Confessions of a Shopaholic

Please reblog to anyone who’ll help

(my email is mlua2f@bangor.ac.uk)

I hate being a charity case. I’m always the one who helps, not the one who needs help. I’m always the person who gives, and I almost never receive. I don’t say this bitterly or resentfully, I like helping people, I like being the person to whom someone in need can come. As of late, however, I haven’t been that person.

A year ago, I dropped out of university thanks to an unhelpful staff, “friends” who turned out not to be so much, and a severe depression. Feeling lower than I’d ever felt before, I returned home to a disappointed family who wanted nothing to do with me and thusly, kicked me out. I spent a couple of days on the street until my previous employer gave me somewhere to stay and helped me find a job.

Over the months, I still remained in a shell - lonely, depressed - although, being a waiter, I had to fake some semblance of happiness to get through the day. I made enough to get by and met some genuinely great people at my job too - people who I’ve grown to love more than my family, to whom I haven’t actually been in contact with since April ‘09. These people - my coworkers, my friends - were the people who encouraged me to reapply to university again, regardless of my family and what had happened last year.

September came around and I had gotten in to university: a better one, a better course, Bangor University was everything my previous school hadn’t been. In addition, my dormmates were so warm and inviting that the very night I arrived there, I came out to them all. Well, I didn’t even come out - I just was out. I’d never felt so comfortable with people so fast in all my life. Within days, I was happy, and lively, and bubbly. My depression seemed to decrease every day and I was so happy with everything.

Only, as time went on, I realised that without my parents, funding my four years of education was going to prove daunting. Finding a well-paying job in a city where almost 50% of the population are students is, to this day, nigh-on impossible. And the loans companies weren’t being helpful at all - they don’t overly appreciate dropouts, regardless of circumstance. The university tried amazingly to help, offering money wherever they could but it wasn’t nearly enough. The odd fifty pounds doesn’t really help when you have £800 to pay on rent a semester, not to mention food, washing, and textbooks. I’m so poor I can’t even afford one of the textbooks for my course. Recently, my friends have put a deposit on a house for next year. I had to tell them I couldn’t live with them because I couldn’t get the £150 that was necessary. This lack of money has made my friends grow distant from me and it’s killing me, because it’s not their fault I can’t really socialise with them, that I can’t afford to live with them next year.

So yeah, I’m asking for money. I know you have no reason to give it me because I’m just a statistic, another poor student, but a few months ago, I was happy. I was close to my friends. I just want to stay in this uni - I dropped out of my last uni because I was depressed and unhappy. I have a chance to do this year right, with people I like and who like me back but I can’t do that. I can’t go to my family, I can’t go to my friends, and the government isn’t helping me no matter how hard I plead. But maybe you can.

I don’t care if it’s a penny, a cent, or whatever. Every little would help me. This has been my last resort for a while and it kills my pride to have to use it but if you can give me a chance, whomever you are, I would be eternally grateful to each and every one of you. Please.