Hard Decisions

This is part of my story. It is from the recent past to, so all the details are still fresh in my mind. I was having a rough time in life two years ago. I made a lot of mistakes. These mistakes are important for me to understand why I did things the way I did. I don't want to repeat them.

First mistake: I thought I'd save myself some money by buying a house in which myself and my college friends could live in, thus the mortgage and other payments would only come out to around $250 a month for four people. Not bad, I thought. So, I found a willing buyer for after we moved. The problem is, this person wanted to move in with us. This person was a pig. He is the epitome of lazy, disgusting, and as bad as a roommate can get. I'm not joking. As an example, he would cook himself something to eat, destroy the kitchen by making the biggest mess you've ever seen (I think a two year old can't make more of a mess), and then go eat. He would leave his stuff laying about so the cockroaches would live in his stuff.

Second mistake: Living with the guy I was dating for the money it would bring in. We needed a roommate to bring in more money. The guy I was dating wanted to move up to our town so he could go to the college there. Well, he had recently broke up with his first love. When I say recently, I mean within a year, more like eight months. He said he was over her, but he wasn't. I wasn't that attached to him, but he was a good friend. Just not a good boyfriend. He used me for sex, money and emotional support through his time. I was a bounce back relationship. I knew that, but I wasn't prepared for the hell it would bring me.

Third mistake: Having a "best friend" that came and went with my paychecks. As in he pretty much only really used me for the money. It was made obvious to me when I was destitute he turned his back on me, denied me any sort of contact, and pretty much eliminated me from his life at the first time I asked him to pay his half of the cell phone bill, and on time without me having to come after him for the money.

Fourth mistake: Not knowing what it was that I really wanted in life. I had a great chance at being an astrophysicist. I even had a job with NASA. I wasn't truly happy doing it. I couldn't define what I wanted, even at the age of 28. It was my last year in school, and I still didn't have a clue. I wanted a challenge, I knew that much. I loved my job. I didn't want to leave it when I graduated, but I knew I must. I was scared of what was to come.

Fifth mistake: Not doing what it takes to make myself get out of bed, be what I wanted to be, and in general get up and just do it. I had allowed myself to get sucked into being indolent. I just didn't want to do anything. In short, I made myself depressed by my own actions, in turn made it worse.

The turning point to all this was a study abroad trip to Egypt. I spent twenty one relatively sleepless days there. We went from site to site in the days, I slept in the bus, and then I stayed awake at night pacing the hotels and thinking. I wanted to fix it all. I was miserable, but I couldn't place my fingers on why. I went over all aspects of my life like a good little scientist in training should. Then it occured to me. I needed to change it all.

I went back to America, slept off the time shift change, and woke up to a new me. In one day, I changed my major to archaeology, with a focus in geochemistry, my job that I loved so much. I dumped the boyfriend. The biggest thing I did was really stop being slothful. I got up, went to school, woke up my mind, and got back to work. I went back to being me.

It wasn't until nearly a year later that I also shed the "best friend" for begging for money so he could live his semi-decadent life. He couldn't see to pay me back all the loans I'd given him while I was starving, homeless and trying my best to make ends meet.

There is one more part to this story that didn't fit in, but it is important. While I was in Egypt, the school I was at messed up the title of the class, so it never got into the school system as a class. I never got financial aid to go. This messed me up financially even now. You see, it was my last semester after I came back from Egypt, but I had used up all my credit hours. The government says, "You can only take 92 credit hours of classes before we deny you funding. You must graduate now." I had to work really hard, take out a loan from my professor that still isn't paid back just to graduate and move on. I literally lost everything I had that term, just to build my life up from the bottom up.

I'm thankful this period of time in my life happened. It has taught me to be careful, to watch the schools closely, and to know who my true friends are. I know I have the strength to make it through a lot of things now. I'll never give up my dreams. It is all I have even when life gets that low.