Ah the college fair. Second one in a week today. It made me realize just how much i want to escape the little hellish city I call home and go off, far far away.
However. I am terrified about the future. Honestly. This is because I…well…I suppose I should start from the beginning. The very beginning.
So my grandfather worked his entire life as a writer. He wrote about stocks and bonds and gold and money and economy and, for a while there, he was actually successful. He had five kids (one being my father) and put them into this family business the day they hit the third grade. My dad was the youngest so it was the 1980’s before he went in and my two aunts and two uncles had already fled the nest for the most part. From what I heard, it wasn’t exactly the greatest of working conditions for an 8 year old but hey, he’s still here.
Well my dad, being the youngest and somehow, being riddled with guilt, decided that he too would take over his father’s company. My uncle went off on his own and made millions in some company. My aunt moved to the other side of the country with a man she didn’t really love. My other aunt got married at 19 and became a nurses aid because “college is just too…yeah.” My other uncle was working on and off for my grandfather but went into his own little business. My dad felt obligated to take over the company. Well apparently dearest Grampy decided that taxes were too mainstream and as were local safety codes and was eventually fined tens of thousands of dollars by the EPA, IRS and DEP. My grandfather had a stroke and passed away less than a year ago leaving all of this on my dad’s shoulders.
Basically, my life is the plot of Arrested Development without the money.
So you know, my dad ended up driving 400 miles every weekend to see my mom and, finally, proposed to her. Six months later they were married. Exactly nine months to the day of their wedding I was born. I was assured I’m a premie so you know, stuff, but anyways…So my mom was an RN and had horrible hours and my dad was working for my grandfather, writing from home, often skipping 1 to 3 paychecks a month. I was raised on little to no cash except for the small luxury of a Catholic education provided partly by my grandparents who had rented the apartment downstairs from them, where I’m currently sitting now, to my parents for free…for ten years.
So money was always tight and, if I don’t mind myself saying, I really didn’t make much sense. My parents were intelligent people but, coming to school, they were no great scholars. I was quiet and reserved and the “perfect” child in my manners and actions. I was the only child which didn’t make me spoiled (as we had no money) but made me appreciate my parents. This also made me want to move away from them as far as physically possible my entire life. (this apartment was where my mom grew up, my godmothers are living down the street from their childhood home and none are immensely happy…hence forth I base my wanderlust partly on this)
So I was always smart and, unlike on some occasions with my parents, incredibly good with money. I kind of broke out of my impenetrable little shell of shyness around freshman year and started to become incredibly good with dealing with people. I also, apparently, am good with explaining ideas and coming up with new ones. All of these things point to my being in business. So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to follow my strengths and do it and make money and be unhappy so my kids can do what they want. Ah, that’s another part of this.
See, I truly absolutely love the arts. I know that, in my heart, I’d be a damn good filmmaker or writer or journalist or screenwriter or director or, hell, even actress. Alas, I will never even pursue these things that I love mostly because well, everyone wants to be those things and, thinking realistically, the vast majority of them are all much better than I. I was also told from a very young age to never go into the arts as there’s either 0 money or you hit the big time and, being statistically more probable that you fail and burn in your misery, I decided that probably staying away from these things would be a good idea too. I toyed around with psychology for a long long time because again, I know I’d be good at this but I really don’t want to spend the majority of my twenties getting my masters degree so I can get a job where I sit and get paid 10 dollars an hour as I listen to sad things. I was always urged to go into the medical field because of my mother but I have too much of a guilty conscience that I would be convinced that, somehow, every patient that dies directly correlates to how I some how messed up. Plus I hate blood.
So. What’s not the arts, not health related and requires a peppy personality, the ability to function on very little sleep and would give a person the ability to go far away from their home?
Business.
So, you know, I will go into business, probably work in an office of some sort, possibly open my own business and make enough money (and save it properly) that my kids can have the chance to do whatever the hell they want without having to worry about there being, quite literally, zero tolerance for anything that doesn’t involve some definite stability and, most often, no passion behind it.
So there, dear internet, is why I’m so afraid. I’m afraid to fail. I’m afraid to disappoint my parents. I’m afraid that, if I don’t keep up with the “perfect daughter” standard my parent’s will resent me when they’re old. I’m scared to fail like they did. I’m scared to turn into them.
I want to be different. I want to be my own person. I want to be me.
Bittersweet, isn’t it? The way that I’m going to “become me” is to make others happy and lose myself? Really quite sad there. But oh well, why am I complaining? Just because I have to pay for every dollar of my college education, not drive my own car until I’m in my mid twenties or live in fear that I will dissapoint the world doesn’t mean I’m not lucky. I’m happy. I’m healthy. I’m alive. I go to a good school. I have amazing friends. I have a family who loves me. And I have you, internet. I know, no matter what, you’ll always be there to listen to my rants about this and, though you may judge me, you’ll never have the chance to interupt me or brush this off. You get it all at once here, minus the tears, minus the breaks, minus arguments.
You just get this. You get me. Maybe, just maybe, this is how I’m going to get to be myself and that’s rather wonderful, now isn’t it?
