Back in the game

Right now I'm sitting across an apartmate at our dining table in our new on-campus apartment. She's watching some game playthroughs on YouTube w/her headphones on and I'm enjoying a cup of warm milk tea (been so cold lately). It's 3am but we both don't feel like sleeping. Living with 5 other girls, this is really the only time it gets so quiet that I can hear the water from the faucet dripping. I'm not complaining at all. Something funny is always happening with them around and there's never a boring minute, but it's only when most of the noise is gone that I get to really reflect. I look around at our first apartment outside of home -- our neat kitchen and always fully-stocked fridge and pantry, the mess of shoes at the front door, the comfy couch where I've taken many naps before my next class -- and I realize how lucky I am. It's different from my Tenderloin apartment back home, much different. There's no police siren or ambulance going off every half hour, no heartbroken or angry person yelling alone in the middle of the street at this time of night. The water in the shower here doesn't switch from hot to cold in a second. There's a thermostat-controlled heater. We even have a balcony with a beautiful view of the parking lot redwood trees and, from time to time, deer. I'm so lucky to be living here and be able to attend college on a scholarship. But sometimes I get a little ahead of myself, and I get caught up with thinking about what I don't have and I need to remember that this is more than I have ever had before. I trust my roommates with a lot of things and I've had so many good laughs because of them, but sometimes I realize how vastly different we are at times and how things like the quality of your upbringing can affect your decisions and opinions about a lot of different topics. Like I can't help but think "Really?" and just nod when one says her uncle's $1million+ home (of multiple properties) is "not even big", yet at the same time realize she has a salmon diet but is stingy about lesser things and paying back due money (to the point that she will initiate an aggressive debate over some cents). The same private-school-raised roommate would say "see, I never had that kind of opportunity" bitterly when I mentioned that I was part of a local tech company's mentorship program which taught low-income youth from my neighborhood how to begin coding, making me feel like I have to step around land mines and avoid talking about any achievements or programs I've done. And I sound like I'm reprimanding them but I'm also guilty of letting this mentality get to me many times, because I start to talk like I know what they mean, as if things like $3.50 vs $4.00 boba really matter to me in the whole scheme of problems in this world. And I lose a little track of who I really am or who I want to be.. where I come from, and why I'm here. It's not until I'm by myself and get a chance to take a step back and look at the bigger picture that I realize how much more grateful I should be.. That I'm able to get a college education and study what I'm passionate about. That every day I get to wake up in a warm bed and the only immediate worry I have is whether I'll be passing a midterm that week. That I'm given an opportunity that no one in my family, or many others in the world have ever had. This blog post is a reminder for me to not get caught up in the toxicity of those little things and forget my roots, for me to become more of the person I want to be and make the most out of this education that I've been granted.