I opened up the kitchen cabinet, stomach rumbling.
I scoured it, growing impatient and irritated. After searching unsuccessfully for a couple more minutes I made a last ditch effort, sticking my hand all the way into the back. Much to my surprise, I could hear something crinkling. I pulled it out, expecting it to be something good. The wrapper was shiny, silver and half opened, but the taco shells inside of were stale. I sighed, defeated by the fact that my search for something nourishing had been so fruitless. My stomach growled again, louder this time. I stared at the half open container of taco shells and then up at my mom who had just walked into the kitchen. I asked her what was for dinner and she sheepishly muttered that that was all we had in the house for food, that there would be no more groceries for the next couple of days until she got paid.
Me, My Parents and My Siblings
This was a new low, an absolute rock bottom in a string of events that had grown progressively worse over the last couple of years. Having one kid is expensive, never mind having four, and never mind having three of those kids be triplets. Growing up, our family of six had been comfortably situated in the middle class. There had always been food on the table, a roof over my head and gas in both of the family cars. I had played AAU basketball and been able to travel with my team, occasionally staying over at hotels for tournaments. We had taken a vacation once every year, renting out a house in Ogunquit, Maine for the week. We had done things as a family fairly often, making trips to the movies or into Boston and so money had never even been a thought on my mind. But like many families, when the economy took a turn for the worse, so did my family’s finances. My dad lost his cushy job as a lawyer and we began living off the scarce salary that my mom made as a secretary.
The first thing to go was the most sacred thing to any high schooler: my cell phone. Month after month it would get shut off and turned back on again and my frustration would grow. Finally though, the bill became too much and it was turned off for good, leaving me frazzled and resentful. I tried to reason with myself, taking solace in the fact that at least technology made it so that I could use the wifi at home to text. But as my parents grew deeper and deeper into debt the cable began to get shut off more and more often, leaving me without wifi and once again without any means of contacting my friends.
Fees to play sports began to never be passed in on time, dollars were counted out carefully onto the kitchen table weekly and yet my dad still had no job and no apparent sense of urgency to find one. My parents started to be unable to pick me up from practices or friends houses because they only had enough gas left in the tank to make it home from work and only the contents of my mom’s change purse to put more in. Things started to break and never get fixed.
My Best Friend and I
The indignation inside of me began to grow and I could feel myself resenting the people around me. Automatically anyone who had anything was my enemy, someone to be frustrated with. I started to loathe my own best friend because her parents could get her everything she needed and more. In my mind, I had it worse than anyone else. I couldn’t get over the fact that I deeply and truly believed that the universe was out to get me. I constantly questioned why these things were happening, I was not a bad person, my family was full of good people, so why was this happening to us? My discontent rose each and everyday. I would go home and complain endlessly to my siblings about my best friend, despite her being one of the best people that I know, simply because her parents could buy her new clothes and take her out to dinner.
The more I complained, the more I started to ask myself why I was so indignant towards a situation that could have been so much worse. I wanted to place the blame on anyone and anything just to make myself feel better. I wanted to complain endlessly about circumstances that so many people had to experience for their entire lives. Up until now, I had gotten to live a life free of worrying whether or not there would be dinner at home or gas in the car to get me where I needed to go. I was failing to recognize that even though we didn’t always have stuff, I had parents who loved and supported me, parents who would try to make to things work no matter what.
Four years have passed since then and I have actually come to appreciate that time in my life. I have spent every single year since then working tirelessly to support myself financially, to pay for school and my apartment and all the other bills that come along with it. There is a certain type of worth ethic that only some lived experiences can produce. This time in my life opened my eyes to the possibilities that working as hard as possible would bring. It made me realize that I could put the work into my own future to make sure that I never ended up in that situation again. It is the reason I have no problem juggling school and work, the reason I aspire to do more and to be more. I am no longer bitter at the fact that my parents do not transfer money into my bank account like so many of my friends; no longer angry with people who can have whatever they want. I even feel bad for people whose parents give them everything they want, because in the end they are not learning a lesson. As strange as it sounds I am extraordinarily grateful for those times of hardship and turmoil. In the end, it is the reason that I get up each and everyday and strive to succeed.