Starting from the Beginning

I started my life in a bad situation. My mother and father hated each other and by the time I was 6 months old they were divorced. My mother moved to Columbus, OH with my brother and I where we were thrown into poverty. My father refused to pay child support, didn’t bother visiting us and my mother was on her own raising to babies¹. Within two years, my mother had given birth to Other Sis and was a little deeper in the hole.

Back then we had welfare, but it was designed in such a way that a poverty-stricken single mother couldn’t get out once she got in. If she took even a small part-time job, her kids were thrown off of Medicaid and her food stamps were taken away. There was no program to help with rent, no way for her to get help with training and furthering her education. We did have programs that helped with extra food, bus passes and clothes. She found every program she could find for help and went with it. There was no help from either father of her children.

Every year before we started school my mother would go to Charity Newsie to get out school clothes. This was a program offered in Columbus and was, I suppose, a gigantic help to impoverished parents. But is sucked ass for the kids who had to wear those clothes to school. There were only about three outfits that we could choose from and the other kids (the ones who didn’t get Charity Newsie) knew we were poor and picked on us. It was horrible. I was an introverted kid who didn’t even attempt to make friends. I remember very clearly that no one seemed to like me and I was beaten up quite a few times. I’ve blocked out a lot of my childhood in Columbus. I remember the cockroaches, the times without utilities, the time my mother attempted suicide and the school kids hating me. I don’t have any good memories of that part of my childhood.

When my mother tried to kill herself, my great-grandmother came to save us and we were shipped off to live on my aunt’s farm for a while. I still don’t know what happened to my mother during that time. I remember that I loved having a “normal” family and that my life seemed awesome. We went to family functions, went fishing, had cook-outs and real clothes. Other Sis would sometimes ask about our mother, but I don’t remember caring too awfully much. I didn’t want to go back. I wanted to stay forever and ever. Of course, my mother came for us eventually. A woman from the welfare helped her get out to the farm to pick us up. Apparently my aunt refused to bring us home. She wanted us to stay with her because my mother just couldn’t do it. In a lot of ways she was right. My mother struggled with depression and was unable to provide for us on her own. I was incredibly broken when I left that farm.

So, eventually my mother decided to take us out of Columbus. It was after some dude was beaten to death right around the corner from us. Or maybe it was after my mother’s boyfriend beat her nearly to death while my brother and I (both of us less than 10 years old) tried desperately to save her. Or maybe it was after someone tried to kidnap my brother. I don’t really remember why except that I’m sure it was her attempt to save us from something. One day we packed up our stuff and my mom told us we were moving. I thought that we were moving around the corner (every time we moved we had basically stayed in the same neighborhood) but we left the city and headed for a small village two hours northeast of us. Talk about culture shock.

We were still poor, of course. But things seemed a whole, hell of a lot better. I loved living in the country. Our house, though, was a fire hazard from the get-go. We couldn’t use our tub because every so often we’d get a shock from the damned thing. And we had to use a wood stove for heating. That sucked in the winter time. When our house finally caught fire² we moved in with my uncle. That’s when my mother finally got a job. I was 12 years old.

This was my formation period. These are just some of the things that shaped me to be the fuck up I became. My brother, gods bless him, was broken more than any of us and has never recovered from the life we lived. As we became teenagers, we went completely wild and my mother dipped deeper into depression and, I think, borderline personality disorder. We weren’t struggling financially anymore as my mother learned to make money as a house keeper– and still keep her state aid³. I dreamed of going into the Air Force, getting a degree in linguistics and becoming a translator at the U.N. More stuff happened and I got in with the wrong crowd.

I went from being a straight-A student with no friends and who was more than a little bit weird, to hanging with the “hoods” and being ultra cool. I also started smoking weed and drinking. My grades slipped and I decided to take easier classes instead of college prep classes. At 14 years-old I had a 21 year-old, Colombian fiancé, who actually lived in our house and slept in my bed. At one point I ran away to Florida with him and turned 15 down there, living with his family and with my family having no idea where it was I had gotten to. I went through some tough shit down there and finally came home. At 16 I became pregnant, at 17 I gave birth to Lil’ Miss (and graduated high school) and at 18 I moved out to start the cycle again– with my own family.

Which brings me to my point. I won’t rehash how bad I fucked up in the first few years I spent on my own. But Lil’ Miss and I did a little better than my mother did with us. I didn’t have anymore babies while I was single. I worked 2 jobs so that I wouldn’t be forced to take welfare. But we still struggled and I still hurt my first child with the crapped out decisions I made. Until finally I hit the bottom and had to make a decision. Which way to go? Give in to the cycle and dip further into insanity and poverty? Or get the fuck out of it and do whatever it took to save myself and my daughter?

I chose to save us. I chose to end the fucking cycle and improve our lives. I settled down and entered college for the first time. Then I dropped out. Then I found TheMan and he convinced me to try again. We got pregnant and got married. Our son died and I dropped out again. I got pregnant again. My life became stable and secure, things I’d never experienced before in my life. Then in 2006 I decided to go back to school again.

At the age of 37 (next fall) I will be the first person in our family to graduate from college. Next December I will finally receive my very first degree– and then begin studying for my second. Until I sat down and looked at my entire life I was a little ashamed that I was only getting my Associates of Applied Business at my age. Whoop-di-do, right? I should’ve had that damned thing years ago.

But I think it’s something to be proud of and I’m going to allow myself to feel that pride. I came from shit and I should, according to statistics, be shit. I’m not Barack Obama⁴ but I’m within months of actually accomplishing a dream. I’m no longer living in poverty, no longer struggling to eat or to find clothes for my own children, I’m not wondering how I’m going to pay the rent. I’ve broken the cycle for myself and, though one daughter is struggling, my second daughter will never know what it’s like to sleep with electricity or huddle in the cold because the heat was turned off. And her mother will be college educated.

I’m just a little bit proud of that. Ya know?⁵⁶