One day you are outside playing the dirt, with friends or just a stick then in just a blink of your eyes and you are in an office 30 years in the future with no hope of making it back wondering what the hell happened.
When you are young and vibrant you don’t wake up one day and say
“You know what? I think today I am going to forfeit all my dreams and just settle in."
It comes on you slowly like a cancer.
You go to school, You get a job, if you do well they pay you more
Then before you know it you making too much to be able to afford to quit.
Trapped.
If you’re young enough and free enough you can tear up your roots and just bail.
But you are just delaying the inevitable. Sooner or later you will have to find that one place to settle or spend the rest of your life living under a bridge with a name like “Stanky or Roadway Joe”
As you age it becomes harder and harder to be free until one day you realize that the whole job market is full of younger people. Younger people who have not had to learn what you know. They already know it because it already existed when they were born. It’s second nature to them.
Now all you can do is find a job and hunker down and take the daily grind in the ass. Because that’s all we are.
We (the middle class) are whores.
Selling our time to make a buck.
The light doesn’t shine in our eyes any more as we just stare dully at the wall waiting for the day to be over. Placidly laying there while the day does what it wants with us as we tick away the hours just waiting to go home.
We used to dream, then we realized that it hurt too much.
Now we just want to make it home.
We used to LIVE now we just exist.
I still remember the first time I saw the future and it scared the shit out of me.
It was 1979, I was about 10 and there was going to be a meteor storm that night
So my sis and I were laying out on the still warm sidewalks at midnight on a warm California night in San Marcos.
As I lay there on my blanket just staring at the stars my mind started to wander. I remember thinking how time passed and how soon I was going to be “older”.
My mind took off at a full gallop and I couldn’t reach the reins.
I thought how in 4 years I would be in high school and then just 4 years after that I would be an adult and out of school and everything I knew and loved would be changed as Iwouldbeoutofthehouse and on my own andmaybegoingtocollegeandwouldntseemyparentsormysisterandgetmarriednadhavekidsandoorororor
…… I freaked the fuck out.
I started bawling, weeping like my heart had broken.
I bolted for the house yelling for my mom.
Alas, She was in the bathroom.
I knew I needed someone to hold me and tell me it would be ok.
I needed reassurance.
I needed my mommy.
I begged her to come out.
“What’s the matter?” she barked through the door.
I didn’t know how to respond to that. I didn’t even know what the matter was.
I was scared but I didn’t know what I was scared off.
I didn’t even know how to express what the matter was.
“Nothing” I finally sobbed, trying so very hard to cowboy up
“never mind.”
I went back outside and I lay there,
I lay there trying to get my shit back together.
I was only 10 though,
I didn’t even know I had shit!
Much less that it was broke.
That’s where my recall ends… I don’t remember anything else about that night.
Now looking back I think I had a full fledged panic attack.
It may have been then that I really taught myself how to section off my thoughts and lock them down into dark chained trunks in my mind and shove them off into the corner never to be referenced again.
Imagine: A 10 year old boy having a panic attack about a uncertain future that he had no control over.
If he had only known the truth.
Gods! I could have written this. Except "girl". ya know.
ReplyDeleteI remember being in 5th grade and the teacher said, "You will all be about 47 in the year 2000." I couldn't wrap my little head around that. I was 57 and now 57 in a New York minute - trapped like a freakin' rat.