For the sake of keeping my personal information personal, I thought I’d just introduce myself to you as Natalia, a 22 year-old university student. Seeing as how I do like this name, and I am a 22 year-old university student, I think this works great.

I wanted to start a blog here, to vent my feeling and frustrations from the real world. If you would like to read my ramblings, I would be very grateful! Then maybe you could make some suggestions to me… you know, for self-improvement and/or consolation purposes and whatnot.

One more fact about me: I am physically disabled. Not too severely… but enough to be noticed. See, I was born with little to no muscles in my legs, and as you can probably tell, this hinders my ability to walk quite a bit. It is for this reason that I need to wear leg braces, and walk with crutches. I’ve (obviously) learned to live with it though, and am sufficiently independent, so it’s really not a big deal.

Well, I guess I’ll start with the more relevant-to-my-reason-for-this-blog part of this post, here:

Today was absolutely terrible.

I recently (a few days ago, actually) received notification that I had a job interview with the company of my dreams! The interview is just for a 4-month internship position… but nevertheless, I was thrilled. Telling my parents was also a great highlight to my day, as they were able to share in my joy. So, on the same day I received that email notice, I replied back to confirm that I was able to make it.

The interview is steadily approaching now (it’s actually next week), and I’ve been taking great pains to get ready for it: trying to figure out what questions they will ask, how I should react to whatever they say, what questions I should ask them, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve not been obssessing over it, but I have been focusing a lot of my effort onto it.

Earlier today however, my mom calls me at school, to drop a huge bomb on me.

She says that after thinking about it for a while, the fact that that this job is outside of our city (it is only about a day’s car-ride away) doesn’t make her feel good. I should stay in the city, and apply for jobs available around where we live. I (with a huge rock in the bottom of my stomach) told her that I didn’t know what to say, and that we should talk about it when I got home.

We started talking about it a few hours after I reached home. She told me that either herself or my dad needs to come along and live with me, if I got the internship; since during the few months this internship will be taking place, is a very busy time in my parents’ business, I probably wouldn’t be able to go. I told her I was very independent, and didn’t get why she would think that I need someone to come with me… she told me that she expected me to understand. She said that it wasn’t about me being independent or not, but rather that the world is not a place for me to be living in alone… that I need someone there to help me out if I needed. I tried explaining to her my point-of-view, and she basically told me that she totally understood, but wanted me to listen to her anyway. That when her parents told her something similar, she completely agreed with them, and I should do the same with her. Needless to say, we got into a bit of an argument, before she stormed off to her room, muttering something about me not knowing that she loves me and that she doesn’t know why I would make a big fuss.

I honestly can’t agree to this, although I can kind of understand why she would be worried – any parent would be. I do however, have the same capabilities as any able-bodied person… I just sometimes take a longer time to complete my task. I don’t understand why I have to give up on a company that I have been dreaming about working for, just so that my mom can have some pacification that I am safe. For goodness sakes – I am 22 years old!!

On top of this, knowing that a quadraplegic friend of mine was able to move by himself to a different city for university, and had travelled all over Europe with friends, without any problem, just infuriates me. The fact that my mom knows about this friend makes me even more devoid of hope. Usually, when she makes a decision regarding me or any of my siblings, it is set in stone. If we even try to dispute it out with her, she gives us the I-can’t-believe-you-would-defy-your-own-mother reaction, and we are forced to back off, ridden with guilt.

I really don’t know what I am supposed to do… if I am in the wrong, or if my mom is. I have to be independent sometime, right? I refuse to wait until I am married, before I leave the house (which is what my mom wants, of course). I also refuse to give-up my right to independence for the rest of my life – my mom insists that I need to stay at home, so that they can take care of me until I am married and living with my husband, where I will finally be able to make my own life-choices, but only if they coincide with my husband’s choices as well.

*unbelievably frustrated*

Am I not entitled to a bit of freedom? Please let me know.