Man, it’s been a minute since I’ve written on here. Got a lot of stuff to catch you up here, quite a bit’s happened in the last six years.
First things first, family’s doing fine, we’re all still pretty healthy. Grandma’s still trucking along, with as sharp a mind and a tongue as ever. Mom and Dad are Mom and Dad, though each year it feels like they’re growing more and more weary of the kind of friends I keep around and they’re always reminding me to focus on my schoolwork over getting into a relationship like they haven’t drilled that into my head already haha. But I understand their concern, they’ve been beefing with Michael a bunch and they want to really make sure me and Kofi don’t see him as a good example. Oh man I haven’t told you guys about the drama that went down with Michael yet.
So yeah you know, Michael’s always been a bit of a wayward soul. Even when I was younger he was the kind of guy who took things a little too easily and just wanted to focus on going out and having a good time with his chums. Stayed out late most days of the week, said he was borrowing Dad’s car for a short drive and would spend hours out with it. Mom and Dad really raked him over the coals for it. When Michael turned over 18 he was really fiending for a taste of independence, and it probably didn’t help that a bunch of the people he was hanging with -- including his girlfriend -- were thinking of striking out on their own too. So one day he just up and broke the news that he was planning on moving out soon, and that sent everyone into a frenzy. Mom and Dad thought he was crazy and wanted to keep him in the house since he didn’t have even have a good idea of what he wanted to do post-graduation yet (at this point he was just hanging around the house all day and not doing much), Michael insisted that he knew what he was doing and that he and his friends could get work and support each other. They all put up a bit of a fight but Michael had his way. He’s out living in an apartment with his girlfriend, maybe 20 minutes from here? Mom and Dad are still mad frustrated about it and are basically treating it like he “abandoned” the family by putting what he wanted over staying home and getting a job to help them out with paying the bills and stuff. Me and Kofi try to stay out of those conversations, we don’t want em directing their heat at us.
Kofi’s doing great too, since Michael moved out it feels like the two of us have been getting closer. It’s like he’s growing into a little man right before my eyes. Just started middle school and he’s starting to get out there more, making friends and picking up hobbies. Most of our bonding is just through getting together on the couch and binging Netflix. We got a system where we go through one good show and bad show at a time. Most of the good shows are just stuff that I grew up on that he hasn’t seen yet that I’m super excited to show him and see what he picks up on on first watch. And then the bad show is just something we pick off the home page that we think looks corny and we go through it just riffing on the bad acting and the plots that make no sense. It’s good fun.
Attention back on me though, I’m proud to say ya boy’s got a job. Nothing too extravagant, I’m still in school after all, but I’m making some cash on the side working as a cashier at Kroger. When I was growing up and asked my parents to get me some new sneakers or a game system they’d always say “if you’re old enough to be thinking about buying stuff that expensive, you’re old enough to start thinking about getting a job,” and I took that ish to heart. But right now I have my eyes set on a bigger prize: getting into college.
The road’s been a bit tumultuous for sure, and my parents respect the ambition, but they’ve told me that they’re up to their neck in bills and don’t know how if they can put aside any of their own money to help me. And I was hoping I could make up the difference myself, but I’m a few paychecks into my job and I’ve been offloading some of it to help them out. I know they’re living paycheck-to-paycheck and I figure if I can take some of the burden off their shoulders then I will. They’ve kinda suggested as much that they’re hoping I take a couple of gap years after high school to just hang around the house and commit to job, and then afterward I can take some courses in my preferred field at the local community college.
And I think that might be the best way to go for me. When I was younger I was really into wanting to become a doctor, but the more I thought about it growing up the more I realized just how hard that would be. It’d take a lot of money to get into medical school, sending in applications and doing all the required college prep, and all of that’s with the knowledge that I’d be saddled with loans for years. It just feels like a selfish thing to do, knowing how everyone’s struggling to make meets end meet and here I am acting like the thing I want to do is more important than taking care of everyone else (no shade to Michael, love you bro). Bonding with Kofi lately makes me think about his future too like, how rude would it be if I was relying on my parents to pay off school loans and that meant he wouldn’t be able to come to them for anything he needs. Not to mention that I don’t even know if I’d be good at it anyway. I’ve been handling schoolwork fine, been doing my best in all of my classes, and I guess medical school would just be more of that, but the job’s so far and beyond anything my parents have done, or anyone I know in my family’s done. Do I even have it in me?
Still, even with all of that… I can’t stop thinking about how cool it would be if by some miracle I could make it all work. Maybe I can’t bring it up right now since I know my parents would flip out, but maybe a few years down the line when things are more stable? Am I just being stubborn by trying to hang onto the idea? I can’t help but feel if I let my dreams fall by the wayside I’d never be able to forgive myself for it.
First things first, family’s doing fine, we’re all still pretty healthy. Grandma’s still trucking along, with as sharp a mind and a tongue as ever. Mom and Dad are Mom and Dad, though each year it feels like they’re growing more and more weary of the kind of friends I keep around and they’re always reminding me to focus on my schoolwork over getting into a relationship like they haven’t drilled that into my head already haha. But I understand their concern, they’ve been beefing with Michael a bunch and they want to really make sure me and Kofi don’t see him as a good example. Oh man I haven’t told you guys about the drama that went down with Michael yet.
So yeah you know, Michael’s always been a bit of a wayward soul. Even when I was younger he was the kind of guy who took things a little too easily and just wanted to focus on going out and having a good time with his chums. Stayed out late most days of the week, said he was borrowing Dad’s car for a short drive and would spend hours out with it. Mom and Dad really raked him over the coals for it. When Michael turned over 18 he was really fiending for a taste of independence, and it probably didn’t help that a bunch of the people he was hanging with -- including his girlfriend -- were thinking of striking out on their own too. So one day he just up and broke the news that he was planning on moving out soon, and that sent everyone into a frenzy. Mom and Dad thought he was crazy and wanted to keep him in the house since he didn’t have even have a good idea of what he wanted to do post-graduation yet (at this point he was just hanging around the house all day and not doing much), Michael insisted that he knew what he was doing and that he and his friends could get work and support each other. They all put up a bit of a fight but Michael had his way. He’s out living in an apartment with his girlfriend, maybe 20 minutes from here? Mom and Dad are still mad frustrated about it and are basically treating it like he “abandoned” the family by putting what he wanted over staying home and getting a job to help them out with paying the bills and stuff. Me and Kofi try to stay out of those conversations, we don’t want em directing their heat at us.
Kofi’s doing great too, since Michael moved out it feels like the two of us have been getting closer. It’s like he’s growing into a little man right before my eyes. Just started middle school and he’s starting to get out there more, making friends and picking up hobbies. Most of our bonding is just through getting together on the couch and binging Netflix. We got a system where we go through one good show and bad show at a time. Most of the good shows are just stuff that I grew up on that he hasn’t seen yet that I’m super excited to show him and see what he picks up on on first watch. And then the bad show is just something we pick off the home page that we think looks corny and we go through it just riffing on the bad acting and the plots that make no sense. It’s good fun.
Attention back on me though, I’m proud to say ya boy’s got a job. Nothing too extravagant, I’m still in school after all, but I’m making some cash on the side working as a cashier at Kroger. When I was growing up and asked my parents to get me some new sneakers or a game system they’d always say “if you’re old enough to be thinking about buying stuff that expensive, you’re old enough to start thinking about getting a job,” and I took that ish to heart. But right now I have my eyes set on a bigger prize: getting into college.
The road’s been a bit tumultuous for sure, and my parents respect the ambition, but they’ve told me that they’re up to their neck in bills and don’t know how if they can put aside any of their own money to help me. And I was hoping I could make up the difference myself, but I’m a few paychecks into my job and I’ve been offloading some of it to help them out. I know they’re living paycheck-to-paycheck and I figure if I can take some of the burden off their shoulders then I will. They’ve kinda suggested as much that they’re hoping I take a couple of gap years after high school to just hang around the house and commit to job, and then afterward I can take some courses in my preferred field at the local community college.
And I think that might be the best way to go for me. When I was younger I was really into wanting to become a doctor, but the more I thought about it growing up the more I realized just how hard that would be. It’d take a lot of money to get into medical school, sending in applications and doing all the required college prep, and all of that’s with the knowledge that I’d be saddled with loans for years. It just feels like a selfish thing to do, knowing how everyone’s struggling to make meets end meet and here I am acting like the thing I want to do is more important than taking care of everyone else (no shade to Michael, love you bro). Bonding with Kofi lately makes me think about his future too like, how rude would it be if I was relying on my parents to pay off school loans and that meant he wouldn’t be able to come to them for anything he needs. Not to mention that I don’t even know if I’d be good at it anyway. I’ve been handling schoolwork fine, been doing my best in all of my classes, and I guess medical school would just be more of that, but the job’s so far and beyond anything my parents have done, or anyone I know in my family’s done. Do I even have it in me?
Still, even with all of that… I can’t stop thinking about how cool it would be if by some miracle I could make it all work. Maybe I can’t bring it up right now since I know my parents would flip out, but maybe a few years down the line when things are more stable? Am I just being stubborn by trying to hang onto the idea? I can’t help but feel if I let my dreams fall by the wayside I’d never be able to forgive myself for it.
YOUR INPUT:
Do you encourage Kwame?
- Keep working towards medical school!
- Family comes first...