I am 23 years old, and sometimes it feels like my life is over.
Often I find myself thinking that I've seen the best parts of my short time on this gay earth, and that it couldn't possibly get better. My college years were pretty hard, and I went through some very difficult situations, but despite that, they were a mostly good time, and I learned a lot. I find myself missing those years quite a bit now: the structure, my classes, friends in the same city as me that I could see on a regular basis, partying, etc.
The newfound sense of freedom is incredibly daunting. It doesn't feel like freedom so much as misdirection and the gaping hole of existential crisis stretching open beneath my feet, and I don't know what I'm falling into. I'm gonna succumb to the void. Camus and Sartre have never been so relevant. They didn't used to be. I read their works when I was much more stable and idealistic. I don't even want to deal with how absurd and pointless existing is. I'm not quite sure what my purpose is, if it exists at all.
In Chicago I was sure of my place in the world, of what I was doing, that I was making an impact in a small way, that I was around like-minded people and could see the good in the world. It was there that I found exactly what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I came home, finished up school, applied for jobs, got interviews, and promptly prepared to jump into a full-time career doing what I felt passionate about, armed with a college degree. It took me a little while to realize that it isn't that easy. Graduate school is on the horizon, but until that's finished, it's going to be difficult to find work in my field. I have flashbacks to standing on the L platform, checking Transit Tracker on my phone, seeing that the train is always running later than the screen says it will be. Frustrated that it's not coming fast enough, taking me to where the action is.
I am constantly confused and discouraged by my experiences, and now understand what many of my friends are going through as well.
I was speaking to a stranger the other night, a very nice gay boy, who after inquiring as to whether or not I was "ethnic" based on my name (totally understandable; there are few white girls named Maria), asked how old I was and what I was doing with my life. He said that 23 is a time where you know what it is you want to do, but you also have no idea what you're doing. And that's totally normal. Most people feel this sort of way after they graduate college, for varying amounts of time. This isn't news to me, but this time the advice regarding my personification of the familiar Misdirected College Graduate trope came to rest comfortably in my subconscious, assuring me that things will be fine. I believe they will, and that things have to get worse before they get better.
Debilitating anxiety, awareness of the reality of my hearing loss, a shit immune system, a pesky cardiac illness where I have to be hooked up to a little machine, and interpersonal issues make it difficult to feel capable and adequate in the real world. It's hard to focus on doing what I love when I'm worried about paying my rent, taking care of other living beings, and just surviving. Yet, I understand that many are much less fortunate than I, and struggling a lot harder than I am. I consider myself pretty lucky regardless. I'm intelligent, educated, comfortable with who I am for the most part, and I have the means to make things happen for myself.
My dedication to my plans is still firm, and I'm hitting the books, writing an outline, doing research, putting myself out there to make sure I can follow my dreams as soon as possible. I see exactly where I want to be, and I'm going to get there.
Monday, January 19, 2015
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
I Just Wanna Be Able to Say Stuff and For Dudes to Stop Touching My Butt: A Casual Essay
I've had writer's block for probably decades, it feels like. I have some projects in the works but I'm having difficulty carving out time for them since I'm primarily focusing on making a living, and that's taking all my concentration at the moment. Sometimes you have file your art away for another time when you need to just focus on paying your bills and surviving. This isn't to imply that what follows is particularly good writing, it's not, but I do feel like letting some poison bleed out.
I've moved to a different city, and I've taken a new job. It's not anything in my field, but I enjoy it, and I prefer to keep busy and do work that leaves me tired at the end of the night so I don't have to think about anything else. I spent a lot of my time in the months before I moved keeping to myself and avoiding a lot of public situations, mostly due to anxiety but also because I think I needed some time away from the world to feel less angry at it. I suppose angry might not be the right word; frustrated, exasperated, disillusioned with its pernicious effects, maybe. When I emerged into the real world and threw myself into another urban setting I again felt, I guess, totally fucking pissed off at how people act, how society functions.
I rarely hold my tongue around people I know quite well, once I establish some sort of relationship with people they'll start to learn how I feel about things, whether they like it or not. I'm not right all the time, and I enjoy learning from others, even if I sound like a total moron asking questions. But I do know, like, one or two things which I am confident that I'm right about. This knowledge has allowed me to examine my surroundings from another angle and it's through it, I think, that my frustration with this gay earth has arisen. Regardless, I find myself unable to vocalize this frustration articulately in public settings.
I'm talking about people's blatant prejudices, bigotry, sexism, classism, "ironic racism," etc. Maybe you already know that these things bother me, if you ever scroll past my social media musings. Well if you don't I'll just enlighten you right now and let you know that I don't like that stuff. In the most amplified, flamboyant, manic way, I don't like that stuff. So it physiologically repulses me when a coworker (at a former job) describes an affluent, upper-middle-class couple at the restaurant as "ghetto" or "uppity," or when a man "shushes" me when I'm talking (seriously!), when I am called a slut by someone I met seconds ago, when my personal space is violated just by walking down the street, when a friend insists that they "aren't racist, I just hate everyone equally" or "if you're poor, suck it up and get a real job, hard work is the key to everything," or when I am repeatedly harassed and the only way for them to leave me the fuck alone is to lie and say I have a boyfriend, because the only way dudes respect women is through the threat of another dude. I've experienced most of these things within the past couple weeks and I'm not sure if things have always been this bad or I'm just now noticing them.
"Why don't you just speak up? Why don't you call them out? If you don't like it, do something about it."
Yes. I'll completely disregard the public verbal berating about me being a "complete bitch," the violent physical threats, the insisting that I "like it" or that I "can't take a joke", or that I'm some sort of social justice warrior because I get mad when people vocalize their ignorance. I'm not confrontational, and for a reason. I have experienced all of the above for throwing it back in peoples' faces, and I know others have experienced a lot worse. Additionally, I have being verbally abused, physically assaulted, or threatened (sometimes all at once) for talking back to people that have the stronger hand in a particular situation, not necessarily pertaining to some sort of prejudice, but for merely talking back, disagreeing, or refusing to do something they wanted me to do.
So no, unless I'm a hundred percent certain I'm in an environment where I'm safe, I probably won't tell someone off. Sometimes I do, but again, it's not always the best idea. And I shouldn't have to worry about that. It gets bigger than me, too. It's happening everywhere. When people retaliate against a system that mistreats them, they are faced with the realization that their rights are irrelevant, and they'll be snuffed out.
I'm not insinuating that my personal experiences can be equated to situations that exist in the framework of domestic and foreign human rights violations or anything like that, but microaggressions like casual "everyday" sexism, racism, etc serve to illustrate that these things are pervasive and inescapable.
I think it's important for people that maintain some sort of social ignorance to be educated on these sort of things, but it's difficult for me to implement this in my every day life, especially if it might get me in trouble. I suppose my point is that nobody should have to be anxious or worried about speaking up in the face of prejudice. And it makes me really upset every day.
Aside from whatever type of crisis that is, everything else is pretty fine. I'm having a very interesting time moving forward into this chapter of my weird little life.
I've moved to a different city, and I've taken a new job. It's not anything in my field, but I enjoy it, and I prefer to keep busy and do work that leaves me tired at the end of the night so I don't have to think about anything else. I spent a lot of my time in the months before I moved keeping to myself and avoiding a lot of public situations, mostly due to anxiety but also because I think I needed some time away from the world to feel less angry at it. I suppose angry might not be the right word; frustrated, exasperated, disillusioned with its pernicious effects, maybe. When I emerged into the real world and threw myself into another urban setting I again felt, I guess, totally fucking pissed off at how people act, how society functions.
I rarely hold my tongue around people I know quite well, once I establish some sort of relationship with people they'll start to learn how I feel about things, whether they like it or not. I'm not right all the time, and I enjoy learning from others, even if I sound like a total moron asking questions. But I do know, like, one or two things which I am confident that I'm right about. This knowledge has allowed me to examine my surroundings from another angle and it's through it, I think, that my frustration with this gay earth has arisen. Regardless, I find myself unable to vocalize this frustration articulately in public settings.
I'm talking about people's blatant prejudices, bigotry, sexism, classism, "ironic racism," etc. Maybe you already know that these things bother me, if you ever scroll past my social media musings. Well if you don't I'll just enlighten you right now and let you know that I don't like that stuff. In the most amplified, flamboyant, manic way, I don't like that stuff. So it physiologically repulses me when a coworker (at a former job) describes an affluent, upper-middle-class couple at the restaurant as "ghetto" or "uppity," or when a man "shushes" me when I'm talking (seriously!), when I am called a slut by someone I met seconds ago, when my personal space is violated just by walking down the street, when a friend insists that they "aren't racist, I just hate everyone equally" or "if you're poor, suck it up and get a real job, hard work is the key to everything," or when I am repeatedly harassed and the only way for them to leave me the fuck alone is to lie and say I have a boyfriend, because the only way dudes respect women is through the threat of another dude. I've experienced most of these things within the past couple weeks and I'm not sure if things have always been this bad or I'm just now noticing them.
"Why don't you just speak up? Why don't you call them out? If you don't like it, do something about it."
Yes. I'll completely disregard the public verbal berating about me being a "complete bitch," the violent physical threats, the insisting that I "like it" or that I "can't take a joke", or that I'm some sort of social justice warrior because I get mad when people vocalize their ignorance. I'm not confrontational, and for a reason. I have experienced all of the above for throwing it back in peoples' faces, and I know others have experienced a lot worse. Additionally, I have being verbally abused, physically assaulted, or threatened (sometimes all at once) for talking back to people that have the stronger hand in a particular situation, not necessarily pertaining to some sort of prejudice, but for merely talking back, disagreeing, or refusing to do something they wanted me to do.
So no, unless I'm a hundred percent certain I'm in an environment where I'm safe, I probably won't tell someone off. Sometimes I do, but again, it's not always the best idea. And I shouldn't have to worry about that. It gets bigger than me, too. It's happening everywhere. When people retaliate against a system that mistreats them, they are faced with the realization that their rights are irrelevant, and they'll be snuffed out.
I'm not insinuating that my personal experiences can be equated to situations that exist in the framework of domestic and foreign human rights violations or anything like that, but microaggressions like casual "everyday" sexism, racism, etc serve to illustrate that these things are pervasive and inescapable.
I think it's important for people that maintain some sort of social ignorance to be educated on these sort of things, but it's difficult for me to implement this in my every day life, especially if it might get me in trouble. I suppose my point is that nobody should have to be anxious or worried about speaking up in the face of prejudice. And it makes me really upset every day.
Aside from whatever type of crisis that is, everything else is pretty fine. I'm having a very interesting time moving forward into this chapter of my weird little life.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)