In the years ahead of me, I learned that the world is actually filled with people ready to tell you how likely something is, and what it means to be realistic. But what I have also learned is that no one, no one truly knows what is possible until they go and do it.
Homeless person or business person, doctor or teacher, whatever your background may be, the same holds true for each of us: life takes on the meaning that you give it.
I said to myself: what if I woke up, and every single day I did everything within my ability during that day to change my life. What could happen in just a month? A year?
Dream, but don't sleep.
“But I know I didn't love school for school's sake. I had never really been what people call an 'academic' person, nor did I see myself becoming one. Instead, I took pleasure in the fact that my work existed in a social setting, one that was based on the promise of a brighter future. I knew that what I adored about school was that each of my assignments - readings, essays, or in-class presentations - was inseparable from my relationships [...] If I loved school at all, I loved it for what it provided me access to: bonds with people I grew to cherish. And nothing was better than working toward my dreams alongside people I loved who were doing the same.
Life has a way of doing that; one minute everything makes sense, the next, things change. People get sick. Families break apart, your friends could close the door on you.
Sleeping in a hallway around Bedford Park later that week, I took out my blank transcripts and filled in the grades I wanted, making neat little columns of A’s. If I could picture it—if I could take out these transcripts and look at them—then it was almost as if the A’s had already happened. Day by day, I was just catching up with what was already real. My future A’s, in my heart, had already occurred. Now I just had to get to them.
After all, isn’t that what really draws the line between childhood and adulthood, knowing that you are solely responsible for yourself? If so, then my childhood ended at fifteen.
One thing that helped was a picture I kept in mind, this image that I used over and over whenever I was faced with these daily choices. I pictured a runner running on a racetrack. The image was set in the summertime and the racetrack was a reddish orange, divided in white racing stripes to flag the runners’ columns. Only, the runner in my mental image did not run alongside others; she ran solo, with no one watching her. And she did not run a free and clear track, she ran one that required her to jump numerous hurdles, which made her break into a heavy sweat under the sun. I used this image every time I thought of things that frustrated me: the heavy books, my crazy sleep schedule, the question of where I would sleep and what I would eat. To overcome these issues I pictured my runner bolting down the track, jumping hurdles toward the finish line.
Hunger, hurdle. Finding sleep, hurdle, schoolwork, hurdle. If I closed my eyes I could see the runner’s back, the movement of her sinewy muscles, glistening with sweat, bounding over the hurdles, one by one. On mornings when I did not want to get out of bed, I saw another hurdle to leap over. This way, obstacles became a natural part of the course, an indication that I was right where I needed to be, running the track, which was entirely different from letting obstacles make me believe I was off it. On a racing track, why wouldn't there be hurdles? With this picture in mind—using the hurdles to leap forward toward my diploma—I shrugged the blanket off, went through the door, and got myself to school.
... In our family, if you said the words 'I feel,' they better be followed with 'hungry' or 'cold'. Because we didn't get personal, that's just how it was.
That’s when I realized that sex was not necessarily a shared thing. Sex was something you do with someone else, yet you can experience it separately from each other. It didn’t necessarily bring you closer. In fact, it could highlight the parts of you that feel most separate. Sex could reveal to you your own isolation. Sam had told me that this act added up to love, but I did not feel loved by Carlos then, nor, in that moment, could I feel my love for him.
Because I was turned so inward by my mom and dad, I got a chance to see how all the little tiny things come together to make the final product. So I was never inclined to wonder why this, or why that. I knew why.
"It's not about Harvard, it's not about a prestigious school," says Liz Murray of her incredible and uplifting life story, which she shared with an audience atDePauw University tonight. "It's not about that. It's about learning, about educating yourself and gathering enough knowledge to find your way through any little crack or crevice you possibly can so you can move up and escape from that trap you were born into…" She now has her sights set on a masters degree in sociology and psychology hoping to "understand what creates motivation in a human being and how to apply that in society. Is there a way to create upward mobility? Is there a way to break class differences?," she asked. Murray's ultimate goal is to create a coaching and seminar company that will work with groups, perhaps specializing in inner-city schools.
"What, you embarrassed, Lizzy?" he asked, briefly lifting his face from the rancid pile 14
and removing his newsboy cap. "Who cares what people think?" He stared into my eyes,
unblinking, leaning in. "If you know something's good for you, go right ahead and get it, and let
them go blow it out of their asses. That's their hang-up."