What goes around comes around...?

Karma. Does karma exist? The essential answer is "no". Good things do not happen to good people all of the time, and bad things do not happen to bad people all of the time. Well, I suppose that part of this is because nobody is completely good or completely bad. Everyone has their own justification; their own purpose, no? Everyone looks right in the eyes of their own higher power. So... karma can't exist. Who gets to decide what's good and what's bad? God? The government? The people? It doesn't matter; anyone- any group who tries to decide that isn't going to fly with everyone else. Our world is one, big conflict; we are the soldiers. I am an army.

This is the part of my life called "financially dismal." Whatever future I saw before me is now a big blur, wiped of its clarity the moment my mother was laid off. Really, how does that happen? The single parent with one elderly dependent and one college-bound dependent gets laid off.

Let's review the facts.

My mom screwed up big time. She's been in debt since I was in sixth grade. Is she still paying off these debts? Yes. I can't even... begin to name the idiotic decisions she's made in the past six years. Attempting to save her dying company with her own money, taking loans from her own children... ridiculous. Pride and prejudice. War and peace. More war than peace, actually. It tore the family apart. My brothers might as well be named Howard and Buglar. Except there is no ghost in this story. The ghost is money. Money is silly.

We've never had the best financial situation, but have I ever looked at my future and saw nothing? No. But the sad reality is that without money, there is nothing. Money is everything. Everything is silly.

So the course plots itself. Financial aid. Scholarships, grants, loans... when I apply for all of this, I get the big stamp called "unemployed parent." Whoopee. What, they shell out a few extra dollars for my sob story? Sure. Am I good enough to get everything taken care of? No. I have me. I have... scraping by as a good prospect for the next four years. I have the will to be much, much better than this. Because this? This is silly.

"The training is nothing. The will is everything. The will to act."