I'm at work. Feeling the pain every woman feels just for being a woman. I'm a baby about it. Rather than deal with the pain of being a woman, I pop pain relievers and drink coffee and wait impatiently for it to subside.
This pain is real, but so was the pain I felt Friday night. I felt everything seemingly crashing in on me. The pressure of doing everything on my own was getting to me. And while I openly admit that I wouldn’t be able to do anything without the support of my family here, my family is also not putting me through college. My sister & brother-in-law give me meals here and there, let me trade childcare for cell phone bills and provide emotional support. My parents offer nothing but an occasional ear and a desire for my soul to be “saved.” I can already guess what they will send me for my birthday and Christmas. Vitamins and probably a movie to make me question my lack of faith in God. Not that I’m bitter…but my parents can be irrelevant – a lot. They take a stand against my independence by offering me no financial assistance. It’s ok. I realize that a lot of kids don’t get assistance from their parents. However, my parents’ stance is costing me financial aid every year. Shouldn’t they feel some responsibility for that?
I felt wiped out. I could barely respond to Aeryn’s questions of what was wrong, and how did I feel, and her telling me she didn’t mean to offend me when we had a misunderstanding earlier. I finally just asked her if she wanted to go for a walk, because I know I wasn’t going to be able to continue to concentrate on homework, and I felt like I was about to cry in front of everyone at Diesel Café. That thought didn’t appeal to me at all. So we walked to a park nearby, in the neighborhood, and I joked with her, asking her if she wanted to go play in the playground. She said she would if I would, and I said, “you first.” She walked in and set her things down. I followed. Actually, I felt like maybe this was what I needed. A quiet place, a place where I could let go of my feelings, and perhaps “be a child” for a change. We swung on the swings side by side. We were right in Davis Square, but it almost seemed we were the only people around. Occasionally, Aeryn would reach out a hand and touch me, but mostly we just swung and talked. I was frustrated with the world, the way it seemed to be run, how unfair it was, and how this affected me. It usually takes a lot to get me down and I view life as a challenge, but sometimes the mix of impossible circumstances will wear me down – after a while. We talked about how I couldn’t get enough financial aid because the federal government assumed I was receiving aid from my parents. We talked about how my parents had not been helping me since I declared my independence (which I will never regret). We talked about how many people slip through the cracks of fair and decent education because of the government’s adamant insistence to abide by this stereotypical idea that, if under 24 and unmarried and no dependents, you must be receiving enough aid from your parents. Preposterous. And we talked about how colleges often have their hands tied to help you when the FAFSA declares you need no aid. At least, schools like mine – public education institutions which are barely aided by the state government at all, much less the federal government. We talked about how silly education is when people go to college just to get a job, just to pay off their student loans and the aim was never really to learn in the first place. I said how frustrating it was for me when I have developed an insatiable desire to learn – I know it is there, but it is being suppressed by the interruption of the necessity of making money. We talked about how culture puts this emphasis on being more than average – even though, by definition, more than half the population cannot meet that standard, and indeed a “proper standard” as defined by many is met by exceedingly less than half the population. We talked about the shrinking middle class, the unfair distribution of wealth (and assets, which perpetuates the unfair distribution of opportunity and wealth together). I let out my anger and frustration. It was like my soul was bleeding. I rested my head on Aeryn’s chest and she held me close and cried. It was a disturbing time for me – realizing that for so long I must have been buying into this idea of “hard work gets you somewhere in the US” when it is all a bunch of bull designed to perpetuate our own struggle, at our own expense, while raising others to even higher levels of opulence. I wondered if it was possible to make a difference, because that would seem to be the only motivation left to do anything. When life is a continual, daily struggle, and your efforts leave you barely squeaking by, you understandably have cynicism. Cynicism about education, cynicism about capitalism, cynicism about life, about people’s motivations, about the “American dream,” about the rewards of hard work vs. being born into opportunity, etc. Fuck a world that perpetuates opportunity for a select few who have done nothing to “deserve” it, who in fact deserve it less than those who slave to carve a meager existence out for themselves.
What, in fact, is my motivation for going to school? I’ve heard it so many times before, the statistics quoted to reassure you that you are almost guaranteed to make a better salary with a college degree than with a high school degree alone. I have to agree that high school did almost nothing for me, in terms of meritable achievements. I had little to present to colleges in the way of visible leadership, impressive transcripts, extracurricular activities and volunteer work. All I could say was that I was a smart home schooled kid. And hope they would believe me. Luckily the first school I went to didn’t really care. It was a Bible College, and as long as I was interested in living for God according to their standards, my educational history didn’t have to be all that impressive. I worked my ass off for that school. I was in clubs, but once again, had little time for anything besides work and school. My parents helped me a little (because they approved and allowed my decision to go to school here), and I had a small scholarship my first year as well. I worked a work study job the first year to pay the rest of my bill. Even so, I had no spending money until I got an outside job at Christmas time. I was living off my then-boyfriend’s generosity. Not because I wanted to, but because I had almost no choice. Without going into too much detail, the decision I made to go to this school did inevitably come back to bite me in the ass. When later leaving this school to go live with my sister in Somerville, and applying to University of Massachusetts Boston (the only school in the area I could hope to afford), I hoped and believed they would accept my general education credits from Christian Life College. Wrong. And I didn’t find this out until it was kinda too late to go anywhere else. I was screwed. Starting over from scratch, at a school much more expensive than my first, and this time, without any aid from my parents, unless you count the -$2,000 or so that I owed them for car insurance accumulated during my 2 years in California. My parents had made it clear that if I didn’t clear my decisions with them, I would be on my own financially. They did not approve of me even voluntarily spending my summer with my sister, even though the last time I had went home, my mom had threatened to kick me out over the summer. I determined to never live with my parents again. And it wasn’t an easy decision. And my mom made it clear that I was being cut off from verbal contact with her since we absolutely could not get along. I chose to go to see my sister anyway, and therefore, I was a rebellious child, no longer worthy of their meager support. In their eyes, being their child was absolutely not a reason to deserve financial aid. And I had better not expect it. They needn’t have worried. They had been teaching me this lesson my entire life. I let it go willingly. And I wouldn’t take it back, not if they paid my tuition & fees in full until I got through graduate school. I would rather struggle and get through on my own, making myself sick and exhausted, than have them hold anything over my head. And I know someday I will have a sweet sense of accomplishment when I am presented my diploma and know that these last few years, and my entire life, has not been in vain. It is headed somewhere.
So, am I just trying to prove something? I actually love to learn. My professors at U Mass Boston turned me on to learning. I appreciate a challenge, though not really in the form of a bad professor, and bad to me is someone who doesn’t inspire you to learn and who, in fact, hinders you from learning by their arrogance and narrow-mindedness.
In the past week or so, I have felt something different about me & Aeryn. I had before feared that she was afraid of confrontation or disagreement. So, perhaps, we both had our own fears. However, we have disagreed several times since getting back together. I think we both have seen that it has not been that big of a deal. So, one less fear to deal with. I'm all for that. I think we have been very open and honest with each other (as we always tried to be) lately. Is it possible to be in a relationship where you are willing to see through disagreements and misunderstandings and know that you will be there for one another, without becoming bored and uninterested in a relationship that seems too comfortable or not exciting enough? Hmm. Something in me says that it is possible and I think we're discovering that, one day at a time. It doesn't feel old. It's new. Very new. In a very good way.
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thoughtful
