Another lyric borrowed from Howard Jones
I have not been eager to kick the previous blog entry with my HJ concert photos in it off the top spot but today I thought of something I felt like writing about, if just to do a bit of venting than anything else.
I am 25 and through some crap that was mostly my fault, I fell a bit “behind” in life, as it were.
Some of these things were:
- being a little shit
- not caring about my college classes and skipping a great deal of them
- dodging getting a job
- losing my driver’s license for a couple years
and so on and so forth.
In a movement that sort of began last summer, I started to try to get my life back on track. I now
- have a part time job
- have my license back
- I’m making student loan payments once a month.
- I pay for all my own clothes and toiletries, as well as most of the gas I use to get to work
- and I help pay for groceries
While I still get down on myself for falling behind and getting in debt, I try not to shame myself about it too much.
I know it’s a bit cliche to say “better late than never”, but I think it’s true. The only thing I can do at this point is realize I made mistakes in the past and work to correct them, however slow a process that might be. Being angsty about the past will only fuck up my future; it won’t fix the past that I’m lamenting about.
In some ways… this is really hard to do, the moving on part.
My parents are going through their own personal crises but sometimes I feel like they hold me back.
Don’t get me wrong; they could have thrown me out long ago, and I suppose they still could. I’m lucky they have allowed me to live here this long… but they resent their own kindness, I think.
They resent the fact that their 25 year old has a ruddy part time job, no college degree, and a buttload of debt (maybe 5,000 dollars total, which is a lot for me but I guess low in the grand debt scheme of things).
They resent the fact that I still live here.
I’m sure there are a lot of other things they resent about me, but there are things I resent too.
I resent the fact that dad will lose his shit and yell at me over stupid things that he himself does (like when doing the dishes, he will leave crap in the drainer and puddles all over the counter, the same exact behavior he used to hound me constantly for doing). So it’s only okay when he does it, now? What kind of shit is that?
It’s okay for other people to leave their shit all over the dining room table, but all I do is set my bag down on the table and suddenly I’m “taking up the whole goddamn table”? It’s okay for your son to keep stacks of books upon books at his table setting? Why? Because he didn’t hit the same life roadblocks I did and he’s actually in college?
It’s okay for him (talking about my dad again, what is grammar) to keep the garage in constant squalor but suddenly it’s not okay that I treat my bedroom floor like a closet? It’s okay for him to pull such childish bullshit as “If it’s not clean by Monday I swear I’m going up there with garbage bags?”?
No, it’s not. I know in some ways these are like petty bullshit things most people get done fighting about in their teens…
I promise I’m not trying to be childish here, but I just don’t understand this crap.
My dad is the one not working and getting disability right now; he’s the one spending all mom’s money on coffee he wastes and cigarettes he should have quit years ago, and I’m the one he calls “a leech”?
Oh, I’m sorry I’m not paying my complete fair share, but I’m still trying to get back on my feet here. Actually, to get on my feet for the first time. I’m still struggling and having a really hard time because for once in my life I’m trying to act like an adult, and it’s hard when you threaten me over stupid shit like the state of my room.
Here’s the thing; Nobody else ever goes in my room. NO ONE. I am literally the only person who ever sets foot in that room; nobody else has any reason to. If nobody else ever sees it, why should they care what it looks like?
As I said before, I know a lot of this is petty, childish shit on the surface, and perhaps it’s not worth it to pitch a fit over, but I honestly don’t get it. Why are things perfectly okay to do when my dad does them, but suddenly lazy, slob-ish, disrespectful things when I do them?
I can’t have a discussion about anything with him. When there’s nobody to blame, he blames me. I have become a sort of scapegoat for my parents’ woes about their own lives, because it’s very easy to pin it all on me.
Would my parents be a lot happier and have more money without me around? Yes. I’m sure their lives would be easier. Their lives would be so much easier and better it disturbs me to think about it.
However, I am NOT the reason they’re both unhappy with their lives. Even if I had moved out by now, they would still have the same problems, only then, they wouldn’t be able to blame it on me.
I’ve been meaning to tidy my room to a livable state for a while anyway, so I probably won’t end up testing my dad on this (although my parents have been saying shit like that for years and have never once acted on it), but I’m just irritated.
Nothing seems to get better in the grand scheme of things. Before, it was ” find a job find a job find a job find a job”.
Literally right after I did that, they started hounding me about “get your license back get your license back get your license back get your license back get your license back”. Now that I’ve done that? “Get another job, fix your car, get another job, fix your car, get another job, fix your car”?
You can bet your ass even if I were able to find another job, I would literally get home from the first day of working there and it would be “You need to hurry up and get your car fixed and move out”.
They manage to completely ignore any previous progress I’ve made in lieu of the vast amount of progress I have yet to make.
Nobody is debating the huge journey I still have yet to go on, but I can not ignore all the progress I’ve made up to this point. This time just two years ago I was unemployed, like 40 pounds heavier, not trying to look for work, and not giving a shit about anything whatsoever. But thanks for ignoring that.
Okay, I feel like I should say that before, when looking for a job, I didn’t look that hard, or at all.
Now, I actually am looking actively, but I’m still not finding anything other than what I’ve already got.
I’m sick of being treated like I’m not trying. My dad used to tell me that if it were him, he’d spend all day going in to places and putting in shitloads of apps and was convinced this was the reason I wasn’t finding anything.
Despite, you know, the job section of the classified ads being less than two columns long, it’s MY fault for not being able to find anything.
Thing is, that might have worked back in the day when he was young, but that’s not how it works anymore. I could spend hours a day for a month straight putting in applications everywhere, and if none of these places are looking for or need people… I would still not find a job. I could be the best dressed person and do everything right, and if they’re not looking, they’re not looking.
The reason I used the song lyric that I did for this is because my first reaction to dad’s “If you don’t clean your room” bullshit threat was ‘You know what it doesn’t matter you’re full of shit you contradictory asshole’.
And idk. In this instance it really isn’t worth all the drama, since I was considering tidying my room anyway, but I just get so frustrated with what I said earlier; I am making effort and have made progress, but I’m still treated as if I’m that 19 year old, who parties every weekend, skips class, doesn’t have a job, and doesn’t care.
And while everyone else is building decent friendships with their parents, mine are too busy bitching about petty bullshit and ignoring any progress I’ve made. They’re too busy resenting the fact that they allow me to live here than realizing that, yeah, it’s just as frustrating for me as it is for them. I’m not some mooch who doesn’t make any effort whatsoever to change their situation while their parents support them.
And while your intentions might be good with advice like “you need to make them listen talk to them etc”… you haven’t tried to have a civilized discussion with my parents in which your opinion differs from theirs. They just come up with a bunch of reasons why I’m stupid and my opinion doesn’t matter.
♫ friction and harmony ♫ 