Surviving Finland: Confessions of an Underachiever.

Ch. 1

“A Revelation”

The moment I walked through those double doors, into my worst nightmare, I saw the most beautiful thing in my life: a big smile emerged across what can only be described as a figure from the Holocaust. She laid there, so thin you could count every bone in her body, so broken and weak she could hardly lift her own head. The wrong turn could easily disconnect one of hundreds of vital tubes, machines, and oxygen so that you feared even to look at her or one might come out. After three hours on the road, for perhaps the tenth time that month, walking in on a scene like this, her smile was the only thing keeping me from breaking down in tears right there. Of course I couldn’t anyway; I had to be strong for her, as she had been for me surviving this for nearly five years. She was my mother. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this would be the last time I ever saw that smile, or even my mother conscious again.

I ask myself often, “why am I here; if I am so unhappy, how did I come to be in this place?” “Escape,” echoes back at me. Each time I ask myself I am brought back to this moment; the moment I was, for the first time, faced with a future I had never seen. I had never imagined a future where my mother didn’t exist, and I had plans, plans for my mother and me. The future is where I could make up for the past. She and I never really had a mother daughter relationship. Don’t get the wrong impression, I loved my mother most in the world, and she loved me the same. We simply never seemed to connect, like we were on different wavelengths. She was, simply put, motherly: loving, caring, feminine. Whereas I was expressive: argumentative, aggressive, and political. As much as I hate to admit it, just like my father. Because of this, he and I often had long conversations which continued over the phone once I left for college. This would leave the impression that he and I had a good relationship; this would be the wrong impression. He and I, actually, had the worst relationship. I secretly hated my father. I had to work so hard just to convince myself that I could love him, and I did it all for my mother. She used to beg us to get along, to make up after an argument, to act like a family. For her, I would have done anything, and so I did. But I had plans, plans to make up for what appeared to be a rift in our own relationship. I had hoped that she would be there for all of the important moments of my life. That she would guide me through. I wanted her to be there when I was all grown up and married, and I especially needed her to be there when I was ready to have a child. I knew, I simply knew that this would be our bond, our chance to have a mother daughter relationship, once I had a child. Then I could make up for all of the times I didn’t include her in conversation, all of the times I didn’t tell her about my day or how I was feeling. I would make up for all of that as an adult. But would I get the chance?

I needed to get away from all the pain, all the memories. I needed to escape; I needed to be lost, to disappear. Didn’t I? That is why I left, isn’t it? And now, I am unhappy because I have yet to let go of my mother? But this isn’t where my story begins, is it? This isn’t why I am here, what led me to this place. And it is certainly not why I am unhappy; at least not anymore. I have finally come to realize that the death of my mother was simply the last straw. Her passing took away what little fight I had left in me; fight that I used to survive a job that I hated, in a city that I hated, finishing a Degree that I Hated. That’s it, isn’t it? That’s the answer! I am unhappy because I am not in control of my own life; I am living a life I didn’t ‘choose’ for myself.

Ch. 2

“Go Noles!”

Surprisingly, I was ecstatic! You’d think I would be miserable on my first day as a Seminole, that’s what we Florida State University students are called. Even though my father had basically chosen my future for me, I was just happy to move out of my parent’s house, a place that no longer felt like home but more like prison. Only a few months earlier I had felt like my life was over, as many teenagers do. I had begged my parents to please let me audition for the Theatre Dept. at Florida State. I felt that it was already a concession to remain in Florida close to them, as my true dream was to audition for the New York Film Academy, where acting was my focus but I could also study film. My father had basically threatened me, not only would he not support me monetarily, but he would also, “not ‘watch’ me throw my life away.” He had the impression that, to study acting was synonymous to being a waitress in Hollywood waiting for a dream to come true. And even though I also wanted to study film, what I thought could lead to a legitimate career if acting didn’t work out, he was still convinced that it would be a waste of money, and he simply would not ‘allow’ me to do that. My father had a way about him, one that was manipulative and very powerful, especially over my family. I knew what he was saying to me, and I was afraid; I was afraid to lose my family. He had disowned me once before, was there anything to stop him from doing it again? But also, without monetary support I wouldn’t be in school at all, I had told myself. And to have a future where I could support myself, and be out of his control was encouragement enough to accept my circumstances. I was going to study Political Science and then go to Law school.

Ch. 3

“My Life is Over”

How many times do you suppose the average teenager feels like their life is over? This, I would like to know because I cannot even count the number of the times I felt this way, but only as a teenager.

I had a pretty tough childhood, particularly in Middle School. I had practically no friends as I had only just moved into this neighborhood the year prior and had apparently gone to a different elementary school than every other student I now attended classes with. But also, fifth grade is when biology had decided to kick in for me, and no one else. I had gotten breasts overnight, developed acne, and had grown taller than the other students and many of the teachers. These made me awkward and stand out. Boys began to torment me, girls weren’t interested in knowing me, and I had apparently gotten the attention of the black girl clique in my school, that would for the next three years beat the shit out of me as often as possible: at lunch, on my way home from school, I was never safe. To make matters worse, because I was “bigger” than the other girls, the principal said that I was a bully and was picking on these girls each time I got in a fight, and I was suspended from school. I think I spent more time at home than in the classroom because of this. Fortunately, juvenile records are concealed because mine would not have been a correct representation of my character at all. Despite what I was living through, never once did I feel like my life was over; I was merely waiting. Waiting until I grew up, because I knew I was going to do something with my life, I was going to be somebody, and those who had made my life a living hell, they would be stuck in this small town with terrible jobs and a lot of kids. That’s how I saw it. However, as soon as I became a teenager, I constantly felt like my life was over.

Did I forget to mention that fifth grade was when I developed my first crush? Though we were in several courses together, we had spoken for the first time in our Communications class. That day we were sitting at the same table looking through a book about celebrity’s birthdays. In declaring, almost simultaneously, that we share the same birthday as Will Smith, we discovered that we had the same birthday as each other and learned later that only four hours apart. From this we developed a casual dialogue in other classes we had together; however it abruptly came to an end when I discovered my attraction. The problem was that my new friend, my new crush, was a girl and I was disgusted with myself. Fifth grade was when I discovered that I am a lesbian; though I would not accept it until 8^th grade. Fortunately, as time went by, it grew easier to ignore my attraction to the same sex enough to allow myself to become friends with this girl. I told myself it was a phase I would get over; I was wrong. After three years of friendship, she and I had become best friends and I was very emotionally attached to her, especially since my crush had developed much stronger. We had just turned 15, it was the beginning of my freshman year of high school, and my parents informed me that we were moving, from Indiana to Colorado. I was devastated. Not only was I leaving the only place I had ever known, but I was losing my best friend by moving across the country. I believe I cried every waking moment of that 24 hour drive. ‘My life was over.’

What I failed to realize then, is that I would make a new, better home for myself in Colorado. I’m sure you are aware of all those American movies about high school football teams: how the community is involved, and how much funding is put in it; that the school and the town, revolve around the game. Not quite to the extent, by any means, but for the high school I went to, it was theatre. The community got involved, and there was a decent amount of funding, or at least focus on the arts. I always thought it was because we lived in such a remote area that we simply did not have the athletes that other schools had. I had loved and been involved in the performing arts in various small capacities over the years, but because the United States is notorious for cutting the funding of all the arts programs, I had never gotten the opportunity to be in a real play before. In the two years I was there I had been four semesters in theatre, in a countless number of performances including three main productions, two semesters in guitar, and a year on the Speech and Debate team. I was doing what I loved. I was happy. I even got a summer job after my sophomore year and was making a good amount of money. However, without notice, my father broke the news that we were making a spontaneous move all the way down to Florida. A month later we were living in a hotel looking for an apartment. ‘My life was over.’

Ch. 4

“Disowned”

Perhaps one of the scariest moments in my life, happened to me when I was a junior in High School. I thought that I had lost everything, that my life would never be the same from that moment. Thankfully, I was wrong.

I was the new girl at school. Perhaps that’s why I got so much attention, so much new attention. I had only once before met another lesbian, but it was briefly at a speech and debate competition in a bigger city. However, at lunch on my first day of school I had come across where the ‘socially deviant’ students liked to hang around, and I was hit on by multiple girls. I don’t want to say lesbian, gay, or even homosexual crowd, because I don’t think that was the case. I believe it had already begun to be a fad to experiment with the same sex and this is not a crowd I would like to have under the same classification as I, we were very different. But because I was intrigued at the opportunity to be myself in a safe environment, I stuck around.

There was one other girl in the group, who like me, did not classify herself as gay; we acted as merely friends to those in the group. She lived two streets over from me and we took the same school bus home, so naturally we became friends. One day, after a long conversation, we had admitted to each other that we were attracted to women, at which point she told me that she was attracted to me. To be honest, she wasn’t really my type. She was sort of attractive, at least others thought so, and all of the girls in our group had tried aimlessly to be with this girl, but she just wasn’t my type. Unfortunately, my desperation to have my first lesbian experience, to finally discover if I truly am a lesbian was too strong and so she became my first girlfriend. It was the moment I first kissed her that I realized my true sexual identity. I wondered how I could feel so many things, so much more than I had ever felt when kissing a guy, when I’m not even attracted to her. I must be a lesbian. This was such a liberating experience! I was free. I knew who I was.

I couldn’t say for her, what she might have been feeling, but I do know, we were addicted. We used to find little nooks and crannies all over campus to hide and make out. Eventually we got reckless and did it when ever and where ever, with caution of course, but still in the open. I thought for sure my brother, who went to the same school as I, would find out or even stumble upon us. If he did, he never mentioned it to me, thankfully. His opinion meant the most to me out of anyone, except maybe my mother’s.

In the end, it was a simple notebook that exposed it all. She and I were a year apart in school and thus we had no classes together. So we kept a notebook where we would write to each other during class and at home and would pass it back and forth. At a point, I believe she wanted to get caught. She had begun writing about how deeply she felt for me and how she wanted to tell her parents about us; things that disturbed me because I didn’t feel the same, and worried me because I didn’t want my family to find out. Almost immediately after, I was blindsided when I got home from school one day. My parents were waiting for me as soon as I walked in. I believe my father would make a game out of punishing me; any circumstance in which he could torment me without drawing suspicion that he was mentally abusing me, he would take it. He began by trying to make me guess why I was in trouble, why my mother was crying. For all I knew, it could be simple, the usual bad teenager drama, or more complex, my sexual identity. However, I couldn’t just go blurting out my biggest secret every time my dad wanted to make a game out my punishment, because every other time, it was as simple as a ‘bad grade’ or a ‘broken vase.’ I would always have that gut wrenching feeling in my stomach every time he asked me, do you know why you are here, because I would always be hiding something more.

After what felt like hours of verbal abuse, “you are a pervert,” “you are a predator, preying on young girls,” “you disgust me,” I finally heard, “you aren’t my daughter.” My father didn’t even want to give me a chance to explain, he didn’t want to hear my side of the story. Once he heard, yes this is true; he was practically pushing me out the door. Thankfully, I had a place to go. My best friend, and savior, I must say, was a boy I had met in my literature class the first day of school. He was the very first person I had ever told that I was a lesbian, but because he was openly gay himself, and he made me feel safe. I practically lived at his house anyway, because my father left me no peace at home; so that day he asked his mother, and then invited me to come and live with him after my father kicked me out.

At first I felt free, free from parents, free from tyranny, simply free. But that only lasted a couple of days. By the third day I had calmed down, and begun to be afraid. I couldn’t help it; I loved my family too much. I didn’t want my life to be different; I didn’t want to grow up away from my brothers, away from my mother’s love. I wanted them to be proud of me, to watch me graduate, to walk me down the aisle, to babysit my children. And so, a few days later I had a plan. I had called my home, explained to my parents that it was an experiment, a phase; that I had no idea what I was thinking but that I certainly am not gay, and I wanted to come home.

It wasn’t the situation I was in, or how awkward it was to come home after that, what hurt me the most is that my brothers didn’t even know what was going on. They had no idea what I had done, what my parents had done, that I had been kicked out and was now returning. I had hoped that I could finally share this side of me with my brother; we used to tell each other everything when we were kids. And even though I couldn’t admit to him that I really was gay, I had hoped I could talk to him about it, and what had happened, perhaps discover what his opinion was to how my father had treated me. But no, this would not be. It hurt that I still had to hide who I was from the people I loved most and that they would never understand what I went through.

Ch. 5

“Coming Out”

Life was great. I could not remember a time when I had been happier. It was freshman year. I had finally escaped my father and his tyrannical rein over my home. Distance makes all the difference in the world, and I was three hours away.

I had spent my entire life doing everything by the books, following all the rules. I had hoped that if I were a good girl: made perfect grades, made the teachers love me, gotten awards and achievements, joined sports just like my father wanted, never had sex or done drugs, that this would make my father love me, that it would make him be nice to me. I guess that never worked out. So, I was there, in a new environment, boss of myself; I looked to no one for permission to do anything. And because I had never experienced anything before, I wanted to experience it all.

My best friend from high school had come up to visit numerous times before finally moving up and enrolling. He was notorious for being a partier and with good reason. He and I went out, night after night, often to more than one party and sometimes a club or two. I believe one could say my diet consisted mainly of vodka, and I only caught up on sleep during class. I had a pretty unhealthy first couple of months, but I soon realized that I had played the good girl for far too long and it was simply a part of who I was. When drugs began to come into the picture, of which I did not take part, and my friend began doing things that I morally did not approve of, our friendship came to an end.

I began to focus more on school and something else I had been thinking about for most of my life, girls. I was finally free test out my identity as a lesbian, openly. I went on a couple of dates, none with anyone I was truly attracted to or made a connection with. It’s difficult enough to find someone worth more than a one night stand in a college atmosphere, without adding to it a sexual preference. Needless to say, I wasn’t going to find anyone in Tallahassee.

Like most people my age I was registered to many social networking sites, and when simply looking for someone to talk to about what I was going through, I made a friend who lived out of the state. At one point I had ran up and extremely high phone bill and my mother decided to call the number racking up all of my minutes. She had found out all about this girl and the meaning of our relationship, and so my father called me about it. Tired of being pushed around and feeling high on power from my new found freedom, I finally blurted out to him that I am a lesbian and he needs to get over it! I shouldn’t have been surprised by his reaction. He had told me he would have nothing more to do with me, and he didn’t want me to have any contact with my brothers. He wouldn’t have me exposing them to that lifestyle and influencing them. You can imagine how distraught I was. Instantly I became dizzy, and I felt a brick hit my stomach. I felt that, “oh no, I left the front door unlocked,” feeling but much more intensely. I wished that I had never opened my mouth! To make matters worse, soon after, the out-of-state girl had ended our relationship, whatever it was.

Ch. 6

“Falling in Love”

Looking for solace in the only place I knew how, I found another friend on the internet. This time it was different, how we met, what we talked about, how she made me feel. I believe I fell in love with her that very first night we began to talk, though I would never have admitted it. That would be crazy, right? I guess no crazier than what happened next. She and I began talking day in and day out. By this point we had discovered web cams and had begun to video chat more hours of the day than we didn’t chat. I believe during this period of our lives if we were awake, we were talking; and because there were those brief moments when one of us would have class or work, we would give up much needed sleep to catch up on the hours that we lost. I believe my catch phrase became, “do they have wireless?” Whenever my friends asked me to go out, or if I were required to be anywhere away from home, “do they have wireless?” This continued on for seven months straight. I honestly don’t know where I got the time or energy to attend classes, let alone make good grades. My bet would have been on me failing out; however, I suppose I was much more motivated back then.

Finally, after seven months, we had decided that we simply could not be another second apart. We had fallen madly in love with each other, and now we wanted to meet to see if any of it was real. Did I forget to mention that she is from Finland? That’s right. We had been having a sort of long distance affair, she in Finland, and me in the United States. No one would have logically bet on our relationship, but they would have been missing out. Fully aware of the danger involved, I had decided I would take a leap, get on a plane for the first time leaving the United States, to go to a foreign country I had never been to, to stay with a girl I had never met in person. Of course I was irrational, I was in love. But first, I needed some money.

Fortunately, by this time my parents had calmed down and we were sort of speaking again. Obviously due to my mother, who I always knew would love me no matter what. I believe she was afraid that if they shut me out then, I would never come back, and they would lose me forever. My mother was a very smart woman, she would have been correct. I am very stubborn. So we had come to the agreement that we would act as if nothing had happened, though I refused to pretend to be something I am not. They agreed to accept the knowledge, though we would not talk about it, and I was forbidden to allow my brothers to find out, or else I would be cut off from them. The overwhelming love I had for my family, and that I wanted to keep my relationship with my brothers forced me to accept these conditions.

So that summer, when classes were finished, I had returned home to get a job and save some money. I knew it would be easier to save what I needed if I didn’t have any bills and I could live off of my parents. I had gotten the only job that was available, or perhaps the only I was qualified for. I began to work as a waitress at a local bar and steakhouse. The pay was terrible, but everyone knows you work for tips. I was so determined to make it out to Finland that very summer that I had begged to work from open to close every single day, that’s sixteen hours. Even though I was making an exceptional amount of money in tips, nearing the time I had planned to leave for Finland, I still had nowhere near the amount of money I had hoped for. But then something amazing happened.

A few months prior I had applied for ‘special circumstance’ at my University. ‘Special circumstance’ is where the University takes into consideration a special circumstance, such as an illness, disability, or death in the family and they give you a small return on the tuition you have already paid. Essentially, they determine that you are not getting the family contribution that they expect you to get from your family, aid from your parents to attend school, and so they take that amount and give it back to you, to put towards bills and such. What’s ironic though, is that despite my mother’s illness, I already wasn’t getting any family contribution. I had been paying my way through college, tuition and bills, all by myself with the help of a lot of loans.

Quite literally two weeks before my planned departure, I get an acceptance letter in the mail saying that I was to receive a deposit in my account the day prior. Sure enough, I checked my account, and I had just enough to buy my plane tickets and have a little spending money while there. It couldn’t have been more perfect, especially since I had wanted to do something else as well, which without this money I would not have been able to do. I took every single penny I had earned the last two months and I took my best friend out to every single jewelry store in the city, and I bought and engagement ring! If everything were to go as well as I expected it to, I was going to ask her to marry me.

Ch. 7

“The Best Summer of my Life”

I’m so glad that we were on good enough terms that my parents volunteered to drive me to the airport. I’m certain it was to make sure I was safe, and not because they supported me or my trip. However, I was so nervous that to add finding my way through a large international airport on my own made me sick to my stomach. I was so glad they were there. However, I do believe the last thing my mother said to me at the airport before I left was, “don’t go do something stupid like get married.” I never understood the expression, frog in my throat, quite like I did that day. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted for her sake to do as she wished, or at least give her peace of mind, but I knew I couldn’t do that. I knew what my intentions were, and I knew there was nothing that could change my mind. Rather than lie to her, because I knew I couldn’t do that, I simply shrugged my shoulders as if to say, “what can you do, it’s done.”

And I was right. Finland was everything I had expected, and more. Everything I had felt up to this point paled in comparison to how strongly I felt for her on that very first day. After having spent the day meeting all of her friends and enjoying Mid Summer holiday, that very evening I proposed to her and she accepted. Only one month later we went to the magistrate and we eloped! To this day, I have never been so happy in my life, as our first summer together.

Ch. 8

“08.08.08”

I will never forget the summer my mother died. It was the most emotionally draining period of my life. My wife and I had just spent perhaps the worst two years of our lives in Tallahassee, for various reasons. With senior year still ahead, and plans to remain at Florida State for my masters’ degree, it was not pleasant that I already had a terrible case of senioritis.

To make matters worse I hated my job; it was like going to war: the things you did made you feel like scum, your customers were casualties, your colleagues your enemy, always trying to steal from you or cheat you for an extra buck. And then corporate was there to consistently change the rules of the game, trying to find a way to pay you less and less: quotas harder to obtain, and each sale worth much less than it was before. But I had to make a living, I had another mouth to feed, I had to support my wife, and a Starbucks salary was not going to do that for me.

I never thought anything of it at the time, but I think my mother could feel death approaching her. She had insisted that I come home for father’s day that it meant a lot to my father, and since I had missed mother’s day we could celebrate them together. I did everything in my power to make sure I got time off, because I could sense how badly she wanted this. It’s almost as if she had been waiting for me so she could to let go, because that very night, on father’s day, my mother was rushed to the hospital.

After not returning to work for a month because my mother was still in the hospital I was informed that if I did not return I needed to file for an extended leave of absence. From what I understood, this meant that I still worked for the company but I wasn’t guaranteed a position when I came back. I was afraid I would lose my job so I allowed myself to be put back on the schedule. I went to work for 12 hour days three to four days in a row, and then I drove the four hours to the hospital and remained there until I had to return to work again a couple of days later. There were times when I made that drive up to four times in a week. On a few occasions, when they thought she had made a turn for the worse, I would leave work and make that drive two or even three times in a single 24 hours.

To this day, I still feel like I never got to properly say goodbye to my own mother. I had to leave the city the night before; I had work in the morning. I had intended on returning the very next day after my shift, but I would never see my mother conscious again. I had only been there for a couple of hours when I got a call at work; it was my father, he said I’d better head down, right away. I left work immediately, even though my supervisor didn’t seem to understand, and even got angry with me. I believe I even got a speeding ticket that day because I was driving so fast trying to get to the hospital; I was so afraid I wouldn’t be there when she passed. It didn’t seem to make a difference anyway, she was already unconscious when I got there, and they didn’t expect her to ever wake again. After a grueling number of hours my mother finally passed away on August 8, 2008. She was only 38 years old.

Ch.9

“Betrayal”

“Escape,” that was my initial reaction, wasn’t it? I needed to get away, I needed to escape the city I hated, to leave the job that tormented me. I needed some semblance of a new life to convince myself that I am a different person, that these aren’t my memories; they’re someone else’s. I needed to ignore the pain. No one ever tells you this, but that never works.

I had made up my mind, I was leaving Tallahassee. Especially because this was a fragile time, it meant so much more to me that my best friends had decided to come with me. They too needed a new start, and we were going to experience it together, we were going to support each other. We had decided on Universities in London to which we had all been accepted. All we needed then was money, and with London less than a year away there was not a whole lot of time to acquire it. We wanted this move so badly that we began to live as if we had no money; we spent only what it took to survive, bills and nothing more. At around a dollar fifty for the ingredients, we ate spaghetti everyday for months. We were saving.

When my mother had passed away, by some miracle, the insurance company actually paid out. My father received 150 thousand dollars upon her death for funeral arrangements and whatever he saw fit. Unfortunately, no one knows exactly what that was. In just a couple of months my father had squandered away every single penny that my mother had hoped he would use to get his and our lives back in order.

I didn’t know at the time that he had spent all of the money, when I got his call. He explained that he had done precisely what my mother had wanted and he bought a new liquor license and a piece of property; he was going to open and run another bar, like he had done when we were kids. He explained to me that nothing had gone through yet and he needed to borrow some money to pay his mortgage or he would lose the house, my mother’s house. I had explained to him time and again just how much I needed that money for my future, and how hard I had worked and saved for it. I told him when I absolutely needed the money back by and he told me he would have it long before that deadline. As terrible a person my father could be and had been, he had never given me a reason not to trust him monetarily, my father was no thief. I certainly wasn’t about to let him lose my mother’s house either, so I gave him every cent I had.

It took over a month to finally realize what was going on. Even before he had called me for money my father had apparently stopped paying all of his bills, including three phone lines for him and my brothers that were in my name. He had also taken off out of the city, leaving my then 16 year old brother home alone for weeks at a time. Neither my brother nor I would have known any of this if our younger brother hadn’t been so scared he needed to call us. One day he calls up my brother in Tallahassee to say, “Dad hasn’t been home for weeks, I don’t know where he is, and there hasn’t been food or electricity in the house for a long time.” We immediately drove down to get him to come and stay in Tallahassee.

With much difficulty, we all survived the next few months and I was even able to resave the amount I needed for plane tickets. However, that was all I was able to save. Fortunately, my wife has the amazing ability to foresee possible complications in any situation. Several months prior she had requested that I apply to the University of Helsinki as a backup if I did not get in to the University in London. That decision will have turned out to be our saving grace.

I found myself in a position where I could not receive any loans. I would either have needed my parent’s tax information to get a federal loan, which I did not have, or positive credit to get a loan on my own, but my father had destroyed my credit when he stopped paying bills that were in my name. Therefore I could no longer pay tuition. Besides that, because my father had stolen ever single cent that I had saved, we no longer had the money for a deposit or rent of an apartment. We were left no choice but to ask for help from her family. This was the most difficult part for me because I have so much pride. I have always been a hard worker, and have always found a way to support myself and those that I care about without charity from anyone. This time I couldn’t avoid it.

Ch. 10

“A New Hope”

When we lived in Colorado that’s when they discovered my mother’s tumor. At the time she was working for a nursing home which offered her meager health insurance, for just her and my father. One day she had passed out while taking a shower and so my father took her to the emergency room. We should have known that day something was wrong, when they came back to tell us she had a tumor. They had said, “no need to worry, it ‘looks’ benign.” It’s unfortunate that we were simply too ignorant to understand that a tumor cannot look benign, only a biopsy can determine if there is cancer or not. A year passed before my mother had any other symptoms.

She returned to the hospital a year later, a different hospital, where they asked her if she was aware she had a tumor. They did a biopsy and explained to her that it was malignant and in need of immediate removal followed by chemo therapy. When my father finally caught on to what had happened, he attempted to take to court the other hospital or insurance company (I am unable to recall the specifics as my parents shared very little information with me). They were able to get the support of a major group of malpractice lawyers for free, however they were unable to form a case because my mother’s record of ever having gone to that hospital had miraculously disappeared.

By this time my mother no longer worked for the same nursing home, but also we had gotten so low on money that they simply couldn’t make payments on insurance any longer and we had gone without coverage for quite some time already. My mother couldn’t get her surgery. My father worked as rapidly as he could, trying to get my mother insurance. Month after month he researched, he applied, he looked for loopholes; my mother had a preexisting condition, she did not qualify for insurance. Amazingly he found an insurance company who was unaware of her condition, as most were, but this time he lied on the application. My mother now had insurance, very expensive private insurance, but still insurance.

Now in Florida, she had gone back to the doctor, however by now her tumor had grown too large to safely remove it from her body; it had spread from her liver to her stomach. She was also informed that her particular kind of cancer was quite rare, Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor (GIST), and they have no known treatment. However, soon after she was contacted by a cancer research facility in Tampa, called Moffitt, who informed her that they were using an experimental drug with GIST patients and they would like to interview her to see if she could be a candidate.

Ch. 11

“Underachiever”

When I had applied to this program my mother had just passed away. I was utterly obsessed with corruption in healthcare and our insurance companies. To me, they had killed my mother. I often think what if they had just taken the time and money to do a biopsy; what if she had had the surgery and chemo, would she be alive today? Ironically, it was just about the same time when Candidate Obama had begun rallying around healthcare reform. I was intrigued. I thought I want to be a part of this; I want to make a difference that might save someone else’s mother. So when I applied and got in I sort of saw it as a sign that this is what I am supposed to be studying. Everything happened so that I had to be here; I had to attend this University, where it just so happened that I would be studying Welfare States and healthcare. I could write my thesis on Healthcare Reform. I was determined; I naively felt that I could make a difference with a simple Masters’ thesis.

I was quickly knocked back into reality however when I met with my thesis seminar advisor. I believe the very first thing she said to the class was, “you’re not going to do or change anything with your thesis, so choose something that is do-able. Choose something simple and straight forward because you only need to prove that can research.” Now this didn’t dismay me one bit, I always sort of knew that this single paper alone would accomplish nothing, but I still felt that it had a purpose and wasn’t for nothing. It was when we had to present our topics to her that I felt crushed. She had singled mine out, of all the topics, that she was the most worried about. I asked her about this, to which she replied, it was not researchable. After spending a day or so in despair, believing I would not be here to study the one thing I could be happy studying, I tried again. I got online, I did some research, and I came up with a new thesis topic, still one that would allow me to research healthcare reform, but one I believed to be researchable. For this she responded to me that my new topic was far too broad, and that she still believed it to be not researchable but she wouldn’t be able to tell until I narrowed it down. I came back at her time and again, still trying to hold on to healthcare in some shape or form, it was always the link to my previous topic. Eventually, I began adding in homosexuality so that I at least had a test group, a subject of my study. I thought that if I had a group to talk about, to interview, she would determine it researchable. My new topic was about the life expectancy of homosexuals; if it was indeed lower in the first place, was it related to social policy. I really thought I had it this time; I had done my research and really had a direction to go in. But without fail, she determined that I would not be able to complete this research. Not only could she not see how the study could be done, but my lack of a medical and/or psychology degree made me unqualified to complete this research.

By now, I was defeated. I had attempted every angle I could to research healthcare reform, or expose healthcare corruption. I had determined there was no way for me to study this topic. Several months had already gone by where I had flooded myself with material and research about healthcare reform. My obsession also gave me a chance to grieve and with my new found defeat, my anger and drive towards the topic went with it. I now felt nothing. I don’t want to say I was numb, it was more like: I wasn’t sad, or angry, or even happy. It was more like a disinterest or boredom. I no longer had any motivation or drive; laziness seemed to encompass my every being. I just didn’t seem to care anymore. I began skipping classes, sleep seemed more important to me. I signed up for less and less courses, and seemed to drop one after the other when I couldn’t keep up with the work because I could find no motivation to keep up. Even now, to this very moment, as I write these words I have yet to find motivation to go back to class or begin work on my thesis.

To be honest, I am only writing this paper, and at the last second I might add, because I need a certain number of credits per year to keep receiving aid from the state, without which we would not be able to pay our rent. I have tried time and again to get a job, but without the Finnish language I may as well be a high school dropout. My education means nothing if I cannot communicate with the people. But like everything I attempt these days, I have failed to make any progress. This is the story of how I became an underachiever.

I would like to add a special thanks to Professor Pierluca Birindelli.

It was his assignment to write this autobiographical essay. Thank you, it was better than therapy.