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It's Never Too Late to Dream

By Traci Dasher-Sullivan
Black College Wire

Traci Dasher-Sullivan

If you had told me six years ago that I would be graduating from college -- with honors, at that -- I would have said you were out of your mind. Back then, college wasn't even a remote consideration.

I dropped out of high school in my senior year. I had failed 11th grade, and found myself failing 12th grade as well, so I followed the lead of so many of my loser friends and gave up.

I already had my own place and a full-time job making $7 an hour (a whopping wage back in 1995, especially for a 19-year-old dropout). What did I really need school for? Add to that that I had developed a taste for alcohol and marijuana, and you've got a lethal combination of stupidity.

I spent the next three years changing both jobs and residences with lightning speed. My drinking diminished, but the marijuana use progressed into other drugs -- cocaine, LSD, Ecstasy. With the exception of crack and heroin, you name it and I probably tried it at some point.

The drug use fed upon my growing depression and self-hatred; it was a vicious circle, one that I wouldn't come out of until I had hit rock bottom.

It happened in the summer of '98. My drug-dealer boyfriend and I were on the Interstate somewhere in Richmond Hill, Ga., presumably on our way to a friend's house where we would be staying for a while.

We stopped at a gas station to use the phone. He returned to tell me that he had to go pick up a "package" and asked me to wait there for about an hour (drug dealers don't like strangers).

I agreed and he left. I never saw him again.

I had had no money, no transportation and nowhere to go, but thanks to some good Samaritans at a local church, I was taken to a women's shelter in Savannah.

I moved in briefly with a girl from the shelter, and soon after, I met my future husband and the father of my son (and baby-to-be).

To say that my son saved my life is an understatement. I had given up on being anything, on doing anything with my life, and then I met my son.

Looking in Jack's eyes, I saw my future for the first time and I knew what I needed to do. I needed to become someone he could be proud of one day. I needed to lead by example.

Because of him, I finally quit the drugs and the drinking, got the courage to enroll in college (against the advice of my parents and others who thought for sure that this was just another one of my many spur-of-the-moment whims) and the will to succeed.

To everyone's surprise, including my own, I did succeed, and on May 6, after many years of struggle, I did something I'd never done before: I graduated.

If there is any moral to my long and winding tale, it is this: It is never too late to dream.

If you want something bad enough and are dedicated to doing whatever it takes to achieve your goals, even if that includes making some sacrifices along the way, you will succeed in the end.

It doesn't matter who you once were; all that matters is who you become.

Just as the lowly caterpillar morphs into a beautiful butterfly, you too can become the ideal.

It will all be worth the wait.

Traci Dasher-Sullivan graduated from Savannah State University with a bachelor`s in mass communication (print media) with a minor in theater.

Posted May 29, 2006