Another Twist in the Road

You know when you make a really big decision and you plan it, you spend months thinking about it and you hope that even though the odds are stacked against you, have always been stacked against you, through sheer determination and the power of will, you take that leap and once taken, that leap sends you spinning off into a new direction you never saw coming?

Welcome to California and here's your tumor.

4 months after arriving in Los Angeles for Garrett to attend the American Film Institute to pursue a Masters Degree, we have made the decision together as a family, for him to drop out of school.

Deciding between us was the easy part, and even that took almost 5 weeks of back and forth talking, yelling, and some tears. Telling our families, was a whole other issue.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and I really believe that, so what's another problem thrown into the mix of continuous problems that have been spinning around our lives since we met?

I guess sometimes I just want a break and once I get to that point, it doesn't take long for me to realize that I have a break. Garrett's tumor is not malignant, it's operable, though risky, and we are still married which is something that 2 years ago, I never thought would be possible now. Life is what it is. It's not easy.

The constant struggle is with the individuals in us and the parents in us. We are 30 years old, our parents owned homes by the time they were 30 and yet here we are, one of us going to grad school. I think we both have this picture of what a normal life should be for our kids and yet, that isn't their life. The fear is that our constant struggle to better ourselves, and them, may end up backfiring and yet neither one of us is quite ready to just stop. This is the part that no one tells you about when you have a baby as a teenager. Everyone warns you for the here and now, but what you don't consider is what happens when you are 30? What happens when your almost teenager has lived in multiple cities, attended multiple schools, and just when you think you've got the bull by the horns, it turns on you?

AFI was great while it lasted, but it was expensive. Far more expensive than the student loans taken to help pay for it and as we sat and counted up what we would owe after school with what we owe now, we simply couldn't continue like this. It just wasn't feasible anymore. Cutting it off at one semester means owing the least amount of money back as possible and with Garrett's surgery looming, and the costs we are about to incur, the road ahead is a bit scary. There is no savings when every penny has been spent on education.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't think about running away, going back to Tennessee and trying to forget I ever took a chance coming here but the bullheaded part of me just refuses to accept that as my reality. We came almost 3,000 miles, gave up everything we had, left everyone we knew and somehow, we are going to find a way to make this work because there really isn't another option this time.

This week is all about filming for a thesis project, and doctor appointments. Surgery is in 9 days, recovery is 14 days and then there's Christmas. Since leaving AFI, Garrett has been asked to join over 5 student productions starting in January, one of them for another film school. Once he heals from surgery, money will be the first priority and then if he has spare time, working on some of these productions until he lands somewhere and starts from the bottom up. One of his teachers at AFI told him when he was leaving, "Look Garrett, People come to AFI for three things and you already have them. You are going to be fine."

The light is at the end of the tunnel, but it's a long tunnel and it feels like we've been in this tunnel for a very, very long time. I remind myself that this time is different. For the first time, we are both out of school and we will both be working. That is a new dynamic. Would it have been easier to stay in Tennessee? To buy a small house in Oak Ridge and have a normal family life? Perhaps. But you don't know what you don't try and Dante, who struggled to fit in his whole life in Tennessee, suddenly fits in here and every day that I see Garrett do what he does, and see people that like his work, tell him that they need him on their projects, is another day that makes this worth it.