FA+
Shop
214
Views
Views
0
Favorites
Favorites
Category
Poetry / Human
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 50 x 50
File Size 14.1 kB
Report this content
More from clicketyclack
I don’t need your help feeling like shit about the mistake
You know what's probably not a good idea? Submitting a poem right after you've written it instead of sleeping on it and talking yourself down from posting angst. But hey, you guys are probably the only people I could post this for that aren't going to lose their shit. Don't worry, I'm okay and junk, just kind of down.
As with all the poetry I copy-paste into the comment section, this is really supposed to be in centered formatting with spacing that may or may not have survived.
P.S. Look for art from me soon.
At midnight I’ll be twenty-four years old this is my life so far:
I live with my parents.
I have a college degree which I am not using.
I work a mediocre retail job
-where people throw tantrums over ten dollars.
I have had one serious boyfriend;
-that was a mistake.
I live at home.
And you want to remind me of what a disappointment I am.
I don’t need reminding.
How could I not know?
Who in their right mind would live like this?
Who?
Who would want to feel like I do?
I haven’t been happy to have a birthday since I was fifteen years old.
Because everything I’ve done I’ve done late.
Everything I’ve accomplished hasn’t been enough.
I didn’t get a license fast enough
I didn’t get a boyfriend fast enough
I didn’t get my college stuff together fast enough
I didn’t get a job fast enough
I didn’t graduate fast enough
I didn’t move out.
I didn’t get a job in my field.
I failed.
I’m a perfectionist and I failed.
I failed at all the things I wanted you to be proud of me for.
I feel like a captured samurai.
I did not do the honorable thing so now I wander the enemy encampment
Less than human
But you think I want to be here.
I don’t know how to get out.
I struggle and fight but I’m having a fever dream and I’m tangled in the sheets and you’re screaming at me
to get out of bed.
I can’t.
If I had quinine to take I’d take it, but it wouldn’t stop the nightmares.
It wouldn’t keep me from being who I am.
And who I am is someone who is sick to death of being me.
I used to be proud to be me.
I used to have potential.
I don’t feel like I have potential anymore.
I failed and failed and failed.
And if I were to move out without getting a “real job” and I had to move back in
I’d kill myself.
I’m disappointed in you that you can’t see that
And you’re disappointed in me for everything else.
As with all the poetry I copy-paste into the comment section, this is really supposed to be in centered formatting with spacing that may or may not have survived.
P.S. Look for art from me soon.
At midnight I’ll be twenty-four years old this is my life so far:
I live with my parents.
I have a college degree which I am not using.
I work a mediocre retail job
-where people throw tantrums over ten dollars.
I have had one serious boyfriend;
-that was a mistake.
I live at home.
And you want to remind me of what a disappointment I am.
I don’t need reminding.
How could I not know?
Who in their right mind would live like this?
Who?
Who would want to feel like I do?
I haven’t been happy to have a birthday since I was fifteen years old.
Because everything I’ve done I’ve done late.
Everything I’ve accomplished hasn’t been enough.
I didn’t get a license fast enough
I didn’t get a boyfriend fast enough
I didn’t get my college stuff together fast enough
I didn’t get a job fast enough
I didn’t graduate fast enough
I didn’t move out.
I didn’t get a job in my field.
I failed.
I’m a perfectionist and I failed.
I failed at all the things I wanted you to be proud of me for.
I feel like a captured samurai.
I did not do the honorable thing so now I wander the enemy encampment
Less than human
But you think I want to be here.
I don’t know how to get out.
I struggle and fight but I’m having a fever dream and I’m tangled in the sheets and you’re screaming at me
to get out of bed.
I can’t.
If I had quinine to take I’d take it, but it wouldn’t stop the nightmares.
It wouldn’t keep me from being who I am.
And who I am is someone who is sick to death of being me.
I used to be proud to be me.
I used to have potential.
I don’t feel like I have potential anymore.
I failed and failed and failed.
And if I were to move out without getting a “real job” and I had to move back in
I’d kill myself.
I’m disappointed in you that you can’t see that
And you’re disappointed in me for everything else.
Category Poetry / Human
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 50 x 50px
File Size 14.1 kB
Hrh, I really want to go full advice animal on this. But to try to keep it short, we live in a world that generates roughly enough success as is necessary to keep people from rioting in the streets (and for the most part that's working, also contrast whatever could get people riled up 50 years ago with the realization that our first-world problems are still pretty first-world. (Which is where the conversation usually ends, but don't rile yet - death by a thousand social papercuts is still unpleasant and surprisingly orthogonal to indoor plumbing. Hopefully there's more to life than avoiding war and cholera.)
So you can either assume you and some vast majority of the population are hopelessly defective, or you can just realize that lots of people have interests in keeping things kind of awful but one way or another you're going to end up past that wall. (And that trying to pretend that it wasn't there, or is barely a hurdle, is part of the plan to sell you all the services and loans that all command such high profit margins because the odds of anyone finishing their payments currently are...?)
That said, I hope this isn't taunting, but if Being Home is part of the problem (where you have those arguments, and - based on that wince about the license - maybe live with people who also assume 'ability to show up on time by own means of conveyance' won't be the first check box on employers' lists re: their unique snowflake) ... as long as you aren't heading into something more abusive or worse, get out ASAP. If you're saving up.. anywhere it's physically possible, save harder. Cramming under one roof seems deceptively economical, maybe even environmental or whatever - but the difference between 'literally trapped' and 'able to be anywhere that is not immediately or randomly going to invoke conflict on you just because you're around' can not be overstated.*
Also take note of the "Silicon Valley" model: in the worst case, you file bankruptcy, grumble for a couple years and try again. They wedged that right into the Constitution for a reason (er, I'm assuming USA here - it worked well enough that most of the world eventually adopted the option) - all this cutthroat competitive free-enterprise stuff seems 'good for business' over all, but you shouldn't really let it kill you if you don't want it to. It appears that the only way to carve out an actual life right now is to struggle for every nickel and then gamble whatever you can on something worthy (and possibly the only benefit of this system is that it guarantees drama for those who think nothing is more worthy of everyone's money than tulips or Beanie Babies or bets on bets).
[Yeah somehow this became both long and a socioeconomic argument, but since my own vaguely respectable day job just involved going through all the paperwork involved in getting a bank to buy someone a house in the vague hope they might do well enough to be able to pay it back someday... while being compensated at a rate that seems otherwise fair but might need an extra zero to consider doing the same within two hours' commute. Asking that much for a place to live seems a bit like asking a thousand a barrel for clean water, but I guess a critter kind of needs the use of both to properly enjoy indoor plumbing.]
*Fn1: And if you happen to have had bad experiences before, review whether those problems were just caused by actual jerks. I just got out of the metaphorical basement into a real one after far too long (I didn't do too well with college, college didn't do too well for me, but if I wasn't in the best frame of mind to begin with, 3 out of 4-or-5 roommate deals ending up as basically crisis situations sure didn't help) and I'm finding that the time freed up from anticipating whatever unnecessary argument will happen next ends up being almost enough time to hold down a second job (if my first one held to business hours, but I'm starting to realize a plurality of them mostly do). On average, I think people only have to live with an average level of concern for the safety of their stuff and/or their person. [Although on the 'life turns out to be painfully ridiculous' side of things, I notice that outside of the 'season' here, the only things available near what my actual_apartment is costing are like rooms in a house shared with 6 or 7 other people, and I have a hard time imagining that working out better than it sounds. Depending where you are this also might mean that things only look bleak or expensive because every decent landlord with normal people for tenants first put their place on their market when it was ready one spring and it only becomes up at that same time of year thereafter when the lease renews if the old tenants have been the sort of people who are nice enough to wait for the lease to renew rather than skipping town and taking all the copper in the plumbing with them.**]
**A Thing That Actually Happens.
[I feel like I have explaining-stuff-Asperger's here, but if getting out of the house without needing twice life's savings every month is a thing, I just really wish I'd had people living in the present around to remind me of that obvious stuff a while ago, rather than people who last rented in Manhattan in the 70s and just knew that living in the 'queerest' spot was a good way to not get mugged on the way home. 'Imagine their surprise,' I guess, but not such applicable advice out in the normal 'burbs.]
So you can either assume you and some vast majority of the population are hopelessly defective, or you can just realize that lots of people have interests in keeping things kind of awful but one way or another you're going to end up past that wall. (And that trying to pretend that it wasn't there, or is barely a hurdle, is part of the plan to sell you all the services and loans that all command such high profit margins because the odds of anyone finishing their payments currently are...?)
That said, I hope this isn't taunting, but if Being Home is part of the problem (where you have those arguments, and - based on that wince about the license - maybe live with people who also assume 'ability to show up on time by own means of conveyance' won't be the first check box on employers' lists re: their unique snowflake) ... as long as you aren't heading into something more abusive or worse, get out ASAP. If you're saving up.. anywhere it's physically possible, save harder. Cramming under one roof seems deceptively economical, maybe even environmental or whatever - but the difference between 'literally trapped' and 'able to be anywhere that is not immediately or randomly going to invoke conflict on you just because you're around' can not be overstated.*
Also take note of the "Silicon Valley" model: in the worst case, you file bankruptcy, grumble for a couple years and try again. They wedged that right into the Constitution for a reason (er, I'm assuming USA here - it worked well enough that most of the world eventually adopted the option) - all this cutthroat competitive free-enterprise stuff seems 'good for business' over all, but you shouldn't really let it kill you if you don't want it to. It appears that the only way to carve out an actual life right now is to struggle for every nickel and then gamble whatever you can on something worthy (and possibly the only benefit of this system is that it guarantees drama for those who think nothing is more worthy of everyone's money than tulips or Beanie Babies or bets on bets).
[Yeah somehow this became both long and a socioeconomic argument, but since my own vaguely respectable day job just involved going through all the paperwork involved in getting a bank to buy someone a house in the vague hope they might do well enough to be able to pay it back someday... while being compensated at a rate that seems otherwise fair but might need an extra zero to consider doing the same within two hours' commute. Asking that much for a place to live seems a bit like asking a thousand a barrel for clean water, but I guess a critter kind of needs the use of both to properly enjoy indoor plumbing.]
*Fn1: And if you happen to have had bad experiences before, review whether those problems were just caused by actual jerks. I just got out of the metaphorical basement into a real one after far too long (I didn't do too well with college, college didn't do too well for me, but if I wasn't in the best frame of mind to begin with, 3 out of 4-or-5 roommate deals ending up as basically crisis situations sure didn't help) and I'm finding that the time freed up from anticipating whatever unnecessary argument will happen next ends up being almost enough time to hold down a second job (if my first one held to business hours, but I'm starting to realize a plurality of them mostly do). On average, I think people only have to live with an average level of concern for the safety of their stuff and/or their person. [Although on the 'life turns out to be painfully ridiculous' side of things, I notice that outside of the 'season' here, the only things available near what my actual_apartment is costing are like rooms in a house shared with 6 or 7 other people, and I have a hard time imagining that working out better than it sounds. Depending where you are this also might mean that things only look bleak or expensive because every decent landlord with normal people for tenants first put their place on their market when it was ready one spring and it only becomes up at that same time of year thereafter when the lease renews if the old tenants have been the sort of people who are nice enough to wait for the lease to renew rather than skipping town and taking all the copper in the plumbing with them.**]
**A Thing That Actually Happens.
[I feel like I have explaining-stuff-Asperger's here, but if getting out of the house without needing twice life's savings every month is a thing, I just really wish I'd had people living in the present around to remind me of that obvious stuff a while ago, rather than people who last rented in Manhattan in the 70s and just knew that living in the 'queerest' spot was a good way to not get mugged on the way home. 'Imagine their surprise,' I guess, but not such applicable advice out in the normal 'burbs.]
I will comment on this soon to help, but I'm almost out of a suicidal depressive slump, and I'm in danger of relapse if I keep thinking about this.
Just want to remind you that you are not alone, I'm also with you in that feeling of unemployable "failure," we're the types of people who never learned how to stop caring about ourselves, and now we're dying for it.
Good luck with the financial situation, the job hunts are hard as hell on someone without the strength to keep punching things.
(hugs)
Just want to remind you that you are not alone, I'm also with you in that feeling of unemployable "failure," we're the types of people who never learned how to stop caring about ourselves, and now we're dying for it.
Good luck with the financial situation, the job hunts are hard as hell on someone without the strength to keep punching things.
(hugs)
Comments