Page 2 of The Girl He Loves

I groan and drop my head into my hands. “You have got to be kidding me! I’m so close to finishing. So close to turning my life around and making real money. Well, more than I make now in retail anyway. Now you're telling me I just spent over three and a half years and accrued butt loads of student loans working on a degree that I can’t have?”

I study her from between my fingers.

She says, “Well, you can try to have your record expunged. But that takes time. You can’t do your student teaching until this matter is all cleared up.”

“And what if I can't get my record expunged?”

Jamison sighs. “You won’t be able to teach.” She holds up her hand. “But we can shift you to a different track.”

I snort with derision. My degree track is elementary education. But my plan wasn’t to stop there. “You said once I got this degree, I could then do online school and get my certification in special education. What am I supposed to do with these classes if I can’t use them to teach special needs kids?”

“If you get the record expunged between now and September, I can get you on the list for a spring internship starting in January. That puts your graduation out by six months, assuming getting your record removed goes smoothly. Six months isn’t so long.”

I stand on the precipice of a full-blown pity party. Or at the very least a good old-fashioned crying fit. Six more months? That feels like forever. And that’s if things go smoothly. My odds of winning the lottery are probably higher than getting something to run smoothly.

Yet, I’ve persevered. I’ve stayed strong. I kept swimming. However you want to phrase it, I’ve held fast to the belief that if I worked hard to improve my life, I’d succeed.

The last five years have been really crappy. I mean, I’m living proof of that saying: “the hits just keep on coming.”

First, I discover my son has epilepsy. Ever experience your kid having a seizure? Moms out there whose kids have seizures know how scary that is. Like suck the breath out of you scary and leave you trembling for days. I'm not saying there aren’t other scary things, but this is my scary thing and sits right at the top of my “things that scare the shit out of me” list.

Then my marriage fell apart. Secretly, I’m kind of okay about that. Would I like to have a partner who splits the chores, worry and expenses with me? Absolutely, but my ex-husband Justin wasn’t a partner. He was the dude who brought home money and wanted sex. Sex that wasn’t even that good.

We married for the wrong reasons, though our intentions were noble. But I don’t miss him. I miss the child support money because I live paycheck to paycheck.

And now, here I am.

I say, “You know, Mrs. Jamison, all this information would have been helpful before I borrowed forty thousand in student loans to get this degree. And now you're telling me I can't even use it, much less graduate, unless I can get my record expunged?”

She pats down the air between us with her hands, as if to say “bring it down, relax, chill.” None of which I’m capable of doing.

Mrs. Jamison says, “You can graduate on time. But to do so we’ll need to shift you to a different track, a different degree in the same sort of field, because you can't do your student teaching. But there are lots of things you can do. You know, you can, uh…” She glances down at a piece of paper where she’s clearly written out a list of these new and grand occupational opportunities.

“You could be a corporate trainer. You could be a college academic advisor.”

I close my eyes. “Isn't that working with children? I mean, just because they're 18….”

“Well, they're legal adults, so...”

“Oh, so it's okay to have an indecent exposure record and work with so-called legal adults who can’t even buy liquor, but that's fine. I get it.”

I really didn’t, but whatever.

When I started college the first time, it was to major in psychology, which I never finished, and here I am again, second time around, with a degree in a different field that I can’t finish either. Kinda feels like this isn’t meant to be.

Jamison continues, “You could be a sales rep. Oh, a real estate agent.”

I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but that train has left the station. I say, “I could’ve done all that without getting a degree. I pursued this degree because I want to work with children like my son. I want to help other families. I want to help other kids. I want to give parents hope, to know they are more than the sum of their problems or their child's diagnosis. That maybe not all their hopes and dreams for their child are gone.”

She smiles sadly. “You could be a tutor.”

I shake my head in confusion. “I’m sorry. I could be a tutor? Isn't that working with children?”

“Yes, but if you do it privately, you don't have to disclose anything.”

This was a joke, right? “Oh, okay. So, ethically, I can just put my morals aside. That's good to know.” I make a mental note to have every person who ever privately worked with my child fingerprinted. I'm realistic enough to know not everyone in this world is upstanding.

Dear Lord, I’m a hypocrite.

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