Help a fledgling professional programmer makes some important career decisions.

I've been programming in some capacity since I was 8 years old (AT&T GW-Basic babeeeee) and am now 20 years old. I code primarily in C#/.NET (Can't do Mono, don't care for it.), C/C++, Assembly, Python, and I'm presently learning Lisp. (Yay Repl.) In particular I have seem to have a knack for reverse engineering, debugging, and code optimization.

Here's the deal, I went to uni for a single quarter, but had to drop out because I couldn't get any loans.

My Father's income disqualifies me for federal assistance and loans of any kind, and he refuses to cosign a private loan, so I don't seem to be able to get any money for school. Furthermore, my mother doesn't have the credit to cosign a loan (recent bankruptcy), and my father refuses to help me at all in going to school.

I did for about four months work as a programmer, for a systems migrations company. I was hired primarily because of my debugging knowledge, although it never came into play. I ended up creating an arcane mainframe data file parser in C#. However, I separated from the company and started my own business (not in the field of programming though, because me and the fellow I started it with couldn't find any contracts :( ) and went off on my own. The reason I left is because I was exempt salaried and I was being forced to work 70+ hours a week, refused access (without cause, there was no NDA on the data) to example data files for me to work with (I was working in the blind. This is unbelievably hard.) and various other reasons.

Oh right, and I was getting paid $1600 a month. Not the worst I've ever been paid, but considering the workload and stress, yikes.

Kind of regret leaving now, but it was all I could do to maintain my sanity.

Worked for myself, in various capacities since April 07, recently had to get a regular job because the company basically went down the tube for a number of reasons. (One of which involved being screwed over by UPS and PayPal at the same time.)

Honest-to-god, all I want to do is work as a programmer for a living, but I couldn't get anyone to hire me despite my knowledge/experience because of my lack of a degree. I've talked to a financial officer from a local community college and it doesn't seem immediately viable that I'll be able to go back to school.

Are there any worthwhile programming certifications that would be respected and known, and allow me to get back in the field? I'm basically paid $9 an hour to post on ebay at my current job, and I feel like I'm being wasted.

Is there some alternative that would allow me to go back to school? I'd personally love to just go to school full-time and focus on my studies. (Vigorous auto-didact.)

For that matter, anyone want to hire me? :D

Thanks to anyone who can offer any advice!