Going away to college is the most amazing experience that I’ve had in my short 20 years of living. It’s provided me with so many experiences that I wouldn’t have had if I hadn’t left home, and it's given me the chance to grow a little more and get comfortable in my own skin. My biggest problem with not being at home for about nine months out of the year? Leaving my mom and two siblings behind.
For 20 years, my mother has served not only as my mom, but my dad too; she’s worked so hard for me to have the opportunities that I’ve been given. We’ve been hovering around the poverty line for almost as long as I can remember, and it’s hard for me to think that, while I’m here, putting myself thousands of dollars in debt every year to try to be a good role model to my siblings, to try to give them some kind of funding for higher education, and to hopefully one day be able to show up on my mother’s doorstep and say “the troubles are over,” she is at home almost crippling herself, working 50+ hours a week to support me and my siblings and make sure that we have everything we need to keep going and do the things we need to get where we want to be in life. We don’t have everything we want, but we have what we need. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wonder whether or not I made the right decision in leaving home instead of staying with my mom, taking a job as a manager in a retail setting, buying myself a car, and helping my mom and aunt pay the bills.
With everything that I do, I keep my family in mind. Last year, my mom somehow managed to send me to the United Kingdom for a week to go on a choir tour, and I’m still trying to figure out just how she did it. It was hard for me to admit that I needed help if I wanted to go on the trip because I knew if I told her I wanted to go, she’d be determined to make it work, and that was money that could have been used elsewhere. Every year, she somehow manages to send me and my siblings back to school and gets through it without completely losing her mind in the process. When I get my supplies, I always make sure that I try to spend more of my money and make her spend less on me so she can take care of the kids first. Every time she comes down, she tries to give me money or get me the things I need, and it’s hard for me to take it without commenting and trying to talk her out of it. While I’m here, I’m guaranteed three square meals every day (if I have time to go get food, that is), a solid roof over my head, and a warm bed to sleep in. At home, mom has to worry about keeping the roof over our heads, feeding everyone in the house every day, and making sure everyone is warm where they’re sleeping.
My mom is working a decent job right now—it provides the money she needs to help the family survive—but it doesn’t pay my tuition, and it doesn’t put a college fund away for my siblings. Education is something that’s always been really important to me, and while you can survive working a job that requires minimal training, I feel that the outcome of a job involving schooling can be much more rewarding in the end. Being away at school while my mom is working hard at home can be really hard at times, but it pushes me to do the very best that I can to one day be able to take care of her.
