How To Fit Your Life's Story in Four Lines

I am staring at this Appeal Suspension of Aid form on my desk at work. I should be worried about my deadline for these four files today, or the fact that my tracking report is due tomorrow and not even half of it is completed yet. But I can't take my eyes off this damn form.

The words "suspension of aid" look and sound so ugly. Like some sort of anti-financial aid disease. I felt my heart sink down to my stomach when I saw it on my online transcript this morning. I figured I'd be proactive since the Financial Aid office last night told me that I wouldn't be able to apply for a student loan until June 4th, and just log on to the student website to see what type of financial aid availability I had.

Let's see....um, none, perhaps?

And now here I am with this form in front of me that I need to fill out to appeal the school's decision made back in the fall of 2005.

There is so much that has happened in the past year and a half and even the prior year leading up to that semester. But I only have four empty available lines to explain myself. The process is so frustrating.

In four lines, can I tell you how it felt to be kicked out of my parents' house the night before my 19th birthday because my mother said "You hate me because I am white..." not because I ever made her feel that way but because of some innate guilt that she had formed from adopting me? Or how she threw all my clothes in trash bags and let them sit in the frontyard while it poured rain? And how that night I had to sneak into my father's place of stay (my uncle's home) because my uncle "has a thing against Asian people"?

In four lines, could I tell you how my mother refused to let me back in the house to obtain my textbooks (books that I paid for with my own money) so that I could study for final exams?

In four lines, do you think you'd care that I had to find a ride to the school library, sat there at the computer and wrote emails to all my teachers to explain the situation and only had one teacher respond?

Probably not. And that's what's so difficult. There are no words I could use in just four lines that could ever amount to how I feel right now. That could equal the want and the desire that I have to learn and to better myself now more than ever after having dealt with my obstacles and trying to get back on my educational feet.

But I'll try. It's worth the world to me to at least try.

And so I begin to fill those four lines...