My name is Olivia Carter, and the morning my mother threw my plane ticket to Paris into the garbage can, I learned exactly how much my family valued my dreams—which is to say, not at all. It was five hours before my flight. Five hours before I was supposed to board a plane that would carry me away from Phoenix and toward the art program I’d spent three years working myself half to death to afford.
I was standing in our kitchen with the boarding pass envelope in my hand, mentally running through my packing list one more time, when my mother walked in and stopped cold.
Her eyes went from my face to the envelope to the suitcase by the door, and something hardened in her expression—that particular look I’d learned to recognize over the years, the one that meant she’d made a decision and expected everyone else to fall in line. “You’re really doing this,” she said.
Not a question. An accusation.
“Mom, I told you—the program starts next week.
I have to—”
She crossed the room in three strides, snatched the envelope from my hand before I could react, walked directly to the large green trash can by the garage door, lifted the lid, and dropped it in. The soft thump of paper hitting garbage echoed in the sudden silence. My little sister Jenna appeared in the doorway, phone in hand like always, and when she saw what had just happened, she laughed—that sharp, performative laugh she used when she wanted to make sure everyone knew she was in on the joke.
“What does a beggar like you need a graduation dream in Paris for?” she said, loud enough to carry through the whole house, each word landing like a slap.
My mother didn’t correct her. She just stood there with her arms crossed, waiting for me to break down, to apologize, to admit that wanting something beyond this house and this half-life was ridiculous.
Their laughter filled the kitchen—my mother’s low and bitter, Jenna’s high and cruel—and for one long, frozen moment, I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t process that the people who were supposed to love me had just thrown away my future like it was Monday’s expired leftovers.
Then something shifted inside me. Not anger exactly, though that would come later. Just a cold, clear certainty that I was done asking permission to exist on my own terms.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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