It's difficult to go to school for so long. Hard to maintain a healthy balance between work, play, and study. It's hard to save up enough to avoid having to rely solely on financial aid. But it's pretty satisfying.
I grew up in Texas, oddly enough. I say oddly because I don't think I really fit in well with the idea of what people see when they think of a Texan. I'm pretty tall, sure, and stubborn as hell, but I think the similarities end there.
My father's name was Virgil. He was a good man, not the brightest, but he always did what he thought was right. He was also very supportive and can be easily credited for starting me on my current path when I was a young teen. Now, when tourists think Texas they think of westerns. Of tall mustached men with cowboy hats working on ranches or hunting deer.
My dad worked in an office building; he was the service for some small company that sold printers, currency counters, and other kinds of bank equipment. He was pretty tall, too, and he did have a mustache, but a goatee came with hit. He also had a pair of Ostrich skin boots and a matching belt. Hideous things, but he loved them.
The older he got the more Texan he appeared.
He encouraged the guitar playing and the reading and the writing I did when I was growing up, and it's thanks to him that I'm well on my way to achieving those long-term goals I used to hear about when speaking with the guidance counselors at the community college. He was a good man, firm in his beliefs but respectful of others, to a certain extent.
He always tried his best in discussions of religion and politics to be gentle with his words, so as not to offend anyone. It was comical at times, but I look back on some of our discussions with a smile. I'm an atheist. I came to the realization sometime around my junior or senior year of high school. I told him first, because he was my dad, and I told him everything.
He was my best friend after all.
I told him about my beliefs, or lack thereof, and asked him about his. He told me he believed in God, which I expected of course, and we discussed it. It was a very strained conversation, I could tell he wanted to tell me I was being stupid and that I should believe in God and all that nonsense. But, to his credit, he never interrupted me. I can't say I was so respectful at the time, I'd often interject with snide remarks and little quotes from the Bible that I believed contradicted his words.
He said I should be a lawyer or something, because I came so close to convincing him that his beliefs had been false.
At the time I was pretty proud of myself. I feel bad about it now, though, like I was forcing him to accept something he didn't want to, or didn't think was the truth.
I've always done my best since those early debates to be respectful about things like that.
Moving on to my mother.
She was different from my dad in just about every way except taste in music. He was older than her when they got together, and both where in high school when I was born. Both also dropped out, but my dad went back a few years later after getting his life in order.
My mom never seemed to do that. I loved her, for all her faults, but I often hated her, too. She liked to party, more than I ever have, and was a far wilder spirit than I ever will be. She would go out all night at bars and not come back until well into the morning, or would DJ at places and get free drinks from the drunks there.
She was pretty, she had red hair and brown eyes and people say I looked a lot like her when I was younger, but grew into my dad's features as I grew up. She was also the loudest person I knew, and had one of the hardest lives, too.
Her father was a drug addict and a drunk. She loved him, but she hated him. He used to abuse my grand mother, whom I lovingly referred to as Nana, until he was shot one day during what I've come to discover was an argument with a drug dealer. I never met him.
Nana was a harsh woman; she made her daughters work from an early age and didn't take a lot of nonsense. You'd figure that kind of discipline would breed healthy adults, but looking at my mom and her sisters, I think only one really turned out completely right.
I used to sit with Nana for hours and talk about this and that, about the latest thing my mom did to piss my next childhood ambition or me off after I became a superhero or what have you. I cherished those moments with her. She was a wonderful woman.
She died of cancer when I was sixteen.
That was just one of the hard blows to my mother's life. She had a string of abusive boyfriends that never seemed to end, and always ended up leaving the few good guys she ever met or pissing them off with her aggressive attitude.
She was a mean drunk when she's around people and a sad drunk when she's around me, unless we discussed my dad. Then she was down right evil.
But she did her best to be good to me, and I did love her. And I do miss her.
Her and my dad both wanted me to finish high school, so I did; they wanted me to go to college, though my mom insisted I start at a university instead of the community college. I went to community because it was closer, safer, I was still afraid of leaving home.
But after a while I left home, I went to a different school for several years and after finishing there, moved up north for many more years to attend a different university.
I spent a lot of my time studying abroad, and so I've learned French and Spanish, a healthy chunk of German and even a few bits of Romanian from a friend I made in Spain.
Then there was that time I went to Egypt, now that's a story.
I grew up in Texas, oddly enough. I say oddly because I don't think I really fit in well with the idea of what people see when they think of a Texan. I'm pretty tall, sure, and stubborn as hell, but I think the similarities end there.
My father's name was Virgil. He was a good man, not the brightest, but he always did what he thought was right. He was also very supportive and can be easily credited for starting me on my current path when I was a young teen. Now, when tourists think Texas they think of westerns. Of tall mustached men with cowboy hats working on ranches or hunting deer.
My dad worked in an office building; he was the service for some small company that sold printers, currency counters, and other kinds of bank equipment. He was pretty tall, too, and he did have a mustache, but a goatee came with hit. He also had a pair of Ostrich skin boots and a matching belt. Hideous things, but he loved them.
The older he got the more Texan he appeared.
He encouraged the guitar playing and the reading and the writing I did when I was growing up, and it's thanks to him that I'm well on my way to achieving those long-term goals I used to hear about when speaking with the guidance counselors at the community college. He was a good man, firm in his beliefs but respectful of others, to a certain extent.
He always tried his best in discussions of religion and politics to be gentle with his words, so as not to offend anyone. It was comical at times, but I look back on some of our discussions with a smile. I'm an atheist. I came to the realization sometime around my junior or senior year of high school. I told him first, because he was my dad, and I told him everything.
He was my best friend after all.
I told him about my beliefs, or lack thereof, and asked him about his. He told me he believed in God, which I expected of course, and we discussed it. It was a very strained conversation, I could tell he wanted to tell me I was being stupid and that I should believe in God and all that nonsense. But, to his credit, he never interrupted me. I can't say I was so respectful at the time, I'd often interject with snide remarks and little quotes from the Bible that I believed contradicted his words.
He said I should be a lawyer or something, because I came so close to convincing him that his beliefs had been false.
At the time I was pretty proud of myself. I feel bad about it now, though, like I was forcing him to accept something he didn't want to, or didn't think was the truth.
I've always done my best since those early debates to be respectful about things like that.
Moving on to my mother.
She was different from my dad in just about every way except taste in music. He was older than her when they got together, and both where in high school when I was born. Both also dropped out, but my dad went back a few years later after getting his life in order.
My mom never seemed to do that. I loved her, for all her faults, but I often hated her, too. She liked to party, more than I ever have, and was a far wilder spirit than I ever will be. She would go out all night at bars and not come back until well into the morning, or would DJ at places and get free drinks from the drunks there.
She was pretty, she had red hair and brown eyes and people say I looked a lot like her when I was younger, but grew into my dad's features as I grew up. She was also the loudest person I knew, and had one of the hardest lives, too.
Her father was a drug addict and a drunk. She loved him, but she hated him. He used to abuse my grand mother, whom I lovingly referred to as Nana, until he was shot one day during what I've come to discover was an argument with a drug dealer. I never met him.
Nana was a harsh woman; she made her daughters work from an early age and didn't take a lot of nonsense. You'd figure that kind of discipline would breed healthy adults, but looking at my mom and her sisters, I think only one really turned out completely right.
I used to sit with Nana for hours and talk about this and that, about the latest thing my mom did to piss my next childhood ambition or me off after I became a superhero or what have you. I cherished those moments with her. She was a wonderful woman.
She died of cancer when I was sixteen.
That was just one of the hard blows to my mother's life. She had a string of abusive boyfriends that never seemed to end, and always ended up leaving the few good guys she ever met or pissing them off with her aggressive attitude.
She was a mean drunk when she's around people and a sad drunk when she's around me, unless we discussed my dad. Then she was down right evil.
But she did her best to be good to me, and I did love her. And I do miss her.
Her and my dad both wanted me to finish high school, so I did; they wanted me to go to college, though my mom insisted I start at a university instead of the community college. I went to community because it was closer, safer, I was still afraid of leaving home.
But after a while I left home, I went to a different school for several years and after finishing there, moved up north for many more years to attend a different university.
I spent a lot of my time studying abroad, and so I've learned French and Spanish, a healthy chunk of German and even a few bits of Romanian from a friend I made in Spain.
Then there was that time I went to Egypt, now that's a story.