Forum Post: what dream

this is an essay I wrote one night when I was angry about they impossible odds myself and my father are upagainst.

They say that there is a dream of America and that anyone can achieve their dreams and goals in life. I was taught from birth that if I wanted something I worked for it and that if I work hard enough I would be successful. Now I look back at my life and realize that there is a static barrier between classes and that if you are born poor like me, most likely you will die poor. My life now 26 has been nothing but disappointment, I had so many dreams, now just fantasy. I don’t see the American dream they tried to sell me and I want a refund. I wish I could say those lines, but as life goes, there are no refunds. I was a happy but poor girl my whole life and living in the old civic center of San Jose was nice. I never worried about how much money we had or what my life would be like. As I got older, I saw the divide between my cousins and me. I understood every time I went to their house for Thanksgiving and Christmas that they were lower rich and I was there poor cousin. I hated spending time there but loved my family so I made myself uncomfortable for them. I had to watch what I did and what I said, I had to walk where they told me and touch only what I was allowed to. I would even wash my hand three or four times after every time I went to the bathroom so I won’t be dirty. Nevertheless, I was always dirty somehow. My father worked hard for every dime he got and was set to go places in the appliance repair world. However, fate is a cruel woman and my father was injured on the job and was never able to recover. And, just like that, we were poor again, he tried to get better and get a job he could do but his back slowly got worse and he is now disabled. His last job was at a radio station and we loved it. The family loved it and we were not middle class but not too bad. We got off well fare and lived off his and my grandmother money. I was in high school then. However, that turned sour as some of his coworkers accused him of indecent behavior while on the net. Without checking the cameras or the log ins to see that someone else was there. So, we were poor again. My grandma like my father had bad luck with being poor. She was born in 34’ and was given away to a family because hers couldn’t feed her with what they had. It was the depression and everyone had it rough. They weren’t they poorest, but she still had to walk five miles into town. Her foster dad was a miner for the coalmine in Rockbridge County West Virginia and she lived with her two foster brothers and mother. Her foster mother left when she, as she put it knee high to a grasshopper, which I think was somewhere between 6-9 years old. Grandma had to take over all the housework and never got to finish elementary school, she never got to the fourth grade. Later in life, her foster dad got sick and died of black lunge, or coal miner’s lunge. She lived with her surviving foster brother Richard and helped him take care of his kids, Frank died while falling asleep behind the wheel in an accident. Grandma met her first husband my grandfather and they married, they were still poor. Her husband was a wife beater and a deadbeat cheater that would not hold a job for more then six months. He got in trouble and left her with four kids to raise. She raised them on welfare and even after she married again, she was still poor and passed on that way as well. I wanted to be a therapist and help people, but when my grandmother got altimerz, I put my life on the back burner mostly and took care of her. My credit suffered, my school suffered, my social life and guys I was interested in was forgotten. Now I have my life but there is nothing to it now. I can’t pay off my bills to go back to school and get my B.A the psychology and I am just trying to get caught up on my bills. I see my high school friend happy in their middle class lives, the class they were born in and I feel left behind. I am still poor living in government house with no prospect to a better future. I told my grandmother once that, “I was born poor. I grew up poor and I will most likely die, poor.” So I ask this country again, What dream? I don’t get to have one.