I Failed at the American Dream

LIVING ABROAD

I left the country and now live a different dream instead

I was born in the Bible Belt. I was raised by a single mother who struggled to make ends meet. I was the kid who wore the same clothes to school every day because that’s all we could afford (I am talking to you gold cable-knit sweater).

My mother didn’t own a house, and we moved between rentals frequently. Sometimes the lights were shut off, and my grandparents would sometimes pitch in to pay for a new pair of basketball shoes.

I never did own a pair of track cleats, even though I qualified for the state track meet every year in high school. I was the only kid running the 100-meter dash without spikes.

I spent summers with my father who worked a blue-collar job to pay his bills and child support. We sweated in the Florida heat at the YMCA and spent afternoons in my grandmother’s pool, although she never had much either.

I was never hungry, and I always had a home. I was fortunate in that regard.

I never buckled under parental expectations. Neither one of my parents graduated from college. I was never taught how to handle money. I never learned about college applications or how to pay for tuition.

Although I applied for and was accepted to state universities, I had no idea how to get there. This was pre-internet, and my counselor was non-existent in school.

So, I moved to Florida to be closer to my dad, started attending community college, and borrowed a shitload of money to pay for my degree in English. And as you well know, a degree in English is the key to huge amounts of money, packed with tons of career prospects. Not.

I became a teacher. I made $32k working at an affluent school in South Florida, where I couldn’t afford to live by myself on a salary that was considered “professional.”

I worked full-time through college, sometimes two jobs at a time to make ends meet. I paid for my own car, my own cell phone, and my own CDs. I managed to travel a bit, but I paid for that with credit cards, as is the millennial way.

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