Control

What does control as a child look like? I can't remember the look on my mother and fathers faces when I would ultimately make a decision that countered their very authority. I don't recall the "stops," and the "nos," that lingered in the air after my parents had watched me classically rebel. At some point you learn one of two things. There is a system already put in place when you come into this world. A heirarchy of old and new that form and get in line at the assembly to continue the practices of old. Mother and Fathers are right and you are without a doubt wrong. Even if you prove you are right on a matter, you are wrong for correcting the system. The system corrects and monitors itself. Parents know more, see more, hear more, understand more, and therefore have the perfect perspective to ultimately keep you safe, and happy. I realize I may be rambling a tad so if I may let me go back and clarify that I said there are two different ways of seeing things. Children often fall inline behind their parents and hold their native tongues, and ideals as sacred and right. It isn't until you realize that they are flawed and ignorant of certain things that you can make a decision to see things the other way. These children are what we call the "problem child." Oh come on you have all heard that phrase before, either used on you or one of your siblings. God forbid all of your children or you and your siblings turned out perfect you have most likely heard it from a friend or relative about their child. They are always up to no good, and they test their parents at every twist and turn. Most people don't really see this happen until teenage years, but some children choose to express this rebellion early. It often times lands them with remarks from the teachers, and swift and stern talks at home, sometimes landing at physical punishment to subside such behavior. I admit I was one of the children whom saw their parents as nobles and saints. I had instances of rebellion but for the most part temptation came knocking and I simply turned up the television volume. I had no need for my life to become more complex than it already was, and thus I had no need for change. My parents fed me and clothed me all the same. They took me to church and allowed me to be involved in whatever activities my little mind could think of. I got warm hugs, and kisses, and even in the midst of consequence my blanket was allowed to follow. (In case this metaphor is unclear, I am referring to the times at which I was put in time outs and I would bring my blanket into the chair with me and take a nap. This is a true story.) I had no need to question my parents because they, in my mind, had everything right. I was spoiled by no means, and therefore it let me be grateful when I did receive abundance of things. So why then as an adult do I look back and wonder had I challenged authority would I still be where I am today. I look up and all around me is drab and flat. I am stuck in a situation that outplays itself over and over a thousand times a day. Why have I trusted the people around me, as to a fault. I relied heavily on the support of my friendships, and family, and my work. Oh goodness my jobs. Are they not but a crutch saving you from devastation and despair. How many times my mother would come home and complain of the management at her job. Or my father would come home exhausted from the weight of overtime again and again in this dark slate of a winter. It wasn't a please could you, it was a if you don't we will find a reason why you aren't needed anymore. It was a sentencing my father could not bare year after year with three girls and a wife. You don't see the anguish as a child because you are too easily swayed by the packages, and feasts before your very eyes. Your parents are gravely tired from working their lives away, both to appease you, and appease their bosses. It is a jail sentence for them to lock down a retirement plan. While our generation was taught to not quite settle into a job that was beneath your potential, my parents had been given the gift of giving up. Give up and surrender your life to thirty years of passing time and neglecting the health of your body, your home, your mind, and well... your very dignity. You are but another cog in the wheel as they say. I don't want to be another cog in the wheel though. I have done it long enough and to what end does it bring? I followed the manner of my parents and I obeyed the scriptures and here I was ghastly underwhelmed.

I sat in the back of a class semester after semester, silently taking in the information bestowed to me by an elder of my field. I listened as my classmates chimed in with great points for further advancement. I watched as the halls filled with students, some lingering, some rushing, but all had intentions of being something someday. They didn't teach us practical skills anymore, but spoke words of theories, and historical information that had long been forgotten. The ways of the old kept coming up as class after class arragned itself. Practicality aside, I had to wonder if these classes were really my ticket out of this boring mundane life. I started to fear, and succumb to the need for instant gratification. It has truly always been my weakness. I needed that money more than I needed to sit in a class and listen to the history of people who no longer represented us as a people. So Freud had theories that are semi purposeful, but he was also demeaned and belittled in every class I had. Freud thought everything was a sexual innuendo, and the teachers almost all bashfully regarded his work as holding some weight and value while also being laughable and crude. This same man I later came to find out, was completely in a world of his own as he soliced himself with his own cocaine addiction. I learned in one of my psychology classes that he and many like him were on cocaine or benzos for most of their lives. Yet these were the people we held so esteemed and in much regard enough that years later their legacy carries on as scientist and men who paved the way? Can they not see they were men, and women, of their time who hated their own lives, and were merely curious of the reasons why we do the things we do? Why are we unhappy? I can tell you that sitting in a classroom full of students who mumbled, and texted, and smacked their gum made me feel impatient and dead inside. I wanted to be, not learn. I quit my education to pursue my life. I was dead set on having friendships, and having a job that gave me money so I could go live my life. What they don't tell you, and won't tell you is that in your twenties you can be poor and be happy. You have forty dollars in your bank account till next friday... who cares when a pack of Seagrams only cost eight dollars and ninety-nine cents. You went and got fast food, and bought all the clothes you wanted. You got obsessed with things and would save up just a little bit to be able to afford all that you wanted. You weren't preparing for the future because you couldn't see life like that. You didn't see that if you kept your spending habits the way they are now they would surely haunt your future endeavors. You don't see that staying at home with mom and dad means free room and board and free food for all. The only bill you had to worry about was gas, and even sometimes that struck you in the heart. You could be making as little as five dollars an hour and still be richer than your friends that chose to completely consume themselves in their school work and dedication to their future self, and so you had this sense of entitlement and inflated ego. You found yourself believing you were living your life in a noble way, and that you had everything so much better than those dorks who sat in a classroom and studied people who were sufficed to say, awful humans, who did awful things, and still advanced society. It wasn't until they graduated and the prospects of their money making capabilities had arose, that I had begun to question my own logical fallacies. I had led myself to believe I could cheat the system, but in return the system cheated me.

I squandered what little potential I had by moving from one dead end job to the next. I watched as my friends began to pass by me, and I wondered to myself how did we get here? How had I become the one who was no longer with money but constantly broke. How did I end up living with someone who had more earning potential than me? How did I end up again going to another dead end job? Why was I stuck in a repetitive cycle of earning and spending and spending some more. I had taken a look around and thought well I have for sure made the mistake of coming here thinking that without a degree I would amount to something. I enrolled myself back up into those classes with a fresh new eye for success and yet it was the same distant feeling in the back of my gut. No! There has to be better than this there just must be. These students are so young, they know nothing. They are bored just like I am yet they suffer for the greater good of their life... Why can they see it and I can't. My mind wanders as I begin to slowly slip from the classes one by one again. If this day it wasn't homework it was a report that I had completely done by myself not a single person in my group giving me any feedback. I have anxiety people, I can't just show up to class and present something we havent practiced. I skipped that day... and I knew that was the end of the education system for me. I failed that class because of something I could not control. That was it wasn't it... I have no control over my life. I get in my car and an accident happens at a stop on the way home from work. A job at which I make approximately eleven dollars per hour and I had just been given a six cent raise for the year. (One of the highest in my department!) I was tired and sore from a long day on my feet in flats, but it was an open road before me coming up on eleven o'clock at night. It was a no brainer that I would be fine, but the reality was I was not. I went to turn on a left signal and a girl whom had just graduated high school sped ahead thinking the green arrows were meant for her lane to go forth. Before she realized he grave mistake we had an impact. That moment changed my life because in the flash of an eye I realized there is no control! I could not have stopped that moment, she could not have stopped that moment. I am alive, she is alive and we are both well but there is totaled vehicles. There are insurance claims and deductibles. There is her celebrating at Chili's that night with her family that she had just gotten into UC and was going to be attending college there. Was she though? Car's are expensive, and dinner was expensive, and college is expensive and what if that one moment of her life changed the entirety of her being able to be successful or not. The reality is that everyone has those moments where discord comes in and wreaks havoc in the wounds and the crevices that lie barely holding the frame of your life together. I could have died. I could be dead and gone and no one would be able to read my words now. Do my words hold weight though in a world that is so vastly competitive and non understanding of the things that hold us in place or potentially hold us back. Control is the only thing that led me to believe I would be sucessful. I chose to go into the work force. I chose to work as hard as I could and build up my resume for later. I made a choice to give up on my education again, I made that choice not to attend the class that ultimately made me say to myself this is not it for you! I wrote songs that no one would ever hear. I vowed quietly at night that I would make it somehow in this life. These... are all things that I am realizing don't matter because there is no control. At any moment you could lose your job, your family, your housing, your own life, because none of us have control. So it is now as I am writing this that I continue to write because maybe just maybe this is a semblance of control that I have. Maybe this is the way I make a difference and define who I am without walking through a system that degraded someone like me. Perhaps it is with my own language, and my own pursute that I will find happiness. I take risk, I stop avoiding failure, and I start to push back and leave whatever small legacy I can on this earth. I am in control of that much.