Rebuilding a Life to Provide a Happier Childhood for Her Son

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/01/nyregion/neediest-cases-monserrate.html

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After an explosive fight with her boyfriend, Melissa Monserrate, 18 at the time and five months pregnant, shut herself in the bathroom and put a razor blade to her wrist. Her boyfriend found her before she could hurt herself.

On that night, in December 2009, he stood guard by the door until the morning, making sure she did not leave to try to harm herself again.

She had just moved out of her mother’s apartment in Ridgewood, Queens, and begun living with her boyfriend and his family.

The pregnancy was unplanned and difficult for Ms. Monserrate, who said she came from an unsupportive home environment. She discovered she was pregnant the summer before her senior year of high school and kept the news from her parents until she could no longer hide it.

She missed 60 days of school because of complications from the pregnancy and had to have a minor operation, but worked hard to catch up on missed class. She managed to graduate on time.

Much has changed since her son, Xavier Hormaza, 6, was born. “My son is everything to me,” Ms. Monserrate said. “But at the time, I wasn’t thinking about my son.”

Ms. Monserrate, now 25, and her boyfriend are not together anymore.

At his house, she recognized the same adversarial environment that she had grown up in, and she wanted to give her son a different childhood from her own. Describing her home life as “very chaotic,” she recalled arguments between her mother and stepfather that became physical. Once, when a fight escalated, a knife pierced Ms. Monserrate’s bedroom door. Ms. Monserrate covered the hole with a mirror.

When fights starting breaking out between Ms. Monserrate and her boyfriend, she decided something had to change.

“I didn’t even know I was leaving until I’d left,” she recalled of leaving his apartment on Halloween in 2014, adding that she had not even packed an overnight bag. “That night I thought, ‘I can’t do it anymore.’”

In an interview at the Jamaica, Queens, offices of Opportunities for a Better Tomorrow, a work force development nonprofit and partner of Community Service Society, one of the eight organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, Ms. Monserrate said that after she left, she realized she could not become the mother she wanted to be without first rebuilding her own life.

She left her son with her boyfriend and his family, went to stay with a friend in a two-bedroom apartment in Queens, and continued working as a cashier at a CVS.

At a co-worker’s urging, she also began therapy last June, finally confronting the troubles from her past that she had long ignored.

At first, her financial situation had been secure. When she was 3 and living in an old apartment building, doctors found elevated levels of lead in her bloodstream. She was awarded $100,000 in a lawsuit against the landlord — accessible as a lump sum when she turned 18. But unaccustomed to such wealth and with a newborn to care for, along with the expense of living on her own and helping family members, Ms. Monserrate had run through the funds by 2015.

Struggling to get by on a cashier’s wage of $8.25 an hour, she applied for public assistance and once received $191 in food stamps each month. But now, because she is a full-time student and is unable to work part time, she no longer qualifies for food stamps and her financial situation has been tenuous.

“But I’m still happy I helped my family,” she said.

The CVS co-worker who encouraged her to seek therapy also urged her to go back to school and find a better-paying job. At a Human Resources Association office in September 2015, while enrolling for workfare, a public assistance program requiring recipients to look for work, she met a representative from Opportunities for a Better Tomorrow.

She enrolled in several certification and credentialing programs to bolster her résumé. She received a certification in retail customer service, learned Microsoft Windows programs and took a public speaking class.

After completing her courses at the nonprofit in February 2016 and with the help of her friend at CVS, she enrolled at LaGuardia Community College, where she received financial aid to cover her tuition, and prepared to start classes the next month. But days before classes began, she learned that her textbooks would not be covered by her scholarship. If she could not purchase the books, she would not be able to start until the following semester.

Community Service Society expedited a grant request and provided her with $187 in Neediest Funds to buy her college textbooks. In September she qualified for the Accelerated Study in Associate Programs, which is providing academic resources as well as covering her tuition. Now in her third semester, and on the dean’s list with a 3.9 grade point average, Ms. Monserrate is a psychology major and hopes to become a clinical therapist.

“I want to give to people what I didn’t receive for so long,” she said, adding that her time in therapy has helped her move forward from the nightmares of a decade ago.

She currently shares an apartment with three roommates in Maspeth, Queens, and pays $370 monthly toward the rent. She worked briefly at her college bookstore and is now looking for a part-time job to help pay off nearly $650 in credit card debt.

But while her finances remain shaky, she said her life was finally coming together. She is again taking an active role in raising her son, helping him with school work and playing together in the park.

Her dream for her son: “I want my son to have a father figure. I don’t want him to go through life without him. I want him to grow up with two parents that love him and protect him.”