If someone told me my college graduation would end up with a slap on the face and police sirens, I wouldn’t trust them, but that’s exactly what happened.
Just picture a university courtyard packed with students and families during a gorgeous summer day and then my father slapping me right across the face.
The sound of that slap itself was loud and brutal. The photographers even lowered down their camera from surprise. My maroon-colored hat fell off my head to the ground, rolling right next to my graduation certificate. For an instant, all I could feel was the burning pain on my cheeks with all the people just staring at me.
My father stood right before me, raging and saying, “You don’t deserve that sertificate.”
My mother didn’t try to stop him. Oh, no. She herself started yelling at me, “You’re just a failure dressed in a gown. Stop embarrassing this family.”
My friend Chloe rushed towards me, leaned in and asked me if I was okay.
But all I could look at was my parents. These were the very people who had been telling everybody in the extended family for the last four years that I had dropped out of college. The reason? They were too ashamed to tell the truth about the fact that I had earned a scholarship and succeeded without their help.
This day made them feel horrible and they couldn’t stand seeing me in the cap and gown.
My younger brother, Ethan, followed them in an expensive suit. He was all smiles and felt good about the slap. He was the golden child who received private tutoring and all the praises despite failing out of the community college twice. Yet when the moment came for my name to be called with honors, his smile faded away.
It was then that my father lunged toward me.
The campus security guard began making his way towards us, but I lifted my hand to stop him. “No,” I stated, surprisingly calm. “Let him continue.”
Dad stopped completely taken aback. I bent down to retrieve my cap and shook off the folder with my diploma. My face was aching, but I managed to meet his gaze.
“You are correct,” I stated out loud. “Everyone needs to know the truth.”
“Mia, don’t you dare,” my mom warned me.
I ignored her, and then turned around and marched towards the main podium where Dr. Wallace, the university president, still held the microphone. I took out my folder that I had kept throughout the day and handed it to him.
“Sir,” I said into the microphone, “Before I leave this campus, I need to file a complaint against those individuals who have stolen my tuition money, committed forgery on my loan papers, and are trying to erase me from existence.”
My father roared from behind me, “Mia, stop talking now!”
The microphone was already on and all eyes were on me.
Dr. Wallace looked from my trembling hands to my shocked parents’ faces. “Miss Bennett, are you making a formal complaint?”
“I am,” I said. “I even have proof.”
My mother made a loud, exaggerated laugh. “It’s absolutely ridiculous. Mia has always been so dramatic!”
I turned to look at her. “Was I dramatic when you got student loans taken in my name?”
Her smile disappeared completely.
I’d been attending Westbridge University four years prior. I needed to fund what wasn’t covered by my scholarship through two exhausting jobs. During my sophomore year, I found out about three enormous loans that had been taken out under my Social Security number without my permission whatsoever. These funds had been directly deposited into my parent’s account.
During my confrontation, my dad gaslit me by stating that “I owed them for bringing me up.” My mother told me that “no one would believe a teenager who just wants attention.” I was broke, scared, and alone at that time. Thus, I remained silent. However, I began gathering evidence.
I had all I needed by graduation day. In that envelope, there were documents, forged signatures, and a statement of a financial-aid investigator who had been helping me behind the scenes for six months.
My dad was trying to shove his way through the crowd. “These are private family affairs!”
The university campus police officer immediately stopped him. “Sir, stay back.”
I leaned back against the microphone again. “They stole more than money from me,” I shouted. “They said I was an addict. They used my identity to finance their son’s failed business ventures when I was sleeping in my car between jobs.”
People started whispering.
“How dare you lie about what happened,” my mother started shouting.
This would have been enough to break me. But then, Aunt Linda, my mother’s sister, forced her way to the front. Her face was green with nausea. “Karen,” Linda whispered to my mom, “you told us Mia stopped talking to us because she was an addict.”
It was like someone had dropped an anvil on my heart. I did not know it had come to this.
My father grabbed my mother’s arm, “We’re getting out of here.”
“Actually, yo are not going anywhere” boomed Dr. Wallace over the speakers, “campus police have already contacted local authorities.”
My mother started crying, but not because she felt sorry for everything they had done to me but because their lies and frauds had been exposed to the world. She turned to me and said, “Mia, think of your brother.”
And I turned to Ethan, who could not even make eye contact with me, and then turned back to her.
“Just for once,” I told her, “think of me.”
The police came before the crowd left. It all felt very painful, but was really the only thing I could do for myself. As my parents were ushered into an interrogation room, I sat with Chloe on the other side of a glass door and placed an ice pack on my swollen cheek.
“You did it,” she said.
I stared down at my empty diploma envelope. “I didn’t want it to be like this.”
It’s the part that nobody ever warns you about standing up for yourself. It’s not always empowering; sometimes, it’s like grieving the family that you never really had.
Exactly one week later, the investigation was opened. Paperwork and documentation proved everything I had feared. Ethan called me once and raged at me, telling me I had destroyed everything. I asked him if he knew about the loans but he didn’t answer.
In the end, my parents took plea deals to avoid prison.
The courts made my parents make restitutions; the fraudulent loans were wiped from my name and with the help of my aunt Linda, I found an apartment to live in. For the first time in my life, a family member actually apologized to me without expecting me to console them.
Two months later, the framed degree came.
I felt broken, but I also felt free.
They planned my graduation day to become the day when they will humiliate me in front of everyone. Instead, it became the day when the whole world got to know exactly who my parents were.
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