Usually, the mail is what I associate with spam and junk mail. I would never need or shift through the mail other than the time I received my first paycheck in the mail. However, as it was the end of the summer, checking through the mail became more important. Not so much as regularly opening and reopening my email for any new messages.
Looking for the words “admission” or “scholarship” every time, I received a new notification. Sometimes I’d be duped by clicking on an email without any useful information. The kind that are titled “free scholarship” and are sent out in mass emails through the data you leak through Google searches. I never could understand how they send you the things you never explicitly ask for on Google ads.
One day, there it was, an admissions letter from Philadelphia. The school was a good enough distance away, and it seemed perfect enough with the amount of money they give. Of course, that was when a virus from who knows where decided to spread throughout the world. It caused people on the news to drop dead (although everyone I knew seemed just fine.) And certain mindless people in the news who seem to live off of doing the opposite find it suitable to get themselves sick enough to stop my plans of leaving the house for the first time and living on my own.
We’ll of course, that didn’t stop me from leaving. As my father likes to dictate everything I do, which is hypocritical since he likes to claim that everything outside of Illinois is too expensive but is not paying a cent himself.
So I settle. Which I’m familiar enough with already. It’s probably not all that terrible, I tell myself. Hey, I have to stay holed up in my room for the first year. But soon enough it’ll be as if I’ll get to sleep in a house that doesn’t sound like a bomb went off every half hour.
Yes, and soon enough I did, but that is not the point. Now it seemed like only a few hours away, minutes really to experience my own life. Of course, I’m not happy. I rarely am when it comes to worrying about the future. But like always, I’m familiar with the process of becoming so. And soon enough, the time comes to move out sooner than expected.
After what seemed like only two months but was actually a year, I developed hobbies that I felt I couldn’t afford to have before. While probably a waste of good grocery money, I ended up going to the mail several times a week.
Receiving more and more plants to fill up my room and even that turned from a nice accessory into a part-time job caring for them. With that I find my days seem to be rewarded more often than not after the care I put into them.
Written by Brielle Buford
Featured and Top Image Courtesy of Crispin Semmens‘ Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
Inset Image Courtesy of C F‘s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
