Читать книгу Driven Class America - Cory Psy.D. Ash - Страница 3

My family gathered from near and far in our house in Columbus, GA. They had all come to attend my high school graduation ceremony. They had always shown great love and support to my parents, the same way my parents had for them. I was proud of my family with all the flaws and beauties. I could not have picked a better one.

However, this day I felt a bit removed. It was June 6, 1998, I remember because it was my dad’s 38^th birthday. I was 17 years old. Before going to the new civic center for my ceremony, I reflected on my journey so far. I thought about the places I had been and where I had come from. Four years earlier I was in Savannah, GA where my sister Shalonda died. Three years before I was living in Florida when my best childhood friend Mark died. Two and half years before I started smoking weed. Two years before I was in a car accident where I sustained a hair line fracture in my neck.

At 17 I was well aged. I had moved a total of eight times. I went to four different high schools in three years. All the while I adapted. It was expected, and it is what Department of Defense kids did. Besides resistance was pointless, it would only rift your family.

At any rate, I had arrived at graduation slightly damaged, never been incarcerated, no kids - one on the way, HIV negative, and not strung out on drugs. I thought that finally I would not be in tow to my dad’s military career. My family and I celebrated because we all knew in the fall I would leave the nest.