Princess of the Poor

Its so cold outside. All I have on is a sweatshirt and sweatpants. I usually use them as lounge clothes. My mom has on her good leather jacket because its the heaviest coat that she has. What used to be her Ugg boots are now ripped & torn at the bottom. Hair is a mess, as we bend down to scoop up what we can find. Won't allow myself to cry because of the fear that my tears will turn into icicles. My pride is gone out the window of the cold house that we live in. Today, I got the glimpse of what being poor is like. Collecting cans, milk cartons and glass bottles so that we can get money just to put gas in the car and food in our bellies this morning. But why has this all come as a shock to me ? I mean, it was bound to happen to us one day. I mean maybe its because for years my mother has disguised it by buying us name brand clothes and shopping at discount stores for food so we wouldn't go that hungry. The only difference then was that we had a man in our life but also settled because man after man was no good. All these years I've been living in fantasy because it just felt so good to pretend and fantasize about the life that I wanted to live. But now its time to live in reality and reality is, we don't have much. We have a small 3br house with 2bth, barely a morsel of food in our cabinets, 2 dogs we can't afford to feed and a car that's probably an LA trip away from breaking down. Now I remember why I wanted to be away so bad. I wanted to escape this reality. But I took my chance for granted and now I'm back here living the very reality that I was afraid of. Even though this is what my reality is, I refuse to let it be permanent.

Although I have decided that just for right now I'm going to live in reality, I am still a dreamer and a believer. And I believe that life is what you make it and I am the only one in control of my destiny. With that being said, despite my life struggles, I am going to live the life of the very things that I aspire to be. I want to be a writer so I am going to live the life of a writer. I want to be an event planner, so I'm going to live the life of an event planner. Whatever I want to be, I am going to live it. Not in my dreams, but in reality. I am going to take my dreams and make them into my own reality. I know that I was always meant to be successful because of my nature to never give up or take "No" for an answer. I'm going to reclaim my life as a Howard University student because how dare they tell me "NO". That's unacceptable so I'm going back and telling them "Yes". I am here and I'm going to stay here until I finish. I've never known myself to be anyone's fool or no kind of quiter.

One day I'm going to take care of my family so that we don't have to struggle anymore. No more collecting cans, no more food stamps, no more of any of that. I'm going to save my family from this reality and create a new one. A better one so we can live happily ever after. I'm going to write my own fairytale beginning and be the beautiful princess who sits on the throne that she was always meant to sit on. I have a whole kingdom waiting for me to one day conquer and I will.