I, Tif

Hello, humans! Tif here, with a firm resolve never to dream at night ever again -- which is currently preventing sleep -- and a plan of some sorts to save for grad school that involves pulling one over on the United States government, which I would do with a smile any day of the week. Here's the story:

A few days ago, I, Tif, the ever-intrepid seeker of the eventual Master's Degree in Social Work, (Concentration: SOCIAL POLICY AND REFORM) came into the unfortunate knowledge that there is no state or federal financial aid for graduate school -- whereupon I hit upon the idea of saving/investing my money. Whereupon I spoke with my SSI caseworker and discovered that I am not allowed to have over $2,000 in my combined bank accounts at any given time, including Certificates of Deposit and Money Market Accounts, and that no Education Exemption programs currently exist for people in my age group. My only hope was to open an Education Savings Account with my bank, but according to my banker, those can only be opened for beneficiaries under the age of 18. So, in a nutshell, I was screwed by circumstance: again. I have been scrabbling to cover the cost of tuition since the very first day of my very first semester at USI. My mother refused to sign my financial aid forms, claiming she didn't care if I went to college or not, so I had to peg all my hopes on something called a Dependency Override. Such an override would exempt me from having to have my parents' signatures or financial data on my FAFSA, meaning I could receive aid based upon my own finances. Without it, I was toast.

Dependency Overrides are reviewed by a panel of officials at the college of choice, after the student seeking one has filled out all the forms, gotten letters of recommendation, and written a personal essay describing his or her extenuating circumstance. Said officials can then either reject or approve said override by putting it to a majority vote. I hadn't been out of Hell 2 months, and I was spilling my sorry little guts to a bunch of bigwigs I would never meet and praying like mad for them to take pity on me. It worked. My D.O. was approved by a unanimous vote, but I still had to be the one to figure out how to pay for the schooling. I finagled the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation into paying for books and board. I took every penny I could get in grants. Then, with no parent around to help with the responsibility, I took out loans to cover the rest.

It kind of pisses me off that I had to do all this. Actually, it really pisses me off that I had to do all this. I can understand a parent who can't afford to help his or her child. This was my parents' patent excuse before the advent of, "I don't care whether you go or not": "We just can't afford to help you." And yet somehow, after I left home, my brother ended up with things like classic cars and expensive musical instruments. I was not surprised by this. I had always been the underdog, and I knew it. Matt was Golden: Matt made straight A's, Matt ran track and played ball, Matt was always getting schlepped to some practice or another even though I had to quit my job tutoring after school because my mother said she was sick of coming to town to get me every afternoon. Every bit of positive attention my parents could muster up went directly to Matt. If my mother had to come to one of my choir concerts, she bitched for days beforehand about how much time it would take out of her ever-important daily activities. My senior year, I helped lead the English Academic team to District victory by studying Chaucer and Dante in addition to my other schoolwork, and as far as I know, no one ever noticed. My parents never said, "Good job, Tif." "Way to go, Tif." "We're proud of you, Tif." If I got noticed, it was for failing to be my brother. Sometimes I wonder: if my parents had helped me as much as they spoiled him, would I be sitting in 2010 partway through a Bachelor's degree, poor as dirt and wondering if I'll ever get to see my one singular dream come to fruition? I want to be a social worker. That is all I want. I want to be a social worker and have a decent job in this modest little county, where social workers are so badly needed and in such short supply. I want an apartment I can turn around in without bumping into myself. I'm not having any thoughts of fame or glory or renown: I just want to be a small-town social worker and live a small-town social worker's life. And for that I must fight tooth and claw, every single day. I'm battling for every little bit of everything I have before my feet even hit the floor in  the mornings, but I can't stop: if I stop to rest, I'll lose it all. First my parents, and now the government, by means of the circumstances of my disability, have dropped me in a hole. I ask for a rope, they throw me a shovel. How am I ever supposed to climb out?

But if I know one thing, it's that I absolutely, 100 percent, refuse to give up on this dream. Until earlier today, I had lost sight of one simple fact: that everything that has ever needed to be done for Tif has been done by Tif. Starting when I was a child. I, Tif, learned how to keep myself alive. I, Tif, learned the best hiding places and methods of concealment; I, Tif, paid attention to my father when he used the fuse box so I could learn which switch to throw to plunge the basement into darkness. I, Tif, memorized the schedule of the movies my mother watched and what times she usually fell asleep over her book so I would know when it was safe to go upstairs for food or to use the bathroom. I, Tif, learned to do whatever it took to buy myself one more minute, one more breath, until the fire left my mother's eyes and I knew I would see another day, and I, Tif, did it even if I didn't want to do it, even if I hated it with every fiber of my being, even if it was humiliating and below my humanity. When it came time, I, Tif, figured out how to get myself out for good. I did it even though I was terrified, even though I had very little in the way of a plan, even though I was 18 years old and had never even been grocery shopping. I, Tif, went to college for two years running on fumes before trauma caught up with me. In that time, I taught myself how to stay fed and clothed. I taught myself to have a voice. Well before my 21st birthday, I, Tif, had relocated to another city in another state. I, Tif, bought the bus ticket, then boarded that Greyhound and left behind everything I had ever known so that I, Tif, could start over clean. I taught myself how to live alone without succumbing to loneliness. I learned hard lessons: sometimes love is one-sided and will leave you. Sometimes you will lose a dear friend over something relatively dumbass. Sometimes your religion will fail to comfort you. Sometimes you will realize something about yourself that may make your life harder if you follow your heart, but unbearable if you deny it. This is another one of those things.

Sometimes, my friends, the government will conspire to keep you out of graduate school with nonsense rules and idiotic policies that as good as forbid you to better yourself. There will be another mountain in your way, and eventually you'll have to quit standing at the foot of it feeling sorry for yourself and start climbing the son-of-a-bitch. So that's what I'm doing: I'm climbing the son-of-a-bitch. I have decided to open Certificates of Deposit and monitor my bank accounts online. If I get too close to the Social Security cap, I will pull money out of the bank and put it in my pocket, where it will become nice and invisible. In addition to this, I have scratched the idea of the recumbent bicycle for the time being and am redoubling my money-saving efforts to put toward an in-house grad school fund. It's not much -- just a Foldger's coffee jar with $16.25 in it -- but everybody has to start somewhere. I may not accomplish this goal in the normal time frame -- it may take me years to finish grad school -- but I'll be damned if I'm going to let that stop me. I have to try. I will do it. Only this time, I'm not entirely alone: I have my Biz, to remind me that I'm much more than the sum of the failures I see in myself. I have my Dad, to teach me how to think with a clear head, how to plan my next move and step forward with confidence, to kick in what he can for books and meals, and to do other stuff dads are supposed to do: teach me how to cook, how to save myself some heartache, how to throw a Frisbee, how electricity works, how to love someone even if you fight sometimes. I have my other friends and family too, and even from across several state lines in some cases, they still care enough about me to see to it that I don't forget how much I matter to them. Sometimes I feel like a failure: an idiot, a loser, a motherless child. I get discouraged; it doesn't seem like I'll ever triumph over the things that are trying to hold me down or that I've ever accomplished anything notable. That's when I need my friends to lift me up, and they're always there. Always, helping me believe in myself.

So I'm going to try my damndest to believe in myself. I, Tif, am making a statement right here and now:

I will go to graduate school. I will have my dream, if it takes me my whole life to reach it. I will not stop until I get what I want. I, Tif, will climb that son-of-a-bitch.