I must further my education so that I can have a stable job to support my financial needs when I begin living on my own. After doing my own research I found out that living on a minimum wage income, I will struggle to pay the bills by myself. Even if I had the money to pay for the rent and utilities, I will fall short for grooming products, laundry, and transportation funds. The only jobs that can fully provide for my needs require a degree or certification. Dropping out of school means I consent to living paycheck to paycheck, minimum wage, struggling to make ends meet. Although it’s moving to be able to say “Hey, I’ve been through x, y, and z but I am still here,” I would rather sit down in class, pay attention, and earn a degree so that I may one day live comfortably.

Besides, I’m not just planning to live alone for the rest of my life. I want a family. It’s not enough only to have a family – after all, you could have a family and live in a homeless shelter. I want to raise a family, and properly. I don’t want my kids to be stuck in one city or without a well-rounded upbringing. I want my family to grow up in a wealthy, decent establishment. This establishment will be filled with books, computers, daily newspapers, cable, etc. They will have plenty of resources to learn what they need in order to do well in school. In order to make these dreams come true, I will need the proper financial means to support my family and myself. The best way to do this is to obtain a degree and a stable job. Keeping my goal of having a family in mind provokes such ideas of determination to stay in college.

If a family and my own needs aren’t enough to keep me focused, there is always the fact that my dependence quite literally has an expiration date. That’s right, unlike most youth, who can stay at home until they’re ready or for as long as they need, I am in foster care. This means that I have until the tender age of 21 to remain in the care, custody, and service of the New York State Administration for Children Services. According to www.fostercaremonth.org, each year, an estimated 20,000 young people “age out” of the U.S. foster care system , 51% were unemployed , 36% had been homeless, and only a staggering 2% obtained a Bachelor’s degree or higher . Therefore, it is my responsibility to take care of myself and prepare myself for this world, because statistically, the cards are stacked against me.

I will do everything in my power not to become another youth who ends up in homeless shelters when she ages out. With motivation and hope in my blood and an expiration date in mind, I am determined to break the statistic and pursue my education until I am stable and ready for permanent work. That being said I have no intentions of dropping out of college, and becoming a part of such unfortunate statistics.

The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.

-Moulin Rouge

I thought about that quote everyday day before I closed my eyes and fell asleep. Sometimes I found myself awake for hours fantasizing of what it would be like for someone to actually love me. My entire seventeen years have been spent endlessly desiring what it would feel like to love and be loved in return. Just a glimpse of pure, sanctified affection would fulfill the numbness and repair the wounds inflicted on my heart for more than a decade.

All a foster child ever dreams about is to love and be loved in return.

I was given a tour of Saint John’s Divine cathedral two days ago. To have something so striking and beautiful within my reach and visible to my unworthy eyes is something that I will never forget. As I gazed in awe at the vibrant stained glass windows and Gothic architecture it came to me. THIS was what it must be like to be in love. My fingers ran across the 250 year old limestone charred from a fire that happened some 100 years ago, and it not only tickled my fingertips, but my very soul. Looking up at the Roman arches stretching across the ceiling I had the urge to not just cry but sob. These walls have been witness to endless suffering and endless recovery, and maybe the same feeling that I had being near something so magnificent is what it would feel like to have love. Someone who cares without a hidden agenda and sees through my exterior into my being.

Later that day I walked into the possibility project. I hugged the men who have not only became my teachers but also my role models. I hugged the woman who became my mother when I had none. I realized I felt the same emotion as when I peered through the gigantic rose window. It struck me that that feeling of peace, acceptance and most importantly love, had been mine since I joined this program. I had been too cold, broken and scarred to even realize it. This time I felt like crying not because of the love I lacked from my biological family, but rather the love I now possess.
I no longer have to fantasize in bed about being loved. I no longer have to search for affection in all the wrong places. I now see that the quote from Moulin Rouge is the most truthful composition of words that has ever been spoken. And finally I have a piece of that joy all to myself.

My name is Gabrielle, but everybody calls me Gabby. My last name is Garcia, and even though it’s a Mexican last name I am black and Puerto Rican. I was born and raised on the Lower East Side of New York in the Lillian Wald Projects. My mother is severely mentally ill, and my father doesn’t care for me much so when I was 15 years old child protective services removed me from my home. I have been living in care ever since.

The point is that like you I fell on very hard times. Because of my difficult almost unbearable home life I got involved with a bad group of people just like you did. I stopped going to school to hang out with my friends and smoke weed all day. Like you I had a turning point in my life. For me it was when I started attending the Possibility Project. It’s a program that enables a select group of youth in foster care to put on a play written by us in our own words. The program encouraged me to go back to school, and start planning a better future. Due to my hard work, and their support, I am on track to graduate in June. This program has not only changed my life and put me on the right path, but has also changed every other teenager’s life it has come in contact with.

We recently created a play called “Know + How =”. It was so successful we are now turning our musical into a screenplay. One of the plots in the movie is about a daughter who is struggling to keep her family together after child services finds out her father is abusing drugs and they are separated. That daughter is me ☺. We have yet to cast someone as my father, and I know this is a long shot, but I would love to play alongside you. We have been working so hard, and it would mean so much to us if you could show your support and play the part of my father (don’t worry you don’t have to sing or anything).

I know there are hundreds of people calling you trying to cast you in a part, and here I am a seventeen-year-old girl with only seventy-five cents and a Duane Reade membership card in my wallet. But you have no idea the impact you would make if you came to work with our program. Not only in my life but also the life of other youth whose only mistake was getting dealt a bad hand.

Whether you accept my proposal or not I am always going to admire you as an actor, and as a living testament that sometimes a young person only needs a nudge in the right direction for them to succeed.

Love,
Gabby

The concept was simple and yet somehow impossible for Paul to describe to me at first. Every year the Possibility Project, the non-profit producing the film, casts 25 foster care youth in a musical which they write and perform in about their own very difficult lives. They wanted me to help adapt the play they were writing at that time (June 2010) into a feature film.

Later on I went over the conversation in my head. This isn’t it verbatim but I think it illustrates what was probably the most hilarious part of it.

Me: You want me to shoot a documentary? No.
Paul: No, I want to make the play into a movie.
Me: Okay, you want me to shoot the play, and do some behind the scenes work?
Paul: No, I want to make something like “Crash” but not really “Crash” because I didn’t really care for that film.
Me: Wait, so you don’t want to have any documentary elements at all?
Paul: No, with a documentary it’s someone else putting there views into a film – this is their voice in their words.
Me: I mean it could be useful to have some so people get to know who these foster care kids are. Maybe we could do 1/2 and 1/2 like in “American Splendor”.
Paul: What’s that?
Me: It’s a movie where they flip back and forth from reality to show the characters in story, and the same real world people talking about their life.
Paul: No, it’s important to just adapt the play into a movie.
Me: Oh! Okay, great – We’re just going to make a movie then?
Paul: Yes!
Me: You know it’s weird because my whole life I’ve wanted to make narrative features, and I have no idea why I’ve been trying to talk you out of it.

We laughed  for awhile.

A couple of weeks later I got a phone call to meet up again. This time it was to discuss the creation of a marketing film to build up buzz. It was funny because we sort of skipped the “you’re hired” part, and went straight into discussing how we could possibly get funding for the movie. We rolled through the next few months meeting up now and then to discuss the trailer’s progress, and how everything would proceed if things did work out. Overall I figured we had a 20% chance of getting funding. I’ve been down the super fun road of fundraising for films after all. The piece was completed in time for the premiere of the show on October 6th, and Paul literally made a miracle happen within a couple of days. The night after the second show he pulled me aside to tell me the good news. I couldn’t believe it was actually going to happen, and I would have a real budget for it. It was like a dream come true, and I couldn’t believe it, and yet it is true. A real dream come true.