Sense of Then

Today begins my fifth year of living in California. I threw myself an informal going-away party in the house we were getting ready to sell before I moved. It was July 2021, and my stepdad said, “We’ll see you back here before the end of the year,” as if I was not qualified to start the life I had wanted to live for so long.

I think back to all the times I tried to flee — from running away from home at 15, to researching emancipation at 16, to realizing staying was physically safer. I knew I had a college fund, so I planned to go away to college after high school. I wanted to major in psychology to the level of a PhD and work as a dream therapist. I have always had vivid dreams and have been able to understand myself better because of them.

In the last semester of my senior year, I learned that I no longer had a college fund — it had been used and never replaced. When I said I would just go there myself and figure out how to pay for it, I was laughed at and told good luck getting there, that I wouldn’t qualify for any aid, and no one would help me pay. I still planned to go, but then found out I was missing two high school credits to be accepted at the four-year university 150 miles away. So I went to the community college in my town.

It took a long time and a lot of student aid to achieve a bachelor’s degree. I was 30 by the time I had that degree.

I had majored in business because it was practical. I had four kids by then and had survived years of domestic violence and single parenting. I had lived in shelter housing, and by the time I received my bachelor’s degree, I was living in Section 8 housing, driving a car they had “gifted” to me — because there were always “gifts” that kept the connection as something owed. I was 39 when I acquired my first master’s degree, 45 when I completed an MBA, which was supposed to lead toward an executive position at my work before the pandemic interrupted, but it has fared well professionally.

Last year, with the return of my inner child, one of the first things she woke up to was me completing many years of ad hoc higher education psychology courses into a bachelor’s degree in psychology — 26 years after my original goal.

Now, I am four classes into a master’s degree in I/O psych, understanding so many things about why things were the way they were, and about the importance of evolution in theories, ideas, and perceptions. I don’t qualify for student aid anymore, and I don’t have a safety net of someone else’s money to help me reach my goals. But I persevere. That’s one constant about me. I take one class per term and pay out of pocket according to a payment plan. I go without other things I might like to have, because this degree, and the knowledge that comes with it, is a long time coming, and it is just for me.

Today begins my fifth year of living in California. I still haven’t been back to Iowa. It took 34 years, but I finally got away — and this time, I haven’t gone back.