Someday...I swear this on my life...I will not be a starving student. I will go to the grocery store...maybe even Whole Foods!!--and not completely stress out over how I will manage to eat healthy things that I'm not allergic to on a very tight student budget.
Someday my bills will be paid without flinching. My tea bags will not be re-used until they fall apart. Someday I will not sneak behind the library on recycling day to dig out the paper being sent to the factory so that I can print my own research articles on the back of the used sheets. Someday...and I also swear this...I will not steal toilet paper from Starbucks. I will also not flirt with the door guy at the gym who lets me work out for free. And I will not flatly lie and say that I am an undergraduate to the University Card Services guy so that I can ride the bus and metro all year without having to pay. Some day I may even spend money on indulgent skin and hair care products. Maybe. Someday...
The best part about someday is that someday I will not emerge from the Financial Aid office on a Monday morning with swollen eyes, puffy nose and swollen throat from 30 minutes of crying and pleading with the one-dimensional, cubical dwelling financial aid demon to give-me-my-money-dammit-please so that I can pay it all back with interest for the next 30 years. I will not then drag myself, lost and bleary eyed all of the way across campus to the gym only to find that my favorite door friend is home sick today and that his big-haired, fake eyelash-wearing replacement will not let me in. Rats and double rats! Ever resourceful, I will not look at my tennis-shooed feet and convince myself that instead of crying even more over my lost gym privileges, I should suck it up and just go for a long run in the park. And someday, (this is the very best part) I will not have to force myself to the park, whereupon, just as I am starting to feel just a little better, I WILL NOT LITERALLY RUN INTO Mr. Stability HIMSELF! No, this will not happen in the Land of Someday! Mr. Stability will be a long-gone memory, and he will never again look me up and down like he wants to eat me like a Scoobie Snack and tell me that I look great and offer to take me to lunch. Then ask if he can run with me. Then ask, if not lunch, then dinner? Coffee? Drinks? Why don't we go back to my place and I'll tie you up in my basement so that you will never leave? Why God why? What did I do to deserve this wrath on such a pretty morning? Is it because I gave up The Baby Jesus?
Someday, I will not call my mother crying on her birthday to tell her that I couldn't send her a card and that it is official: I think the financial slap that is ingrained in the institution of punishing advanced PhD-seeking students has officially broken my entire spirit and will to go on. And someday, my mother will not cheer me up by saying, "Honey, I love you. Go home, take a long shower, make yourself pretty, and go out and get yourself a cocktail job so that you can make some money with the pretty face I gave you."
(Someday, I will look back with great fondness when I remember how my mother always took full credit for the things in me that she saw as a reflection of her lovely self.)
But someday...someday...a cocktail job (so that I can make some money with the pretty face my mother gave me) will not be the panacea for what plagues me. Yes, someday, I will go to the spa...and soak...and maybe even eat chocolate with my lady friends...
Someday, I will not need to follow my mother's financial advice. I will not go home, put myself into my best ridiculous hot girl costume ever (complete with equally ridiculous push-up bra) and strut my way through the early afternoon, flirting with bar managers and laughing at bad pick-up lines so that I can get hired for my next big gig. But the best part is that someday (and I do mean it this time) is that I will not silently plan to leave my new cocktail job after a month by saying that I got a better job at Hooters, when in reality, I will be shoving off to do my doctoral field work research in the Middle East. Hooters, here I come...
And finally, someday I will look back at this and remember again why I will be creating a fellowship program for female students who are exactly like me. And then I'll go and volunteer at the women's center in my area...and try to figure out ways for rich people to give money to poor people so that we can all live healthier lives...and write powerful and interesting books..and raise sons and daughters with bright minds and solid spirits...and make fabulous gourmet meals from my organic Whole Foods groceries...
Someday.
(Love you, Mom. Happy Birthday.)
About Me
- Namaste
- I'm Namaste. I suffer from a chronic rebellion disorder and wear my heart on my sleeve because I don't know where else it will fit. I write long posts. I ask hard questions. I'm not quite sure what to do with all of my education. I fantasize about gardening, making lemon-mint drinks from my own lemon tree and mint garden. I recently discovered that I am good at domestication.
7 comments:
hang in there, namaste. you have class, sass and brains, but the good looks will get you through to the other side. use what you got. you can do it.
All the people filing for bankruptcy, foreclosures, and your typical American consumer is sitting on avg credit card debt load of 10 grand and you think your actually missing something???? Keep doing what your doing when you get a job that pays and you'll be so happy. I've rewired my way of thinking when it comes to money and living without "Things" has made me feel so much better mentally...
Hope things are going well!!!!!
O-face is right. At least you have a sense of humor. The Scoobie Snack line was the best. That guy sounds like he pushes way too hard. Poor you!
your mango post on mr. stability is my all time favorite post. ever. on any blog. anywhere.
Yes, "...as God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again."
The alternative version, from 20 years out say:
1.) Someday..I will go to the grocery store...maybe even Whole Foods!!-
[The Geezer version]:
(If for nothing else but people watching and the chocolate selection).
2.) "Someday my bills will be paid without flinching. My tea bags will not be re-used until they fall apart."
(You'll still resent all the bills & petty charges, but yes, the tea gets way better!)
3.) "Someday I will not sneak behind the library on recycling day to dig out the paper being sent to the factory so that I can print my own research articles on the back of the used sheets. Someday...and I also swear this...I will not steal toilet paper from Starbucks".
(Umm the graduate library had orders to have me recycle several periodicals, personally & quarterly. I was tight with them, and lived there too. You never out grow stealing toilet paper. I still do it at the finest hotels. It's a strictly defensive measure. But the maids all know this and have taken to hiding it under their carts now!)
4.) "...someday is that someday I will not emerge from the Financial Aid office on a Monday morning with swollen eyes, puffy nose and swollen throat from 30 minutes of crying and pleading...".
(Many years on, it's the only street addy that is still vivid in our minds of one undergrad college, for just this reason. And the fact that you no longer have to go to a Western Union office next to the railway to get your wire transfer from momma.)
5.) "...he will never again look me up and down like he wants to eat me like a Scoobie Snack and tell me that I look great and offer to take me to lunch".
(This never happens to the guys. Not then, not now, not ever. So no push up bras for us, it's on to sell our blood & plasma!)
6.) "I will not call my mother crying on her birthday to tell her that I couldn't send her a card..."
(This is why momma's are saints, all of them. If you've got a sheet of paper and enough change for a stamp, you've got enough for a card for momma. No really. I often made my own cards. I still do! Little known fact, you can also reuse certain stamps, erase cancellation marks, and send letters under post that will get there, but with postage due, (at worse) perhaps. It's the thought that counts).
Cheers & Good Luck! 'VJ'
i can't help but think that the grad student budget is infantilizing. i feel like a broken record sometimes because i say it all the time, but it's true. and even so, it's difficult, but necessary to believe that someday will come...one day!
And someday you can say "I didn't sift through dumpsters for used paper to be called MS. Namaste, thank you very much..."
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