Is it the relatives we see every Christmas? Is it the friends that we chose to keep close to us? A combination of the two? Perhaps a family is simply the people who pick us up when life has beaten us down.
Courtney graduated from Massapequa High School in 2006 and entered SUNY Farmingdale that same year. She went to study graphic design, which at the time seemed to be a lucrative field. But problems cropped up even before she left college. Her school altered the requirements for her major halfway through her experience. Her adviser didn't understand the new program, resulting in Courtney taking unnecessary classes and graduating a year late.
She began applying to jobs immediately after graduation. However, she graduated after 2008, and no one was hiring. Courtney received only one phone interview after sending out countless resumes and then never heard from the company again.
“I just felt that everything was wasted,” she says, expressing a sentiment familiar to our generation. “All that money and five years of college right down the drain.”
Courtney was living with her mother and sister and dating Austin, who is now her fiance. Her dad had disowned his children and walked away from his family, leaving them with nothing.
And Hurricane Sandy was about to take what little they did have away.
“Sandy claimed my house, my car, and all my worldly possessions,” she laments. “So I was suddenly homeless in a blizzard.”
Rebuilding a life in New York was financially impossible for Courtney and Austin, so the pair moved down to Florida, where they live in a relative's condo. Austin works for a car rental company and Courtney is returning to school to study cosmetology, her generous mother paying her tuition.
“She's superwoman,” Courtney says. “She's always been two parents for me and she gives me more love than I could get from an eight person family. She's my best friend and even though she has so many people to take care of, she still takes care of me.”
Her mother's support reaches beyond sending her back to school. She also buys most of their groceries, as the majority of Austin's paycheck goes into paying student loans, gas, and insurance.
Courtney and Austin struggle with money every single day. Although they together with a reasonable rent, it comes at the cost of living one hour away from both Austin's job and Courtney's school. Before they managed to save up enough to have two cars, Courtney was driving four hours a day. Even now, they both wake up at 5:30am every morning to be at school and work on time. Austin's hours were recently slashed, and now the second car has become yet another financial burden.
“Even though we live together we barely see each other,” she says. “We see each other for about an hour before it's time to go to sleep and do the whole thing over again tomorrow.
Courtney still applies to jobs every day, and every rejection letter or wordless dismissal heaps on more stress and frustration.
But she refuses to let her hardships define her.
She has found renewed purpose as a cosmetologist. Her school is partnered with a program that helps recently released female convicts get their life back on track after their incarceration. She styles their hair and applies their makeup, all to prepare them for job interviews. Courtney takes great pride in this.
“I know that these women have it rougher than me,” she says. “But I feel like I help them and I'm so proud of my work.”
Courtney and Austin will be getting married on October 25th. It will be a very small wedding: just the couple, her mother and her sister. As Courtney puts it, “it's all the people who matter.”
“We've been together through everything for five years,” she says of her relationship. “Of course we fight because money problems put stress on everything but you always have to remember who's important.”
Courtney sees this stage in her life as a particularly steep set of stepping stones to the next. She takes nothing for granted and is astounded daily by the amount of love and support she receives from her mother and fiance. She knows now that she is on the right track. Despite all the frustration she is eager for the next stage in her life to begin.
“On days when I don't think I can possibly make it, I remind myself that I have a 100% success rate of getting through bad days.”
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