{"id":10833,"date":"2017-04-13T17:35:05","date_gmt":"2017-04-13T21:35:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mdcthereporter.com\/?p=10833"},"modified":"2021-02-25T16:55:23","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T21:55:23","slug":"mature-24-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mdcthereporter.com\/staging\/8357\/mature-24-18\/","title":{"rendered":"I Am More Mature At 24 Than I Was At 18"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_10834\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-10834\" style=\"width: 413px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-10834\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mdcthereporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Maturity-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Patricia Cordon and her 4-year-old son Santiago.\" width=\"413\" height=\"556\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-10834\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fun Times: Patricia Cordon spends a Saturday at the Miami-Dade County Youth Fair with her 4-year-old son Santiago Angel Roque. <br \/>PHOTO COURTESY OF GUILLERMO &#8220;BILLY&#8221; BORGES<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I used to envy my peers who I thought were farther in life than I was because they were graduating college and I couldn\u2019t even get past the first semester. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u2019m guilty of spending time on social \u00a0media comparing my life to the lives of others thinking \u201cI\u2019m so behind\u201d or \u201cI could\u2019ve had this degree if I had stayed focused in school!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After graduating high school, I lacked motivation. I wasn\u2019t focused, mature or appreciative of the opportunities I had in front of me. It wasn\u2019t until later in life that I stopped comparing myself to others and decided to finish what I had started years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I jumped from job to job because I was incapable of holding one for more than a year. I wasn\u2019t mature enough. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After spending almost a year unemployed, my car caught on fire because I was unable to pay for the maintenance issues it had. So now I was unemployed and carless. My previous attempts at college courses resulted in either failing or withdrawing from the class because I wasn\u2019t focused enough. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I wasn\u2019t appreciative of the opportunity I had to go to school for free and now I find myself paying for classes out of pocket to raise my grade point average because of the decisions I made when I was younger.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Being a young mother at 20 and having a complicated birth was just the beginning. When my son, Santiago Angel Roque, who is 4 years old now, got kicked out of his first Pre-K class for behavioral issues, he started showing signs of autism (flapping of the hands, lining up toys, hypersensitivity).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I spent the following year going to endless therapy sessions, evaluations and doctor\u2019s appointments so that he could get the help he needed and get accepted into the Florida Diagnostic &amp; Learning \u00a0Resources System, which specializes in providing education for children with disabilities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I never got the chance to tell Santiago\u2019s father his diagnosis because a week before I found out, his dad passed away in his sleep due to an overdose.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Experiencing the loss of my son\u2019s father was unexpected and painful. I was already a single mom before he passed away, but the reality set in once it was time to say goodbye. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It took his death to realize how precious life is. I realized it was time to stop being selfish with myself and use the potential I was given. My parents sacrificed for me so that I could have the opportunity for a better future, so now it is my turn as a parent to sacrifice so that I can provide that same opportunity to my son. He deserves it.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I used to envy my peers who I thought were farther in life than I was because they were graduating college and I couldn\u2019t even get past the first semester. \u00a0 I\u2019m guilty of spending time on social \u00a0media comparing my life to the lives of others thinking \u201cI\u2019m so behind\u201d or \u201cI could\u2019ve had [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":445,"featured_media":9011,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[2797],"class_list":{"0":"post-10833","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-forum","8":"tag-maturity"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>I 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