Monday, September 16, 2013

Reality will never meet your expectations

What does our age really say about ourselves?  
I'm 27. And at my age I feel as though in one breath I've accomplished so much and in another breath I've accomplished so very little. 
If you've felt this way at any age you know exactly what I mean.Receiving wedding invitations from people you went to high school with (or to add salt to that wound, wedding invitations from underclassmen you were friends with at one time or another), going to Walmart for something you ran out of and running into the queen of the school and her 3 illegitimate children accompanied by the baby daddy roaming the aisles behind her, glossy eyed hoping this is not reality, and so and so forth and so it goes. 
Should I or anyone else judge their level of success by others who happen to be in the same age bracket?
If you had asked the middle school aged John, siting in the principal's office during gym because the coach tried beating up the token fag, I would have ever so gently put down my copy of Harry Potter and told you at 25 I would be married to a gorgeous well established man with 2 adopted Asian boys living in the perfect house that would be the shade of pink you could get away with without crossing the line into gaudy, and I'd own an afghan hound. 
I'm 27 and none of that has happened... Was I delusional? No I just wanted to believe there was a reality outside of the one I was trapped in so badly that I just knew after all the years of enduring one uphill climb only to reach another higher one that things would HAVE to be perfect. 
Well the reality is nothing is.
I wanted to be a teacher so I could make a change in society. I figured if life wasn't going to give me the room I needed to make my perfect reality come to fruition I'd start cultivating young minds and giving them an example of what society and normal could be. Foolishly I thought I'd make an impression on each child I taught and the effect would trickle down creating a more palatable reality. 
I'm 27 and yes, I'm told I've made an impact, and even in some cases a monumental change in some of my pupils' lives but the closest I've come to seeing that acceptance or society change is running into a former student at Marshall's who was working the registers and not only recognized me (you never know if they will have the faintest idea who you are once they move on. I've found it's always best to wait for the signs that they know you to avoid that crestfallen moment where not only does the child not remember you but neither do the parents) but came on to me, asked me out and proceeded to tell me the kind of "liquid dreams" O-Town was referencing in their only chart topper I inspired . And so it goes...
But I don't feel like a failure. I truly don't. I feel like I live in a realm where everybody is moving too fast and they just refuse to slow down. 
I was engaged once upon a time. That sure took me out of reality for a solid two years and then promptly dropped me on my ass back into reality. Looking back though I'm happy it didn't work out. 
I guess the real problem I struggle with the most is defining what happiness is, more specifically what my happiness is. Yes I know what my favorite color, flavor of ice cream and member of Nsync is. But is this what happiness makes? 
The reality we live in now, whether we choose to see or acknowledge it or not, there's not time for true happiness. 
Society has made this reality about working. Working working working. Working your life away until you turn to look back and see that you may have accomplished all your "goals" but what happiness did you gain? 
There are a few things that I know make me happy. I am happy I'm still alive. I am happy I still live at home and I am happy that none of those middle school goals came true. I'm 27 and I still don't know what I want but at least I'm not stuck in the reality society has created. 

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