Admissions

So, here we are, almost five years after the fact, and this is the first thing I've written since. Oh, how I've missed writing. Let me give you some personal history.

At seventeen, I left home to move in with a man that abused me. It wasn't until he left me, hot, dehydrated and pregnant on a street corner that I got away. I didn't want to be away, I thought I loved him. A woman, an acquaintance takes me in to live with her family, her husband and three kids, her husband's single best friend and his daughter. The husband's best friend needs someone to watch his daughter during the day while everyone works. I agree.

Within a month, I am commonlaw married to him; I am on his insurance, and miscarrying the baby. He had a very good job, he took care of me and we dated occasionally but more often stayed in, 'playing house' as my mother put it a year later. Teenagers are fickle creatures. That was September and by December I was pregnant again and his daughter was calling me 'mommy'. We were a happy little family. Three years go by. I went back to school and received my diploma. My husband lost his nice job but I got a crappy one just in time to save us from eviction. We struggled by.

Another year later, we get screwed over by a couple, we thought they were friends. I still have the same crappy job, but my husband can't find work. We have to move in with his sister. I'm miserable because no matter what I do, it's not good enough for his sister. It was the last weekend of March, technically the first one of April, whatever, I left him on April Fool's Day. I tricked him into sending our son with my mom for the weekend. I tried to take his daughter when I left, but I had no legal right to her, and he said no. I went to live with my parents. One condition of my mother's for my living there was I had to further my education. I had wanted to, but my husband had always convinced me we couldn't afford it. I applied for financial aid. I took placement tests. I was accepted for both, and started in the autumn. My son was five, and had never been in daycare. He wasn't ready for school so I withheld him. My relationship with my husband was rocky for a while. The divorce was finalized a year after the separation. I maintained a high GPA in my classes. I worked full time, so I only took the minimum number of classes to be a fulltime student, four a semester.

Three years into my classes, my brother died traumatically. We were close. I failed my classes that fall, and took the spring off to grieve. That following fall I enrolled, taking a bigger class load to catch up. Six classes, I felt like supergirl; until the mid-term exam grades come back. I got A's on five classes, a D on my American Literature exam. It had been an essay exemplifying religious beliefs in early American literature. I don't agree with Puritan viewpoints, am actually somewhat agnostic at this point, questioning my own faith because of my brother's death. My views slanted my writing, and my viewpoint is apparent in my essay. I look back and see that maybe an academic setting is not the place to vent my spleen, so to say. I study hard the rest of the semester. I pass all my classes, except one. My Literature class has a big ugly D in the margin, and a zero where credits should be.

Two weeks after the end of the semester, I receive a letter in the mail. It is a printout of my research paper, and my hand-written final essay. Attached to my essay is another paper, with red writing on it. I do not still have these documents, sent to me four years ago, but I can summarize what they say. My research paper had been done on Francis Scott Key. My paper had marks all throughout, although the only thing I could find wrong was the use of commas. It had a red D on it. The letter from my teacher to me, summarized, said that I had the talent to write of an elementary child, and should stick to manual labor for work. I was crushed. I have been writing stories to amuse myself since elementary school. To say that I had not matured as a writer was not fair nor accurate. I had made A's in Composition 1 and 2 before enrolling in Literature, so I should have known better. I enrolled that following spring in three classes, thinking I should spend more time on my studies. I failed two of them, unable to write the research papers for any of them. The fact that I received a C in my Religions class was a pity grade. I did not enroll the following fall. My mother talked me into enrolling that spring. I dropped the class when the teacher told me I would not pass without a detailed book review. I have not enrolled since. I have re-married my husband.

My mom and I were sitting on her bed, painting each others' toes one evening last month. We were chit-chatting about her garden, her pet poodles, my apartment; she suddenly stops and asks, what made you quit writing? I had to think for a moment. I had not shown her the papers sent to me four years before. I told her what had happened the year after my brother had died. I had blamed his death for so much, when really it was me, letting one mean teacher tell me I wasn't good enough, and not wanting to take the risk of someone else doing it again. I go see the Admission's office and the Advisor tomorrow to enroll this fall. Finishing this summarization is proof enough for me, I can write. I will write.