Chapter 18

One of the things I grew up hearing constantly was, “We want all of you kids to have a better future, and higher standard of living than we did.”

It was one of many philosophies Mother and Father espoused which made them sound like Good Parents.  Yet, whenever the best interests of their children came into conflict with their own selfish desires, they always had some ready excuse to justify acting on their own behalf, even if it caused their children harm.  It is honestly astounding how many actions they took which either directly endangered my quality of life, or actively sabotaged my ability to have the bright future they promised that they wanted me to have.

Even before I was born, Father’s selfish unwillingness to use a condom and Mother’s acquiescence to his desires created three children they literally could not afford to feed or take to a doctor.  When I caught strep throat the first time, it is a wonder I did not die due to their delays in getting me to a doctor, and I do blame them for that.  There may be a huge number of poor people who cannot access health care for reasons outside of their control, but that was not the case for my parents.  Their bad situation was a direct result of their lack of planning and thoughtless pursuit of shallow pleasures.

It genuinely boggles my mind that Mother was “too embarrassed” to apply for welfare until I filled the refrigerator with literal mud pies, but she was also not the least bit embarrassed to seek sympathy from strangers about my lack of medical care and near death from strep throat.  Years later she admitted that she had no sympathy for people on welfare until after she, herself, needed it.  She admitted the experience was humbling and eye opening, and yet it seems strange to go from callously looking down on poor people, to expecting that any stranger would give her sympathy should she bemoan her financial troubles.  At one point she had been that callous stranger, so she must have been aware that sympathy was not guaranteed.

I suppose anyone who responded poorly to her efforts at fishing for sympathy got filed under “not enlightened” or “self-centered”, providing a nice little ego boost of moral superiority at the confirmation she had learned better, and they had clearly not.  Despite that, I am certain her public admissions of her financial woes were never about advocating for the poor or changing society for the better, or she would have at a bare minimum spoken out on behalf of all poor people and voted for politicians and measures which were supportive of social change.  It was there when she needed it, personally, and after that it was no longer her concern whether or not those social safety nets were strong and accessible.

I was almost never supervised at home as a small child, to the point that I have precious few memories of interacting with my parents outside of special occasions and bedtime.  I do not remember playing with Mother.  I rarely remember playing with Father before I was old enough to be in school, and never after that.  I am certain they must have read to me at some point, but it happened so infrequently and stopped when I was so young that I do not remember being read to, not even once.  Instead, I remember always being able to read to myself, and in second grade I was baffled that other kids could barely remember the alphabet.

I even remember giving myself baths when I could not have been more than five years old, and it was entirely on me to take care of my own daily personal hygiene before I was in kindergarten.  Only bubble baths required the participation of Mother, and that was solely to dispense the bath soap, because she did not trust me to use a “reasonable amount” on my own.  Once the soap was dispensed, I gave myself my bath, as usual.  When the public school noticed my brothers and I might be neglected at home, instead of taking that as a wake-up call that they should be more attentive, Mother and Father went into massive debt to enroll my brothers and I at an abusive private school.

To put it into perspective, my parents were willing to risk my death by strep throat because they were broke.  Then, a very short time later, they felt it was completely worthwhile to go into massive debt so they could enroll their three children in a private school.  Neither decision was made based on what was best for me or my brothers.  Instead, it was what was best for them.  Saving money was debatably more important than saving my life, but it was worth massive amounts of cash to ensure that no one investigated the neglect and abuse Mother and Father doled out at home.

I had a second bout of strep throat while enrolled in that private school from hell.  That time it took Mother and Father a week to get me in to the doctor for antibiotics.  That may have been much faster than the previous time, but they still waited far longer than caring or attentive parents would have.

Next up was the great head lice incident.  It happened shortly after Mother and Father bought their first home.  A month or two into my second-grade year, I scooched down in my desk so I could scratch the back of my head on the back rest of the chair.  My head was maddeningly itchy, and I could apply more pressure with less pain by using the chair instead of my fingernails.  The teacher saw that and sent me to the nurse’s office, where it was confirmed I had head lice.

I had such a bad infestation that I must have contracted the lice months earlier.  The back of my head was solid nits, hidden under what hair that I could still run a brush through.  Thanks to parental neglect and the fact that I was solely responsible for my own personal hygiene, neither of my parents had noticed that I had very thick clumps of nits in my hair, or how much I was scratching my head.  I was ground zero for a massive infection of head lice at the new school because I pretty much took care of myself and tried not to bother my parents with trivial things like an itchy head.  When I was sent home from school, I was wracked with guilt for the obviously distressing inconvenience it caused Mother to keep me home and treat the lice.  I was only seven years old, and yet I was already aware that Mother’s needs were more important than my own.  The fact that I needed help and could not take care of it myself caused me a great deal of guilt and anxiety, and I felt like a burden and a failure.

The same year, I also ended up with an allergic reaction to a bug bite on the back of my hand.  Throughout the week my hand continued to swell until even my fingers were looking bloated and I could not close my hand into a fist.  Mother had given me itch cream the first day, so that was what I had been using all week as I took care of it entirely by myself.  It itched badly enough that I was constantly in the nurse’s office for more itch cream, and the nurse could not help but notice that the swelling was continuing to increase.  She finally told me not to go back to class, called Mother, and said that I was not allowed back at school until I had seen the doctor.

I do not remember exactly what Mother said about the whole situation, but I do remember feeling that the ordeal was a horrible inconvenience for her, and maybe I should not have been getting itch cream from the nurse.  I apologized a lot, but at the same time was relieved to get the bite taken care of.  Mother had to leave work early to come get me, drive me to the doctor, and stay home with me for the rest of the day.  The real kicker was, all the doctor did was prescribe Benadryl, with the caveat that he could try something more aggressive the next day if that did not reduce the swelling.  It worked, so all that Mother and Father needed to do was bother to notice that the swelling was not going down, and bother giving me over the counter allergy medication to reduce the allergic reaction.  The next time I had a bug bite swell like that, I knew what to do so I took care of it on my own.

When I contracted pink eye, my parents did take me to the doctor so I could get medicine to treat it. I was told to use the medicated eye drops twice a day until the infection went away. My understanding of the infection was that if my eyes were blood-shot and had a burning sensation, I still had an infection. What I did not realize due to my very young age, was that the eye drops themselves could cause redness, irritation, and burning, so I continued dutifully using the drops until the bottle was nearly empty and I had to ask my parents for more. They never bothered to check on the infection, and trusted me to take care of it entirely independently, so Mother was shocked and upset with me for still using the medicated eye drops weeks after the infection had cleared up.

While Father went out of his way to discourage me from seeing art as anything other than an idle hobby, he also encouraged an interest in STEM sciences.  He was very vocal about believing that women were just as intelligent and capable as men, and he insisted that the sciences needed more women working in them.  However, those declarations were hollow gestures, with no real follow-through or tangible support of my academic endeavors.

In sixth grade I grew weary of math class always being a repeat of the previous year’s math.  The class spent the first month doing basic addition and subtraction, as though we were still all in the first grade.  I flipped through the math textbook and saw that there was new material starting about half-way through, but I feared that, like the previous year, the class would not make it that far before the school year was over.

Somehow, I got the idea that if I finished all the work in the book, the school would give me something genuinely new to do, like real geometry or algebra.  So, over the course of about three weeks I did all the exercises in the book to prove that I had read and understood every chapter, and I turned in my body of work to my teacher.  I got a pained, sad look of simultaneous pride and pity, and for the rest of the year the teacher gave me photocopied handouts which covered exactly the same remedial material the other students were doing.

Mother and Father saw me doing all the work in that book.  I told them why I was doing it, but I do not remember any notable responses from either of them.  I told them what happened when I turned in my body of work, and about my disappointment at the repetitive work packets.  Mother and Father “felt bad”, but they were sure I would be more challenged when I was in junior high and had access to more advanced material.  I would just have to be patient.

There were a couple boys in my school who had been put forward a grade, and I wondered aloud why I could not do the same, but my words fell on deaf ears.  Advocating for me in any way, shape, or form would have required initiative and work on their parts, and they simply could not be bothered.  They were too busy with their own problems.  They refused to advocate with the school and offered no enrichment at home.  I was not even remotely the priority they claimed I was.  It was all on me, and whatever circumstances life threw at me.

School was slightly better in junior high, but I was still so underwhelmed and bored in my classes that I maintained high grades despite staying home an average of one day a week.  When I was fifteen, I finally found a way out.  There is a California-only high school equivalency test called the California High School Proficiency Exam, which could be taken as young as 15.5 years old.  The federally recognized GED, by comparison, could not be taken until 17.5 years old.  I wanted to take the test and drop out of high school, so I asked my parents if they would allow it.  They agreed, if I promised to go to the local junior college and get an associate degree instead.  The CHSPE is only recognized in the state of California, so if I ever moved out of state, I would need a higher-level degree to be employable.

Honestly, looking back on it I am not sure exactly why they agreed to let me drop out of high school.  It might have been that Mother cared enough to hope I would be less miserable, and this was a solution that caused her minimal inconvenience, made even less inconvenient by the fact that Older Brother was also starting junior college and likely to help me since we were friends.  However, it was a financial obligation for my parents, and they were always reluctant to take on new expenses on my behalf.  I was able to get a scholarship that paid for a good portion of my tuition and books the first two years, but they needed to provide for the rest.  Other than that, all the responsibility was on me to work out my schedule, get to and from the school, and do all my work.  Father gave me a basic outline of how applying for college worked, and how to sign up for classes, but mostly it was on me to figure out how to navigate college, make sure I found all the books and supplies I needed, and even figure out my transportation to and from the school.  I leaned heavily on free community orientation events and mostly figured it out on my own.  I thought nothing of it at the time, because being completely self-reliant was business as usual.

I rode the city bus to and from Santa Rosa Junior College almost every day, even though I was old enough I should have had a driver’s license.  I would have rather taken an enjoyable elective when I was still in high school, but I took the driver training elective to save my parents the expense of private driver training.  I got my learner’s permit as soon as I was legally old enough, and I expected Mother or Father to teach me so I could get my license.

Father let me drive roughly four blocks down a straight road in our home neighborhood, ONCE.  Nothing bad happened.  I did not even come close to hitting any parked cars.  I had no problem safely accelerating or braking.  I obeyed the stop signs.  I was conscientious about observing my environment.  I pulled the car into the driveway without any difficulty and parked it exactly where it was supposed to go.

After that one time, all I heard were excuses.  Older Brother had been able to get his license without any problem, but when it was my turn a scant year later, learning to drive was suddenly not possible.  At first the most common excuse was that Mother and Father were too busy, but that quickly turned into, “The cars need unessential repairs, and we would get a fixit ticket if you used it for your driver’s test.”  The declared impossibility of using either of their cars for the test was their justification for not teaching me how to drive, because it related to “unavoidable” circumstances instead of blatant selfishness.

For years I kept renewing my learner’s permit in the hope that my parents would get one of the cars fixed and finally teach me how to drive, but that never happened.  I was not expecting to use their cars to get myself to and from school.  The only reason my parents owned two cars was that they each needed a car to get to and from work every day.  I was not expecting them to buy me a car, because they were reluctant to spend any money on me at all.  I just wanted a driver’s license so I had it if I needed it, and with the expectation that at some point in the future I would buy myself a car.

When Younger Brother was sixteen, older friends from his drunken parties helped him get his license almost immediately.  This inspired me to ask for help from friends in junior college, one of whom agreed, but never followed through by teaching me.

I was nineteen when I finally got my driver’s license, four years after taking my driver’s education class and getting my first learner’s permit.  When Diana’s mother found out I did not have one yet, she was appalled.  Mother and Father had egregiously failed me.  Older Brother’s girlfriend’s mother had to step in and teach me how to drive, let me practice, and even let me use her car to take the test, and at the time she did not even like me!

My parents were all glowing praise that an older woman, who was essentially a stranger, had bothered to do what they were clearly never going to do.  They seemed incapable of recognizing that they should have been beyond embarrassed.  I was not living in an urban area with genuinely efficient public transit, so a driver’s license was needed to have any chance to flourish and prosper, but Mother and Father could not have been less concerned.

Accommodating Older Brother was as much inconvenience as Mother and Father were willing to experience over driver’s licenses.  They were perfectly willing to let me fend for myself, or never get a license at all.  They brushed off the importance of a license by saying that the bus system worked fine to get me everywhere I needed to go, but that was not going to be true forever.  Buses did not go to where my parents worked, proving that job options would be limited by not having a car.  You could not take a bus from our house to the family doctor.  If I never had a driver’s license, I would never be able to get a car, and I would be restricted to only doing things or having jobs that were within reach of a bus stop on what was arguably a mediocre bus system.  As it turned out, the only job I ever had that was convenient for a bus line was the part time job I had on campus at the junior college while going to school there.

The first full-time job I got was as a contract worker at the same company where Mother worked, so I was able to commute to work with her.  However, not having a license or car left me with no possibility of changing jobs or working hours that were different from her own, and as a contract worker neither was a long-term guarantee.

Diana’s mother even helped me get my first car so I would have options in my employment.  Again, Mother and Father were happy to praise her for her selflessness without any apparent self-awareness about their own glaring failures as parents.  I suppose that was necessary, since admitting embarrassment would have included admitting their shortcomings.  By instead heaping on the praise as though the bare minimum was extraordinary, they could continue to deny any wrongdoing or failure.

My entire life I remember Father emphasizing the importance of going to college.  He hated his job as a machinist, and outwardly blamed his fate on the fact that he did not go to college.  He verbally insisted, my entire childhood, that his children needed to go to college to have good futures.

When I was a teenager, the corporation where Mother was working as a secretary restructured, and she took a buyout so she could go to college.  My parents billed it to their children as a way to better provide for us once we were ready to go to college ourselves.  A couple years later, Mother graduated from a state college with a degree in human resources.  Instead of finding immediate solid employment in a field she enjoyed, she bounced between several jobs and finally landed in insurance adjustment.

Then, without Mother or Father having made any preparations or plans to help us with college, all three of us were college age.

My brothers and I all attended junior college after high school.  The reasoning was that junior college was a less expensive place for us to get our general education classes out of the way, and it would give us the opportunity to figure out what degrees we wanted to pursue before transferring to universities.  In 1995 I started attending Santa Rosa Junior College, in 1997 I received an Associate of Science degree, and in 1999 I finally made arrangements to transfer to UC Davis.

My parents were great about paying for my books and classes at the junior college level, but the grand total usually came to about $400-$500 per semester, most of which was covered by a community scholarship during the first two years.  Also, I was able to attend while still living at home, which greatly reduced living expenses.  Paying for an actual university was another issue altogether. 

I knew it was going to be expensive, but my parents had always emphasized that getting a college degree was of critical importance, and they had always said they would be there for me if I needed them, so I assumed they would want to help, at least a little.  I had a decently good paying job in database design, but I knew that as a woman I needed to be more qualified than male counterparts who applied for the same jobs.  If I wanted to be competitive, I would need the validation of at least a bachelor’s degree.

I brought home the FAFSA form (Federal Application for Financial Student Aid) and asked my parents to help me fill it out.  As someone under 24 years of age, the federal government expected that my parents would be contributing to my educational expenses.  Their financial information was needed so the government could assess their expected contribution when deciding if I qualified for federal loans and grants, and to determine how much money I was entitled to.

Even private student loans at the time usually based their decisions on that form, and there was a check box to indicate if you wanted to be contacted with private loan offers.

My parents flat refused to fill in their financial information.  They were especially unwilling to state their gross income, even verbally.  I think Father gave some flaccid excuse about how student loans were a complete racket, and I should not take out any, so he was doing me a favor by refusing to fill out the form.  The hypocrisy of them having taken out some student loans to help pay for Mother’s college education was not lost on me.  My parents also said that they were financially completely incapable of helping me directly with college expenses (they were so, so sorry), but the government would see their income numbers and not believe them.

I implored Mother and Father to fill out the form.  Just as important as student loans, that form was also the first step in applying for most grants and scholarships which included a financial need component.  If the form was not filled out completely, I would be automatically disqualified for most grants, scholarships, federal loans, and private loans.

My parents had just put Mother through college.  They had so many expenses, including paying off her student loans.  They swore they did not make much money.  They were broke in any practical sense of the term, but not broke enough for the government’s taste.  It was a foregone conclusion.  They declared there was no point in filling out the form, because even if they did, I was not going to qualify.

I was screwed.

I filled out the form as best I could and turned it in anyway, but with the form incomplete and their information missing I did not qualify for any aid of any kind.  The only way I was going to be able to go to college was if I paid for it all myself, including all living expenses, out of pocket and with credit cards.  Even Father’s sister that had become a lawyer, who had many years prior promised to help pay for my college, was conspicuously absent.

So, I made arrangements with my employer to work remotely, and went to college anyway, expecting that I would have to pay for it by working my way through college.  Between full time university and full time employment, I had no free time to relax or have fun.  Some people may be able to weather that kind of stress, but I was not one of them.  By winter I was completely burnt out, lost my job, had to drop out of college, and was rapidly accruing a pile of credit card debt.

I scrambled to try and salvage something out of my life, applied for any internet-related computer job I could find since that was where I had the bulk of my work experience, and racked up more credit card debt.  The one computer job I was able to get did not last very long, and I moved on to service industry jobs so I could pay the bills.  The damage was done, however, and I was staring at a pile of high interest credit card debt I had no hope of paying off on minimum wage employment.

When my parents asked how I was doing, I admitted to them that I was looking into bankruptcy.  They had filed for bankruptcy two or three different times while I was growing up, so they knew the process well.  I expected them to give me some advice about how to complete the process, but instead they told me that it would be a huge mistake to declare bankruptcy when I was just barely starting out in the world.  They suggested credit counselling, but I had done the math, and I knew I simply did not have the spare income to pay down the debt, no matter the minimum payments offered.  I was hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck.

To my incredulous surprise, my parents offered to take on my credit card debt for me.  I am not sure if something had dramatically changed with their income, or if this was the result of the income numbers which they refused to put on my FAFSA, but they were particularly flush with cash.  Now that all their children were out of the house, they were spending frivolously and conspicuously.  Father had even talked Mother into learning how to ride a motorcycle, and they both had flashy and expensive bikes they were tooling around on for fun.

I had long been conditioned to avoid being a burden, so initially I refused.  I had racked up the debt trying to do something I knew I did not have the money for, and I could pay the price for that on my own.  But they insisted, and since my only personal option was bankruptcy, I accepted.  As promised, they paid off my debts.

It was nice of them to help me out with that debt, but it would have been nicer if they had been there to help in the first place.  It would have been better if I had not incurred the credit card debt at all, and I had been able to complete a university degree.  It would have been best if they had been willing to fill out the FASFA so I could have gotten financial aid and found a less stressful part time job to help with expenses, instead of trying to keep my full time job and burning out.

It may have only been a few thousand dollars, but I suppose my parents deserve some credit for helping clear my minor debt after that college education Father always emphasized had been flushed down the toilet.  After all, it is entirely reasonable to want to enjoy the fruits of your own labor, and I suppose by the time I was 18 they were rather tired of spending it on someone else who was not as important to them as themselves.

Shortly after I attended UC Davis, Younger Brother started attending San Francisco State University.  He was living in the dorms on campus and had a student job on campus.  My parents insisted that they were fair and did not have money to give to any of us for college, but the numbers simply do not add up.  There is no possible way he could have paid for school, living expenses, and social expenses entirely off a student job on campus, especially in a city as expensive as San Francisco, even if the school itself was less expensive than UC Davis.  On-campus student jobs did not pay nearly enough for that, and often had reduced or zero hours between semesters.

I think it is likely that Mother and Father directly supplemented Younger Brother’s college expenses, and it is possible that he received financial aid and kept it secret.  The secret would have been necessary to maintain the illusion of fairness, since him receiving financial aid would have required that they fully fill out his FAFSA, an action they specifically denied to me.  That kind of deception would have been perfectly on brand in a family which always cultivated the appearance of fairness, while significantly favoring the boys, especially Younger Brother.

Before any of us were old enough to have jobs, I was always very careful about how I spent my miniscule allowance so I could get some toys and art supplies, and also buy myself school lunches that were not terrifying.  That was all I could manage.  Somehow, even though Younger Brother was theoretically receiving the same allowance I was, he was “more careful with his money” and could afford all the comics and toys he wanted, all the food he wanted, all the alcohol he wanted, and all the outings he wanted.  Looking back, each week the comics alone would have cost the entirety of the allowance I received.

No, I fully believe that our parents decided they did not have enough money to help all of us with college while still being able to satisfy their own selfish desires, so they only helped Younger Brother and then lied about it to avoid conflict.

Older Brother?  Well, he attended junior college while our parents were willing to pay for it, and then stopped going to college altogether.  Like me, he was working in computers doing web design, but he was confident that he did not need a degree to have a good future in that field.  Most likely he was correct, because his inability to keep a job in that field for any length of time had far more to do with his personality, mediocre competence, and lack of work ethic than any educational qualifications he did or did not have.

My takeaway from all of that was that my parents only genuinely cared about Younger Brother having a bright future.  All of their platitudes about the importance of education, and their hopes for my future and Older Brother’s future were just that, empty platitudes.  Mother and Father were probably making more than enough money to be able to help all of us with college, but had always been absolutely abysmal at managing their finances.  Plus, they were tired of spending their money on children they never planned for, so they decided to help just one of us, and Younger Brother was more important to them than me or Older Brother.  I have no doubt that they refused to fill out my FAFSA primarily so I would not know how much money they were making, so that they could feign caring while denying me the proof that they could help if they wanted to.

Even if I ignore all my speculation, it is undeniable that if Mother and Father were spending money like water only a year after I attempted to attend UC Davis.  If they could do that, plus pay off my personal debt, they could have helped me attend college if they wanted to.  But self-indulgence and self-gratification were more important to Mother and Father than setting up their children for the brighter futures we had always been promised.