Honey, wake up, wake up, wake up! I got a letter! They’ll honor my TOEFL! This is so awesome! I’m sooo excited, wake up, wake up, wake up!
Oh, gosh, that’s awesome news, honey! I’m so glad, but this means that I’ve got a lot of studying to do by myself, so let me finish up my sleep until 9, when I gotta wake up and play dad all day long.
NO! You’re getting up! We’re having coffee together!...
…I sigh and shuffle out of bed, so I can be grumpy and droop over a mug of coffee, risking to have a headache for the rest of the day.
7:29am:
Oh my god, there is so much work to do! Did you write to the professors in the Sofia University? Did you ask them for references? Did you sign up for TOEFL? Did you study? Wake up! You gotta e-mail the University of Manchester and ask them what they’ll need from you!
But, honey, I’ve worked till 1am, I’ve blogged till 3! I need to sleep! Can’t we take care of it after 9?
So that’s how much you care? You don’t wanna do anything yourself! You want me to do EVERYTHING for you? Fine! Go back to sleep.
I twist and turn, feeling like shit for 5 minutes and shuffle downstairs, barely able to keep my eyes open, so I can immediately e-mail my professors for a reference letter.
***
Days went by…lots of communication…lots of research, lots of advices from nice, caring, true friends, professors, and relatives; lots of real studying, taking tests, thinking and dreaming. Those were times when once again we felt alive, when once again we had a plan for a change; a substantial amount of hope and the feeling of “this is the RIGHT thing to do!”.
7:40am:
Wake up, my references came! We need to print them, sign them, scan them, upload them, e-mail them to the university and by the way, Manchester is one of the wettest towns in the UK! You sure you wanna go?
Oh, my god, Ali, in the name of Christ, mother Mary, God, St. Peter, St. Paul, and all the rest of the f-n' saints, including all the prophets and the angels, STOP WAKING ME UP SO EARLY! I need to sleep! We’ll take care of this stuff later today! It doesn’t all have to happen by 8am! Don’t ever wake me up like that again!
***
So, all her paperwork was ready. She had references, they accepted her test scores , she had been working in the psychology field for the past six months, she had been taking classes in a Master's degree in Counseling Psychology here, she was the perfect candidate and she had everything ready, so we submitted her application later that day.
It was a momentous event, one, filled with beautiful, yet mixed emotions: with the push of a button we were really doing it! We were really going to show the world that we cared for our lives! That we didn’t wanna be waiters and stay-at-home moms for the rest of our lives, that it WASN’T our goal to just reproduce and raise an offspring that was gonna reproduce and raise an offspring of waiters and stay-at-home moms! We wanted to make a difference in this world, just like we always had – nonconforming and getting in trouble for expressing our opinions and trying to live like WE had wanted to and not how we were EXPECTED to.
A press of a button and the entire glass castle could shatter to pieces! Or were we really worth it? Were we really as good as to dare dream of a better life, would we really make a difference?
Next day, 7:00am:
Teni, I know you told me not to wake you up this early anymore, but I just wanted to tell you something:
I got accepted!
I love you!
Now go back to sleep.
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