Tough Times

I recently found a scholarship. It could pay full tuition for a year and comes with a paid internship. The only problem is that the internship is in Washington for 3 months. I don't want to be away form my family for that long. They're all I have. My so-called friends come and quickly go. They didn't even come to my graduation party. The last opportunity they would probably ever have to see me.
To understand why I feel the way I do about this scholarship, you need to understand what I've been through.


Let's start before I was born. My dad had a friend--let's call her Jill--that he knew from working at the hospital. (He was a paramedic. Like a doctor, but more life-death situations) He knew her before he even met my mom. Jill's family and my family were always close. Jill and my mom were pregnant at the same time. They shared maternity clothes. Her kids, my younger sister, and me became friends. Amasis spent the weekend at their house almost every single Friday. We had our birthday parties with them.

Fast forward 14 years--my freshman year in high school. At this point in time, he was no longer a paramedic. He was head of maintenance at the hospital. He got a new boss recently. This boss was a bunch of words that are inappropriate to say. He wanted to cut corners in the safety regulations. He wanted to say that they took certain safety protocols. My dad was supposed to sign these papers. After refusing there was a mutual quitting/firing. My dad got a new job working as a maintenance instructor at Job Corps (kinda like a school for drop-outs to get a diploma). Jill worked there with him.

Jill was a single mom of two daughters. The oldest one was really close to my dad. He was kind of like the replacement for her father that abandoned them. And she was like a daughter to him. They went fishing and bowling together all the time. One day, he told her that he loved her. Jill freaked out. She said that if he even came close to her family, she would call the police. That was the end of a 20 year friendship.

At this same time, my dad got an offer for a promotion. He would make more money. But this meant that he had to work at the Job Corps in St Paul, Minnesota. 6 hours away from where we lived. Normally, he wouldn't have taken the offer. He moved a lot when he was a kid, and never wanted to make Amasis and me leave our friends. But with the recent events with Jill, he wanted out of there. So he took the job. We saw him every single weekend. 6 hours each direction. This was fall of 2007.

In 2008 my mom got a new job in another town. It was only 30 miles away, but she worked nights. 3:00 PM to 2:00 AM Monday through Thursday. So Amasis and I were like orphans during the week. We would get up in the morning and walk to school without seeing our mom because she was asleep. When we got back home after school, she had already left for work. For 4 days of the week, we had to take care of everything ourselves. We had to do the chores, cook meals, and take care of the pets (1 cat and 1 dog at the time). We were forced to take care of ourselves. It wasn't really difficult, and it made us independent. It just sucked to be forced to do everything around the house all of a sudden. Dad wasn't there to do anything and Mom was asleep during the day.

That same year, my mom was diagnosed with cancer. Thyroid cancer and two spots of skin cancer. Luckily, it wasn't too severe and it was easily treated. She had to take radiation treatment then she could stay at home. The treatment made her radioactive, so she had to stay in her room. We only came close to her to bring her food. If she used any dishes, we couldn't use them after her. Weeks after the radiation wore off, she was able to hug us, but she couldn't go near babies or the elderly, which made going to church tough.

During my sophomore year, we put our house on the market. 6 hour trips each weekend were difficult. We wanted to be closer together. It was during March of my sophomore year that I got my first boyfriend. This relationship was short. We broke up that following May. He had just graduated high school and I was going to be moving to Minnesota. We weren't sure if we could handle a long distance relationship.

September of my junior year, Amasis and I did not register for school in our home town. We packed our bags and went to a long term hotel in one of the suburbs in the Twin Cities. The plan was to go to school there. Unfortunately, the house did not sell right away and we didn't have a new house yet. The school we wanted to go to wouldn't let us start classes because we did not have a permanent residence. So we repacked all our stuff and started school in Iowa. The schools started at different times, so we missed 3 weeks of classes. We both had to make up everything we missed. Then we had to deal with the constant questions. "Didn't you move already?"

We still had to deal with 6 hours trips to see my dad. One weekend, we were driving back home and our car died. we were on the interstate and the engine just quit working. Somehow we managed to get to the side of the road. We were stranded there for almost 2 hours. Since this was late winter in the Midwest, it was cold. The sun had set and it was close to the freezing point. And we had no heat. A tow truck picked us up then Dad drove 3 hours to meet us a hotel. They couldn't fix our car, so we had to get it towed 140 miles.

My dad didn't want us traveling to see him anymore, so he made the trip alone each weekend. In the 4 years we dealt with this, he missed 2 weekends. This driving was tough on him. He started getting a sore back and he was tired all the time.

Before the new job, he went on every field trip, he was at every concert and swim meet. After the new job, he couldn't make it anymore. it upset him as much as us.

Winter 2010 he was coming back to watch us at a swim meet. When we saw him on Saturday, he was limping. This had become a common sight, so I though nothing of it. The next weekend, he explained what happened. He was in a car accident. The full account is here. Basically, he lost control of the truck on the ice. After spinning a couple of times, he ended up in the ditch. A mile marker sign broke off on impact and went through the truck door. It went through his seat, between his legs, and into the steering wheel between his fingers, cutting them. If it would have hit an inch in any direction it would have punctured a major artery and killed him. I almost lost my dad. he was an inch from death.

My grandpa died in this time period. I didn't talk to him much. The last few years of his life, he lost a lot of mobility and just sat in a chair all day. I was little and didn't really know my grandparents, so I didn't talk to them. This carried over when I got older and I didn't even see them when we went to visit them. When he was admitted to the hospital, he couldn't move anything and he could barely talk and he didn't seem to be aware of anything going on around him. After a month, he started talking in complete sentences and he could sit up on his own. I though he was getting better and would soon be out. I wasn't worried about anything. When he was put in Hospice, I was in shock and didn't fully comprehend what was going on. I don't talk in situations where I'm uncomfortable, so I still didn't talk to him. I didn't even say a single word to him in his last few weeks of life. I didn't get the chance to tell him I loved him. That's my biggest regret on life.

I've learned to cherish my family. They are important to me. I don't have many friends. I have three friends and I haven't even seen them in a month. I've never really had friends. I was am the social loser that no one want to hang out with. I don't talk. What's the point in having a friend who doesn't even talk to you? As a consequence, the only social interaction I have that's not with sparklers is with my family. They are all I have. And after going through this hell I call the last 4 years of my life, I cherish them. My family has been ripped apart and put back together in the last couple of months.

Close friends we've known 20 years end it all in a day. My dad was always there is suddenly gone. Amasis and I were suddenly forced to fend for ourselves. My mom was diagnosed with cancer. My dad almost died in a car crash. My grandpa died. And there;s even more related stuff I didn't put in here. I had thought I had my future figured out. Then all this happened and my life was turned upside down.

I don't want to miss a moment with my family. I've been in the dorm since September. I only get to see them on weekends. This is killing me. I don't know if I can handle 3 months without them. I've missed too much time with my parents and I've never been away from my best friend, Amasis, that long. The longest I've been away from her was 10 days. She's the only person I can tell my secrets to.

Imagine our best friend that you've known forever. You tell them everything. You went through hell together and survived. Throughout your life, they are literally the only person who has always been there. They are the only person who never left. Now you are being forced apart for 3 months, and you can't see them. What would you do?

This scholarship would be great. We would save $24,000 and it would look great on a resume. But I'm going to have to loose the single most important thing in my life in order to get it. I don't want to miss any more time with them.