It was with high hopes that Dane moved out of his parent’s home and into the dorms near the University of California- Santa Barbara campus. He relished the new freedom of his surroundings and enjoyed the academic atmosphere. He was able to split his attention between focusing on his course work and his hobbies, essentially granting him the freedom that he’d always hoped for.
Dane pursued his studies and passions and was met with success. His grade point average skyrocketed in comparison to his high school grades and he was able to attend several major card tournaments he couldn’t otherwise before moving into a bigger city.
After a semester of late nights and high amounts of caffeine, he felt like he had a grip on the college scene and that he was working towards a bright future.
Three months into his second semester of study his parent’s divorced. Following on the heels of that decision was the squabbling: over money, the house, and everything. With the legally and emotionally charged mess, the parent’s couldn’t agree on anything and became embroiled in a fight for Dane’s younger brother, Phillip.
One day he received a letter from his Mother saying that she wouldn’t be able to help pay for his studies because of the financial strain of paying legal fees. She offered to let him come back to her house if he couldn’t manage to make things work down in Santa Barbara.
He never received a letter, e-mail, or call from his father, but the bank did send him an official notification that his account would no longer be receiving any more funds from his father’s account number.
His father moved to Seattle in order to take care of his ailing parent’s estate and his mother won both the house and Phillip; however, she had been a stay at home mother and had a tough time getting back into the work force. Eventually she couldn’t make some of the bills and let the telephone service drop.
Dane, who didn’t know who won the house or what happened to his younger brother, was cut off from communication with his family. Often not knowing the truth is better than knowing as sometimes, late at night, Dane envisioned his family having reconciled and awaiting his triumphant return.
Luckily, his dorm fees and tuition had been prepaid till the end of the semester and he had a fair amount of funds left over from his part time job last summer. He was receiving some financial aid and still had a good thousand or so dollars worth of scholarship money, but he would be unable to pay for tuition, books, and the cost of living without quite a bit more money.
He buckled down. He tried to throw himself into his studies and under-graduate work but was often disrupted by a deep feeling of despair and discontent. He found that he was losing focus and began to wonder what would happen if he simply quit. He was doing the right thing, staying there and going to college, right? Should he go back to his family? Does he really need a Bachelors or Major?
At this point Dane did what any normal college student would do: go on a binge. Usually this would mean going out with some friends and drinking until they started to suffer from alcohol poisoning, but in this case, as with most everything else in Dane’s life, things went differently. He longed to escape all of his troubles and for him infantilism was his choice means of escape.
Rather than go drinking, take drugs or use women he often just went back to his private dorm, diapered himself up and cuddled with his stuffed moose until the morning. Everything always seemed better on those mornings.
And so it was that Dane approached finals week. The course load grew enormous with finals and end of term projects coming due and Dane still had no new source of income or even a place to stay once the dorms booted everyone out for two weeks of mandatory cleaning.
Dane awoke at his desk, looked at his wristwatch, and dashed out the door. It looked like he was going to be late to class.
Again.