout in a dried up riverbed.... And even if you do catch something, it's so tiny it's not even worth anything.... Ok, so I tried to look into grants. Have you ever tried to look into grants knowing absolutely NOTHING about grants? Seriously, I think a bunch of little 1111000001110000 on a computer screen would've made more sense than that stuff..... Alright, so I tried asking around, seeing what other people knew. Nothing. Fine, I accepted the federal loans I had been so set against taking since my beginning days at my community college. But still, not enough money... Now I'm beginning to get desperate... I pretty much put out a distress signal into the universe, so a family friend sends me to someone she'd met that she thought could help. He knew a lot of financial stuff...but none of it was really helpful... Ok, so now what? Well my parents said they wouldn't help long before my dad got laid off, but now they definitely won't...and can't... I try to get my tuition lower, letting them know about my situation. Alright, my dad has to fill out a form, no problem right? Wrong. He hasn't been laid off long enough for that to go into effect and it wouldn't do nearly as much as I would need it to do.... Great... I'm really running out of options now. What are some of the last things we can do? We go to the absolute last place you would ever want to go to - the devil himself. We go look for a private bank loan. Sit down with the lady. Call the loan services. I get denied... My dad calls the loan services. He gets denied.
By this point my spirit is so crushed and I am falling apart. This was my dream. My one escape. It was everything I wanted and more.... But in this country a dream doesn't mean much without the money to withstand it... So I give up on my dream... Start looking into other options, like working full time for a year or other such things of that nature. (I hate working, by the way...) My parents have been meeting with a financial advisor by this point, for their own future. The boss lady tells them she owns a non-profit that helps students get into colleges and how to write grants. My parents make me meet her and hear her out. No harm, right? They basically tell me I have to pay this much thousand dollars to have some coach teach me through emails how to write grants after taking my S.A.T. Yes I haven't taken it, but I didn't need to. I went to community college first. But on top of all that, they also inform me that I must give up my dream school because they can't help me if I'm not willing to be flexible. So I fall into myself. Don't really want to think or consider anything. But what other choice do I have by this point? None that I see. So I do the last thing I can think of doing and email my school one last email explaining everything up to this point.
They get back to me and I finally see some light. A little glimmer of hope. There's still a small chance I can go to school. But there are some hoops and obstacles I need to get through first. So I tell my parents, after all I will need them for this part - even if they don't want that. I'm told that if they apply for a parent PLUS loan then either they can get accepted and I can go or they can get denied and I'll get an extra $3000 added onto my stafford loans. That's not enough to cover what I'll owe, but it's a good start. Then I'm also told that even if I can't afford the full tuition by the due date, I can still go this semester and attend my classes. The only catch is that I would need to have $1000 or less remaining to be paid by the end of the semester to be able to register for classes the next year. To me this is like discovering diamonds after scrapping up coal. I could still go to school. After all everything is already taken care of - my classes are chosen and registered for, my roommate is selected and has been talked to, my meals have been chosen. Everything has been done - except the money. Everyone kept saying it would all work out, so I kept hoping it would. I finally have one true day of happiness. Blissful relief. Freedom. I just wish it could've lasted longer...
The very next day those financial advisors come back to talk to my parents. I was not planning on talking to them. I had no intention of talking to them. After all, I had figured it out, hopefully, right? But I was called into the kitchen where they were meeting and completely caught off guard by their onslaught of questions and numbers and "facts" and words. I didn't even stand a chance. My head was in a fog. I was unprepared for this meeting. They start spewing out how much money it will all add up to in the end and how this is not a smart plan for me to be taking. They tell me things like the interest on my loans will double every 4.8 years and I will have no way to get out of that debt. Not bankruptcy. Not even death. Now I do understand that they were trying to be helpful. But even still it felt like I was a baby chick getting its beak cut off and shoved over a conveyor belt toward some dark and scary shaft. Completely unaware, unprepared, and having no idea as to what just happened or what was going on. The woman, though she was just trying to make me see what she was seeing, was so condescending and patronizing that it did nothing more than frustrate me further and make me angry. I was in tears before I could get a hold of myself enough to not let it shatter me like it did. My one last hope they stole from me in a last ditch effort to help. Maybe they did help. I don't know. But right now I just feel like a shadow of a person with no home, no dream, and no future.... Extreme? Quite possibly, but how would you feel if everything you had finally worked up to and accepted, everything that had become your desire, your drive, your inspiration, your dream, was simply ripped from your hands? Extreme or not, it's how I feel.
Now what am I to do? Move to Idaho? Away from the one best friend I had finally ever met? Be stuck there with no escape plan in sight? With no hope of tomorrow? In Wisconsin, I had actually been able to see my future. I mean actually see it, visualize it, right there. I had never had that before. Always lost in a world of uncertainty and blind confusion. An outsider to myself and to the world. But there, it was different. I finally knew where I belonged. I finally knew where my life would start. I knew this would be where I would meet that special someone to take with me on my life adventures. This is where I saw me experiencing the wonders of the world, of life, things I had deprived myself from or been too scared to move towards. This is where I would begin my amazing career that would take me to far off lands, overseas, helping people, changing the world, saving the environment. This is where my life began. And I knew it the moment I set foot off that airplane back in February. Even before we drove the three and a half hours from the airport to the little town on the bank of Lake Superior. Even before I saw how the sunlight danced across the snow that first morning. I knew.
And now what? All of that I just have to give up? I have to live with surrendering my dream? Hoping there's something better out there for me? Hoping that somehow, somewhere I can find my life again? I can find where I belong, where I'm supposed to be? I can't live with that. An unsure question is just as bad as living in that world of doubt and uncertainty that I've spent all of my life in. It's just as bad as a sky with no stars - black, void, and empty. How am I supposed to just give up on everything that I felt I was supposed to be and just be ok with that? How can I do that? So now, I fall back into myself again. Crushed. Shattered. Hopeless. A body with no dream.
Vatra Dete · Wed Jul 17, 2013 @ 10:02am · 0 Comments |
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