Hope and confidence are similar, but only one of them permits you to excel in the face of fear. For a long time, I lacked the confidence to overcome my insecurities, which has kept me frozen in an ice block of redundancy-until now. More than hope, confidence comes into play. In the past eight years, we've lost everything, but like my mother, I have never given up hope. When my husband lost a lucrative job in 2007, I never imagined that I would end up in the same place I was as a child: living on false expectations in a tiny house that we couldn't afford to maintain. She has a nice home and everything she needs, but just as it was 40 years ago, it isn't enough. My mother is in her mid-70s now and is still working to keep a roof over her head. The poverty train goes on until you jump off of it. "In the past eight years, we've lost everything, but like my mother, I have never given up hope." Perhaps a degree would have given me the confidence I was lacking to pursue a dream that took an extra 20 years to achieve without one. Though I don't blame them for my poor judgment, I do believe that things may have turned out differently for me had I focused on applying to a university instead of to a job as a receptionist. They did the only thing they knew how: survived. Most likely, they were afraid of the costs involved and unaware of financial aid and scholarship opportunities because neither one of them went to college. My parents did the best that they could, but they never encouraged me to further my education, which is something I have often regretted. One of the toughest decisions I ever had to make as a little girl was choosing something that wouldn't put more pressure on my parents than they already had. And on birthdays and holidays, when mom handed us a Sears catalog and said we could circle whatever we wanted, it was clear that she meant within reason. As children, we knew not to ask for things that our parents couldn't afford. We called it "middle-class." It was an era of keeping your nose to the grindstone without ever losing hope. In all my years of knowing her, she has never once paid full price for anything, and everything we were given as children had been donated, recycled or red-tagged at least three times. She taught me early on to walk straight to the back of a store whenever we shopped because that's where they kept all the sales racks. It was her belief that you were damned if you do and damned if you don't, so you may as well accept reality. My mother worried about the future, especially when it involved spending money. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play Whenever it stormed, the raindrops would glide down the front of the glass, like my own tears. Although I was young, I knew we deserved better than second-hand pajamas with Kool-Aid stains on them, and I swore when I got older that I would never end up like my mother. One of the memories I hold is of a tiny, rectangular window at the top of the ceiling in the church that looked out into the street. Most of the time, I went undetected while crouching beneath the madness, but on those rare occasions when one of the women did happen to catch my eye, we would both smile coyly and go on about our business. The room was filled with anxious women who were racing to find the best bang for their hard-earned buck while scraping wire hangers against metal rods-a sound that sends chills through my spine to this day. I remember hiding between rounded racks of airless shirts and peeking through them every so often to make sure she was still nearby. It just wasn't enough.Īs a child, my mother used to take me shopping for school clothes in the basement of an old church. We had everything we needed: food, clothes, and a roof over our heads. But it was hard to accept that we were poor because it never felt that way. My parents were underprivileged – same as their parents, and everyone in their families before them. I never imagined the struggles that my parents faced would affect me as an adult today.
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