Expectations...Crushed

So I know that I haven't posted since January, blah blah nine months blah blah I could've had a baby in that time blah blah blah, but here for you all is a comeback post. Unfortunately, those of you who were hoping for a funny anecdote, or a philosophical rumination, or a book review or an analysis of Abraham Lincoln, must all have your expectations CRUSHED! For this will be that most dreaded of posts--a rant about my personal life. Not about boys or personal identity or my school stress or my general failuritude, but of all things, money.

Because from money, I think, stems the current predicament in which I find myself. As shamelessly as I ramble about my relationships with family members I feel a little uneasy spilling money secrets. But screw it--here's a rundown of my family's financial situation, from somebody who knows absolutely nothing about finance.

1. Together, my mom and dad's incomes amount to quite a tidy sum.
2. Mom and dad make this money going to work every day at high-paying jobs they don't particularly enjoy.
3. They keep at it (you might say heroically) so that my sister and I can get a good education, which they have always stated to be the most important thing.
4. To my discredit, I have no clue where all my parents' money goes, but it must go somewhere, because my sister and I both need financial aid to attend the private schools that we do.
5. In fact, if my parents go on spending this much on our education--even if my sister goes to a public high school next year--they won't be able to retire. That sucks a LOT.
6. You know those charts that colleges put up to give you an estimate of how much aid you will recieve based on your family's income? Well, according to those charts, because my parents earn so gosh darn much, the financial aid that I'm likely to recieve for my college education falls somewhere in the area of $7.

In other words, the rant that you hear time and again from private school students--"I'm too poor to pay for college but too rich to get financial aid!"--is my rant too, only I'm not kidding. But let's put that aside for later. I should add one more to the list above:

7. Currently, my parents pay for my existence.

As you may have gathered from the 1,000 or so whiny posts I have published about my family, I consider my home to be dysfunctional enough that I want to leave. And if my parents' behavior towards me in recent memory is any indicator, they wouldn't be all that sad if I did leave. I only suggest this because it seems that I, like their jobs or their motor vehicles, am taken care of by my parents as an obligation--at best an investment and at worst a chore--not as an object of any interest. Now, I know from Fox movies and the Ramona Quimby series that I'm probably wrong. But what else can I conclude when my father comes home every day and, instead of saying "Hi," glares and says something like "Why is the cat in the basement? Go put her upstairs."--When my mom asks "How was your day?" but, as soon as I start talking, redirects the conversation to a stressed-out "Why haven't you done ______ yet?"--When, in spite of constantly nagging me to do one school-or-college-related thing or another, neither mom nor dad cares to know what classes I'm taking or what I'm learning, or for that matter, what's happening in my life at all?

My parents lead busy, highly stressful lives. Between work and taxes and aging mothers and oil changes, they can't always stop and smell the roses: I get it. But my point is, if we can't make time to see each other as anything more than chores to be completed, why the hell should I bother to go to college close to home?

Here's where this all becomes relevant. Of late, my parents have insinuated a few things about my college education. The first is that they would prefer that I went to college in-state, or at least in some state close to Washington, because otherwise they won't see me very often and it will "really change things." This strikes me as a little bitchy. Maybe it's too much to ask, but I would think that if they wanted me to stick around, they might have given me some sign in the past few years that my presence was a pleasure rather than an inconvenience. But to insist that I go to college out-of-state, I would be saying: "Even though you two have provided for me and kept me alive since forever, I don't really like being around you, so I'm going to leave. By the way, I need some thousands of dollars." And this strikes me as really bitchy.

Let's go back to the financial rundown I threw out before, for therein lies another of my college woes. My parents, as I said, have always stressed education as being the top priority in my life. Because of this I've been in expensive private schools since the 1st grade, and for this I'm very grateful. But frankly, I would rather go to community college than doom my parents to working until their dying day at jobs they hate. And unless I magically score tens of thousands of aid bucks (see #6), there's a good chance that that will happen. What hits me now is that this education-centered life I've been leading, which by all rights should lead up to the exotic college experience of my dreams, will probably now be cut short by the salary game. That by itself strikes me as incredibly and unforseeably bitchy.

In fact, looking back on all the years that my poor parents spent toiling away in cubicles to pay for my schooling, I wonder if they wouldn't have been better off quitting their high-paying jobs, doing work that they enjoyed, and raking in the financial aid now that it counts. And if they really would have been better off...well, that strikes me as the bitchiest of all.

So who's to blame in this situation? Everybody, really. My parents, the Seattle School District, college, Abraham Lincoln, and I. There's not much that can be done about it. And so--as in so many other whiny soliloquies of mine--I must end with a confession: this post wasn't actually for you. It was just me ranting to the World Wide Web, which seems right now to be the least touchy of audiences.