A Bio of Alex Alex, As Told to NYU's Office of Financial Aid

The following letter is presented as I submitted it to NYU’s Office of Financial Aid early 2021, seeking a dependency override to apply for aid without my mother:

I was told the information I had provided was insufficient and full of holes/contradictions. The life of a person fleeing abuse is often hazy and chaotic because we do not have the luxury of settling down and getting our story straight before we have to run again.

I am sorry that the stories I’m telling seem illogical or make no sense, but illegally immigrating to Boston from Mexico at the age of 3, only to start 15 years of abuse at the hands of the woman who is supposed to protect you, and finally escaping by taking advantage of the opportunities education has afforded you, is not exactly the standard story nor does it fit with most people’s understanding of how a life plays out. I had also left out many details because relaying a cohesive narrative of my life so far will take multiple pages and I had assumed a shorter piece that touched on all the necessary points would be appreciated. For example, I had attended 6 different schools by the time I entered middle school.

Of course, an adult is going to analyze the circumstances of my childhood and think I made illogical choices, but their mistake would be assuming a child can think about things the way a fully grown person can. The whole point of applying for a dependency override is to share the extraordinary circumstances that have caused my living conditions to vary drastically from most college students. What wouldn’t I give to wake up every day and not have my first thoughts be “my father abandoned me, my mother tortured me for years on end, and now I have no parents”. All this reliving of past horrors is so that I, now an adult, can make the logical and healthy choices that a child should not have been expected to make.

My mother left me in Mexico when I was 8 months, to work in the US. Just before my 3rd birthday, she paid a smuggler to bring my sister and me over the border. We crossed on foot through the desert. She was abused by her own mother, who herself had been married off to an older man as a teenager. The man nearly beat her to death and my grandmother was locked in a cycle of drinking and relationships with abusive men who would abandon her and their children. Understandably, she inflicted the same pain onto her children, leading my mother to do the same to me.

As the abuse raged on at home, I found school and academics incredibly easy. My 4th grade teacher ended up referring me to the Steppingstone Foundation, which aimed to get poor children into private schools. I started at Milton Academy in the 6th grade, about 93% of the 45k tuition was waived.

The same program connected me and my family with the Boston law firm Ropes & Gray. The lawyers started my bid for permanent residency by getting my mother sole custody of my sister and I, as neither of our fathers responded to the court’s summons and we had never met them (hopefully that is enough to explain why I am unable to ask my father for financial support. I am literally incapable of finding him). The rest of the process seemed to go by quickly and by the age of 12, at the end of my first year at Milton, I was a permanent resident.

The financial aid officer who spoke with me questioned why, at that point, I did not come forward about the abuse my mother was inflicting on me. If I had residency, why didn’t I come forward? I apologize for not having extensive knowledge about the way the US gov’t handles the abuse of former illegal immigrants when I was a middle schooler. Maybe the xenophobic rhetoric and anti-immigrant sentiments that are baked into this nation’s psyche scared me into thinking that reporting the abuse would end up in my deportation.

And even if I wasn’t deported, I knew my mother, still an illegal immigrant, would be. Where would I go? None of the extended family in the Boston area would have been able to support an extra person, much less the four of us that were my two younger half-brothers, an older half-sister, and I. And on top of it all, I had no guarantee that I would be allowed to continue attending the private school.

I entered high school in the 2015-2016 scholastic year, still at Milton Academy. Freshman year was the first year I could live in the residential dorms. I leapt on that chance, unsure if I would survive being around my mother any longer. This year was also the year another scholarship I earned took effect. A middle school advisor had encouraged me to apply to the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation towards the end of 7th grade. They covered the tuition the school didn’t waive, and sent me to month-long sleep away camps during the summers of 2015-2018.

At this point, why didn’t I seek counseling? I was out of my mother’s grasp and most of my expenses seemed covered. For one, the dorms were not a permanent solution: I had to go back every time they shut down. For another, I knew that as a minor, any educator or mental health professional I talked to about the things my mother did to me would have been required to report it to the authorities. Even with the resources of a private school and behemoth foundation, there were too many variables and unpredictable outcomes, so I spent most of my time in high school sleeping and crying. I would stay up late into the night, unable to sleep, and then crash anytime I had a free period.

I was stuck in that miserable cycle, going from my mother’s apartment to the dorms, until the summer after my sophomore year (2017). I wanted to attend that year’s pride parade, but my mother had a prior commitment that she assumed I was going to help her with. I told her no for the first time. I had known I was gay since I was a child, and I’d come out at school a few months before. It was a big deal for me to go to the parade. She blew up and said that I cared only about myself and not the “family”, and that she no longer cared what happened to me so I could do whatever the fuck I pleased.

She’d always been hostile towards me, but she increased the hostility in the few weeks before I left for Nepal. I decided then that I did not want to see her ever again. I returned from Nepal mid-August, and left for school once again soon after to be a counselor for a program. Those were the last days I set foot inside her apartment.

This is how I got pictures of myself, cropped out of shots I was incidentally captured in

Unfortunately, the life I was trying to escape followed me to school. Early in the year I received a message from the Upper School principal: a social worker was here and wanted to talk to me. Turned out that my mother had hit my brother, and he had told his teacher. The teacher rightfully reported it, and because my mother had had social workers before (when I was about 8), social workers got involved once again. I don’t remember much about the conversation I had with the social worker that day. I was just tired. I remember looking at her and seeing her understand that I wasn’t going to offer up anything of use. Afterwards, the principal pulled me aside and asked me to go to counseling as a favor to him.

I went, mostly because I understood “favor” to mean that he wasn’t going to let this go. But I knew it was a waste of time. Still a minor, I couldn’t say what I needed to. The counselor tried to get me to talk by saying I could tell her about my “friend”. We talked about some vague emotions and burdens, but I knew, whether it happened to my “friend” or me, she would have to report every detail I shared.

As the holidays 2017 approached, I felt an increased pressure to find out where I was going during the school closures. Thankfully, two former teachers stepped in and gave me places to stay during the two weeks of Thanksgiving break. However, I couldn’t rely on their generosity every single time, and soon turned to gay dating apps in the hopes that someone would be willing to shelter me for the three weeks of winter break. Amazingly, someone did open their home to me and wasn’t a creep. I only spent two days at his place before I got a call from my mother, demanding I come home at once. The social worker wanted to know why I wasn’t at her place if the school was closed, and why she didn’t know where I was. Backed into a corner, my mother tried to save face.

I decided to leave the guy’s home and stay with my aunt. I didn’t think it fair to drag him into the mess my mother had created. My aunt at least knew what sort of person my mother was. I’d not wanted to stay with my aunt because her apartment was cramped enough without my taking up space for three weeks. Four adults and two kids already lived in the 2.5-bedroom apartment. Another cousin who needed a place to stay was sleeping on the couch, so I slept in the tiny room connected to my aunt’s room. I took my 8-year-old cousin’s bunk, while he went to sleep with his grandmother in her room. In the bunk below me was my aunt's 9-month-old son. The baby cried at night, as babies do; my aunt and her husband had no privacy as only a slatted sliding door separated the rooms; I only got more miserable as I assessed the situation. I returned to my aunt’s during the two weeks of spring break.

The return to classes solved one problem while handing me twenty others. It being the second half of my junior year, the college application process was about to pick up. My 21 year old sister attended the college information session for parents and handed me the information folders that had been passed out. The student end of the college application process took the back seat. I was too preoccupied sorting out the FAFSA and the CSS to worry about my grades, testing, or what school I wanted to end up at. I didn’t care much as long as it was in a city that wasn’t Boston. Junior year ended without much noise and gave way to a dramatic summer.

The last phone call I had with my mother was around late July. She demanded I go “home” after the UConn program. I ignored her. I blocked her number. I was only two months from turning 18 and called it close enough. I went to NYC that summer, to stay with another stranger in Brooklyn. It was a careless decision but after so much fighting, I was worn out. I soon returned to Milton for my final year of high school.

My 18th birthday came and went mid-September. After all I’d gone through, I had no idea what to do with myself then. Of course things weren’t simply over once I turned 18. I was still a high school student living in a dorm and was about to learn how finicky college financial aid could be. I signed up for a meeting with my college counselor and he explained to me that applying as an independent would be impossible. Not hard, impossible.

The best way forward was to apply with my mother’s tax information. He was in contact with the former-teacher-now-friend who’d let me stay with her during Thanksgiving, and had also worked at Milton a few years prior. In order for Milton to waive the tuition, they asked for my mother’s tax information every year. The former-teacher-now-friend had asked my mother for the tax information on my behalf so that I could finish my senior year, and offered to do the same so that I could apply for college aid. So that’s what we did, and I applied to college, signing the FAFSA on my mother’s behalf.

The financial aid officer said it was illegal for me to sign for my mother on federal documentation. She said I should have applied as an independent from the start, even though it would not have been granted. I don’t know what you would have me do here. How could I have made any legitimate claim to independence as a senior in high school? I had no income. The 12.50 an hour I earned for 2-4 hours of work a week I did for the school wouldn’t have been enough. I had no stable home. I was using my aunt’s address to receive my mail. College was the only out I saw.

In all honesty, at the time, legality wasn’t even an issue that popped into my head. From the moment my mother recognized that I had some intellectual capacity, she turned me into her preparer. From the age of 11 onward, she handed me most of the forms and expected me to fill and mail them out. It made sense in a way. She had limited English skills, and of everyone in the household, I read, wrote, and understood it the best.

In the fifth grade, I even filled out the parent sections in all school application forms, making my handwriting messier during the student portion so that admissions wouldn’t catch on. I initially gave her the parent section, only for her to hand it back while saying I already knew what to do. She’d had me sign for her on so many forms that by that point, it was reflex. The charter school she decided to enroll me in for the 5th grade required parents to sign the students' homework every day, but she instead made me ask if initials would suffice, and then gave me that responsibility as well.

I think that was part of the abuse. She viewed me as someone to do all the things she didn’t have the time or capacity to do. Along with filling out forms, once I turned 11, she had me: going to the laundromat on my own to do everyone’s laundry for the week; sweeping, mopping, and scrubbing the entire apartment; taking the T throughout the city to run whatever errand; and doing grocery runs at the Market Basket the next town over. She even had me teach my younger brothers how to read.

When I was 8 and my brother was in danger of failing 1st grade because his teachers couldn’t help him, she tasked me with keeping him from repeating. And when she started evening school to learn English, most nights I was the one who ended up explaining concepts to her or correcting her work. Sometimes I just did the homework for her.

The financial aid officer I spoke with today said that my mother handing over her tax info my senior year contradicted my claim that she did not support me financially. I was not aware that allowing me to see all the money she didn’t spend on me counted as financial support. I apologize for making a false claim. My mother stopped paying my school tuition by my freshman year, when JKCF took over. I got a job at school in my junior year and started paying my own phone bill. I don’t know how long my mother paid for my health insurance, but I have been covered through the university’s plan since freshman year. The last instance of financial support from her was the tax information I received my senior year, over four years ago now. The officer claimed a parent had made payments in 2019/2020. That is untrue, as the only bank account to be linked to my bursar account is my own.

The officer also said the third-party person wrote things that didn’t match up with what I had written. That makes sense. None of the adults in my life have known the extent to which I was suffering. This is the first time I’ve laid out my life path in such extensive detail. None of them knew where I was living or how I was paying for stuff. And they shouldn’t have; they’re not my parents or guardians. They have their own lives, independent of the mess I find myself in. Even after I turned 18, at what point was I supposed to go to them and say, “hey, the image you’ve constructed of me and my family for the last 10 years is a lie. Here, let me dump 15 years’ worth of abuse and suffering onto you. Have fun!”

Finally, the financial aid officer let me know she wanted more details, and I don’t want to get on a call and hear that my story is full of “holes” again, so here is a chronological list of some of the special abuse my mother inflicted. It doesn’t not include all the times she’s slapped, hit, belted, or otherwise physically harmed me. That happened so often that I cannot distinguish one beating from another. The insults, names, and weeks where she banned me from eating her food are also not included for the same reason. I hope what I’ve written has patched up all the holes in my story.

- 5ish

• The toilet had overflowed, so I grabbed a towel to soak up the water before it got out of hand. Upon seeing this, my mother forced me to kneel with the wet towel over my head as punishment

• 6ish

  • My mother forced me to swallow tablespoons of cooking oil as punishment for taking food without asking

  • I was forced to down 2 2-liter bottles of soda, for opening one of the bottles without asking

  • I had run away from home because I was afraid of a punishment awaiting me. When I was found and returned, my mother decided to make me kneel on the landing of the back stairs, just outside of the apartment, for a few weeks. I was not allowed inside while she was at work. She only let me in to sleep.

  • I often wet the bed at night, so she made me wear my younger brother’s diapers to school underneath my uniform, in order to embarrass me. She threatened to make the punishment worse if I took the diapers off at school and watched me put the diapers on every day.

• 7

  • She walked into the bedroom, got angry at the mess on the ground, and ordered me to eat the scraps of paper on the floor before she got back.

• 9

  • She used to lock the cabinets in the kitchen to keep us from taking food without asking. I figured out the combination and took a moon pie. She found out, pulled me out of bed one night, and sat me at the kitchen table. The light was shut off. She placed the remaining moon pies before me and told me to eat all of them. If I threw up, she said she would make me eat my vomit as well.

• 10

  • I used to steal 1-2$ every few days to buy stuff at the convenience store. One day 100 dollars went missing, so she made me go out on the street and beg for money. My brother had stolen the money.

  • I wrote, during some Steppingstone event, that I wished my mother and I had a better relationship, not knowing she would see it. When she found out, she yelled at me for making people think we had a dysfunctional relationship.

• 11

  • I had forgotten my keys one day, so I let myself in through a window after school. It was a half day; it would be hours before someone else arrived. My mother knew I’d left my keys. After she made me tell her how I got in, she sentenced me to 2 weeks in my room, with the lights shut off so that I couldn’t read. I was only allowed out once a day, to go to the bathroom.

• 12

  • A football game ran late and all the school buses into Boston had already left. I knew there was a T trolley stop a mile from Milton, so at around 7:30 pm, I started making my way to the T, since I’d been taking it for years. Teachers panicked because I seemed to have disappeared and they called my mother. When I got home around 9, she, angry as usual, forbade me from entering the kitchen and eating.

  • The kid whose locker was to my left took my jacket home one day by accident. I thought I lost it and when I got home, she accused me of selling it to someone at school to make money. She told me she wouldn’t be buying me another one. The kid returned the jacket a few days later when he found my ID in the pocket.

• 13

  • I had been tutoring so that I could buy an iPad. When I finally made around 300 dollars, I treated myself to some junk food from the store. When she saw the wrappers, she yelled at me and told me she would break the iPad if I bought it.

• 14

  • My aunts decided to throw me a surprise birthday party and invited friends from school. I thanked my mother (because I thought she’d organized it), so she responded by saying she was surprised that I hadn’t been lying to people and telling them I was rich. She thought I’d have a breakdown when I saw my friends in the apartment.

• 15

  • I brought up how difficult a brother was being, to which she said I didn’t understand how hard it was for him to grow up without a father. I should cut him some slack since not knowing mine made it easier.

********

I do not doubt many will read this and claim I am performing trauma for sympathy.

I am performing trauma.

I wrote this letter in the midst of Covid during my sophomore year to shock NYU into seeing the absurdity of the games they were playing with my life.

I could have written a more sanitized biography for my mayoral campaign, but I decided to repurpose this letter to show the City of Boston not just the childhood that shaped me, but how I respond to bureaucracy. I refuse to let entrenched powers set the rules of the game. The language of the letter is precise, intentional, and brimming with seething rage.

The elite institutions I’ve navigated my whole life have used trauma as a currency of legitimacy. Institutions, classmates, teachers, administrators have all critiqued me and my ideas for being too “radical”, “idealistic” and “naive”. They force my hand, only genuinely engaging with my critiques and proposals after learning of the battles that forged them. I figure, why not skip ahead to that part this time around?

Voting for me, and hopefully electing me to Mayor of Boston, is not a single discrete action that will fix everything.

Voting for me means making a commitment to yourself and to the city, a commitment to take ownership over governance and play an active role in shaping Boston’s and your future.

The commitment I make to you is to utilize my abilities, experiences, and insights to manage the labor and material resources of the city, to improve your life in ways you feel from day one. I promise to build from these daily improvements to set Boston's future as a national and global leader in education, labor, food, transit, healthcare, and healing.

My commitment to you is the same commitment I made to myself as a child. I have navigated cruel and indifferent bureaucracy, elite institutions that sought to use my image while neutralizing my critique, and a society that probed me from various angles to say “we don't want you here, you illegal, you queer, traitor, radical, poor . . .”

I emerged, not unscathed nor unchanged, but undeterred from my commitment to truth, honor, rigorous work, and joy. I emerged because of the people who took it upon themselves to make my world a little bit brighter. I remain steadfast in my pursuit of justice. I turn my critical eye to myself, knowing that the broad changes I call for require an honest reflection of self.

I can guarantee you will not like everything I say —you will even find me extremely annoying. I am prepared to play that role, because the truth sayers, curse breakers, and architects of healthy presents are rarely welcomed as such in the moment.

Most of my immediate and extended family has disowned me, a schism orchestrated by my mother over twenty years: a threat held over my head to keep me quiet, passive, meek. But even at 16 years old, I realized that the social conditioning of family could not satisfy my need for kindness. I accepted and accept the consequences for exposing the abuse, cruelty, and inefficiency that rule our lives.

Throughout this campaign (and hopefully my mayoral tenure) I will point you to observe your daily life, the physical and social changes to the city, to judge whether I have kept my promises. Hold me accountable to my judgements, to my predictions, to see how reliable my foresight is. I will talk a lot —I am a sly user of rhetoric, but my rhetoric will always be underpinned by concrete action and tangible results. And I will hold the other candidates to the same standards.