Okay here we go again I left off on my decision to return to pittsburgh for a semester. As I said it seemed like a good idea at the time. When I informed my mother of my plans she was fine with it and said she understood. She said I could come home but as long as I was home I had to either be in school or working. In addition I had to keep my room clean, take out the garbage, do my own laundry and make sure I cleaned up after myself in the kitchen. I'd say that was more than fair so I complied. Spring semester begins at ccac I'm taking a distance learning course and a few classes on campus too. I started off pretty good I mean I was happy to be home and away from the craziness at VUU. I reconnected with my friends up here actually became pretty good friends with my best friend Colin's girlfriend Ann as well since she was at the same campus. However my heart and mind were still not in school and before long I was failing all but one class. Also in that semester it came to my attention that my mother had not kept up with my tuition payments so I was unable to see my grades. The reason for this was that a few month prior my mother had left her job at the board of education and instead went into business for herself with her two major contracts belonging to Hossana House and our church Covenant Church of Pittsburgh. She also would take other short term contracts from the likes of the Urban League and others. However unknown to me at this time the cash flow wasn't as consistant as it had been in recent years more on that later in the story. At the end of the semester I decided that it wasn't fair to me to keep fooling myself into beleiving I could ignore the issues and they would go away, and also it was unfair to my mom to keep spending money for my education with me not putting in the effort. It was a waste. So I informed my mom that I would at least a semester off of school and just work and try and get my mind right again. So after a brief period as a knife salesman I got my first ever full time job with Echostar Communications. Echostar was the customer service side of Dish Network Sattelite Tv. It seemed so cool I mean going from minimum wage to 9 bucks an hour. Then I got my first paycheck and man I couldn't have been more excited I had never ever made that much money at once. Needless to say I went on a spending spree I mean I bought cd's, dvd's, video games, shoes, clothes. I had a ball man it was fun. However shortly after training was done at this company and I was on the floor full time I began to realize something. This job sucks it was terrible. Call after call the same issues over and over and over. People upset at you because they didn't pay their bill, and I could go on for hours about what some of their customers are like but I won't. However After maybe a month or two I came to the realization that if these are the kind of jobs I have too look forward too if I don't get my degree then I have got to get back in school ASAP. So I figured hey I am ready now I'll let mom know, and we'll get this bill straightened out with ccac and I'll jump into the fall semester. Well as it turns out it didn't work out that way. One day I step out of the house to go to work and notice my car is gone. My first thought is why did mom take my car today but then I notice hers isn't there either. So naturally I think my car was stolen but nope it had been repo'd because my mother was behind on the payments so naturally I was pissed off at her. Shortly after my mom decides that I have to take over the payments for the car. Around the same time she gets rid of the car she was leasing at the time and we are left with just my car. She decides however that she is going to be the primary driver of the car till she gets another. So now I am paying for a car that I barely get to drive....right. So with that and my mom's either inability or unwillingness to pay ccac led to me staying at echostar longer than anticipated. So here it is about a year I've been at echostar when I only planned on spending six months max at this place. I was sooo miserable at this place. I don't think they treat the employees well at all, and I also felt like I could and should be doing better things with my life. I'm sure I wasn't the only one in fact I know I wasn't. A good thing that came out of it is that I made friends with a guy named Van Bey. Nicest guy you'll ever meet some people say he and I are so much alike we could be related, and I take that as a compliment. Anyways not too long after I met him I find out that he is about to be engaged to a wonderful woman by the name of Elysha, and once it becomes official he ask me to be in the wedding. Needless to say I jumped at the chance. As wierd as it sounds my friends wedding was one of the highlights of my life. I got to be a part of something wonderful. I have never met two people who were more right for eachother, and have never seen anyone that happy in my entire life. I saw this and I knew that this is what I want what I need. I want that type of happiness. The reception or after party as I like to refer to it as was an absolute blast, and it really took me out of my head for a while and allowed me to just enjoy myself something I hadn't done in a long time. If memory serves it was either the end of december or beginning of january and I finally paid off my car i also managed to put together about a thousand dollars that I was going to use to pay back CCAC and register for at least one class. I was trying to take command of things finally instead of waiting on my mom or someone else to do it for me. Then boom my car starts overheating badly so i take it to my mechanic he replaces the thermostat and checks the radiator and its all good, but the car still overheats. The issue it turned out was the head gasket. On most cars this was fairly easy to replace but not for mine. Apparentlly with the type of engine I had it would require them to completely disassemble the engine to get to the thing and then of course put it all back together. Very few mechanics are willing to do this kind of thing and when they found one who would the price for the service including parts and labor was $980.oo all but $20.00 of my savings. So right back where I started. So this made me feel as though any efforts were going to be futile towards going back to school so I did what had become normal for me when I was upset or whatever. I bought stuff. Looking back this solved nothing and it only felt good for a little while. So once again I let circumstance defeat me. All I would've had to do was bite the bullet and at least pay back what I owed the school so I could register with no problem for summer and then fall classes. Live and learn I guess. All in all what should've been a 6 month stint lasted two years. It was honestly such a wonderful day when I finally quit Echostar I was registered for the fall semester of 2004 and looking forward too it. I had not been that excited about school since my freshman year of college. I mean this was a complete turnaround from the guy who just didn't care, I was almost salivating at the thought of classes not too mention going to the same school as one of my best friends and being able to hang out like we did in high school. I did the best I have ever done in school that semester I pulled a 3.9 GPA and got myself back on the deans list. It was glorious man I never thought I was capable of that too be honest with you. Spring semester rolls around and since I am in school full time and not working my mom agrees to pay for classes where as in the first semester I made the first payment we split the second and she did all of the third since I was out of money by then. So I'm registered and the payment numero uno is made. I got off to kind of a slow start this time around because I honestly was very tired because of some stuff that I had to do on vacation. So I figured I'd take it easy for a week or two and then go full tilt from there. However my mom saw this and just assumed that I was falling back into my old habits which just wasn't the case. Not at first anyways. The thing is by the end of my first week and a half my mom showed a complete and utter lack of faith in me. Despite what I had done that last semester she just assumed I was giving up again. As you may be able to tell by now I am not the most confident person in the world and unfortunately my confidence can be shaken rather easily at times. The fact that she lost faith in me had me start questioning myself and second guessing everything I did. In addition to this I was taking a probability and statistics class that was kicking my butt. I did put effort into this class but not the amount required for me to do well. I half assed it yet again and I paid for it. I did alright in my other classes but still not as well as I could've and now knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was capable of. Towards the end of the semester I went to obtain a copy of my schedule because I needed something with my student ID number on it. However I found out that my account was locked. My mom had not made any further payments other than the initial payment to register. It happened again, and I was furious. She in fact told me that she did make the payment although now she doesn't remember saying that at all. Before I go any further I need to explain something. My mother told me she was going to take early retirement because she just didn't want to do her job anymore, and also her retirement benefits would bring in some extra money and help us out and help me go to school. During the time I was working at echostar also it was subtle but I began noticing changes in my mother. Out of love and some remaining respect for her I won't go into detail, but I will say this woman and the mother I grew up with were two vastly different people. This was especially hard to deal with due to the fact that through out my entire life up to this point my mother has been the one constant. She was the person I knew no matter what was there for me no questions asked. Even when I was starting to try and become more independant in my teen years deep down inside I knew she was the one I could depend on. Now not so much. She seemed at times more interested in getting over on me rather than helping me. Rather than encouragement I got guilt trips, and threats. My mom always had a tendency to be overbearing but that just seems to be a mom thing. Now alot of things she was doing just made no sense at all, and it was hurting both of us. I'm not even going to say I was perfect through all of this or I was an a perfect little Angel and she was the supreme evil one nope not at all. But bad decision after bad decision after bad decision an extreme level of stubborness that had never been exhibited before, and just some damn bad luck may have broken some things beyond repair.


Too Be Continued.....