Currently I’m living with my parents, and let me tell you at 24 I could definitely ask for a more freeing situation. Though living with my parents has helped me get the school loan situation under control. There are times when I think I could deal with the years of debt to not have seemingly abusive comments thrown my way.
Being the oldest of three, perfection is definitely expected. Although, my mother so clearly pointed out to my youngest sister the other day, “there is no perfect child.” I’d like to think that children can come close to perfection. If not perfect then at least not feeling like the look and or tone of disappointment is warranted.
All my life I feel as though I’ve been trying to make everyone around me happy, especially my parents. Not that I would never have not gone to college seeing as I live to learn. When I graduated a semester late with an obscene amount of loans, my father continued to ask me why I wanted to attend such an expenisive to become just a teacher, or major in creative writing.
Now that I’m living with my parents again after 5 years of freedom the discussion of my debt and school of choice comes up more than necessary. When I was applying to grad school, the field of my masters was constantly being discussed. Why not education, why go for creative writing? Who needs a fine arts masters? Go for something useful, like education. Not only was the decision to go for creative writing up for discussion but the school’s location was also up for grabs. Fortunately I didn’t have to make much of a choice since I was only accepted to one program.
Of course my attempt to free myself from being close to home won’t come until I finish because as fate would have it, I was accepted to the university closest to my permanent residence. Talk about the God’s playing with the lives of humans. Even though the school is only an hour and half away I’ll be moving down there having earned my freedom I believe.
Although offered a great teaching assistantship, I’m actually really excited about starting this program come August. I would have started the day I was accepted. I was going to start come summer but decided to take advantage of that summer off and will be visiting Europe. I can’t wait.
Although this past year I’ve been listening to my parents’ (especially my father’s) verbal abuse. I now see that this past year teaching, and saving up has prepared me for teaching at the college level. And has enabled me to be able to afford the summer up ahead. Even though I still feel like I could do more to make my parents happy I see it’s futile to try to make everyone happy. Even though my going to Europe doesn’t make my dad happy, since he believes I should make lump sum payments to Sallie Mae. It’s going to make me so happy to go to Europe and experience my last summer of freedom for awhile.
My boyfriend is right (sometimes). He says, “you’ve got to make yourself happy and then everyone else around you will be happy.” The man has a point.
Tags: creative writing, dad, graduate school, Happiness, M.F.A., mom, parents, sallie mae, student loans, verbal abuse
