Am I Supposed to be Here?

Today for class I read FFF chapter 13, A Quick Academic Aside. Despite the fact that I love this book ( so much so that I leave it as the last thing I read, kinda like a reward), I found this chapter more boring than the others. One chapter I won't be interested in at all.
That was what I believed until I read the part about classism, something I really didn't think affected me until I read and related to the story she told. I'm going to talk about my boyfriend again, even if I feel like that's all I ever talk about. Bryan and the beginning of our relationship was what I thought about when I started reading the classism part.

We grew up together. We've gone to school together since kindergarten. We rode the bus together from the first day of middle school to the last day of high school. The only difference is that Bryan got off the bus in Lake Barcroft, the community surrounding our high school. Lake Barcroft has huge houses and a Association, needless to say you have to have money to live there. Which my family doesn't. I got off the bus in Bel Air, which is nothing like the Bel Air in California. It's middle class and all we have to our neighborhood is a newsletter that says who got married and who had a baby. In my mom's words Bryan and I are "from two different sides of the tracks."

My parents didn't go to college and don't have incredible money making jobs. I was always ashamed of this, which made me extra nervous when I had to meet Bryans parents. What if they hate me? What if they look down on me because my family doesn't have money? I've loved Bryan since third grade, what if I just don't belong in Lake Barcroft? I pushed my fears aside and met them. They loved me. They still do. I love them. They didn't look down on me then and they don't now. Actually, we are way more similar than I ever thought.

So, it makes me wonder why? Why was I so nervous to meet them? They really aren't any different than me. Money, that's all I was thinking about, the difference in wallet size. We are all just people and there's no changing that. The happiness I found with Bryan was free. All the money in Lake Barcroft couldn't buy that happiness.