Not Settling
Since my string of personal and public problems boiled over and resulted in my arrest last August, I've been somewhat reluctant to accept the idea that whatever didn't kill me would end up making me stronger. I viewed my life as fundamentally ruined, and that any fragments I could shore against my ruins would be some sort of compromised happiness, settling for the best I could get, as I would now never be able to get the best. Instead of following my dreams, I was now recommended to try and find work in an industry that didn't care about arrest records, drug habits, or below-the-elbow tattoos.
I thought I was going to have to settle, to realize an anhedonic satisfaction out of a crumbled potential. In fact though, now that the shock and shame of destroying one's concept of self has largely passed (I cannot lose any more) the result is strangely freeing. All my life, people have had great expectations for me. So much so that I have the word "Potential" tattoo'd on me, inside of a hand grenade. Well, all that shit is dead and gone now, and I really can do whatever I want to (once probation is done, hyuck hyuck) I'm enjoying meeting people who are also damaged goods, I'm enjoying no one shaking there head and begging me to go to law school when I tell them I work for a moving company. I'm genuinely happy for my friends when I hear they're getting married or having children, but it's not tainted with the fear that someone will ask me when I'm planning on settling down. There is no reflexive jealous, I WANT to be a weird pseudo-participant in life. I WANT to just kind of observe things, for the most part. And now I finally can, free from being a people-pleaser.
I thought I was going to have to settle, to realize an anhedonic satisfaction out of a crumbled potential. In fact though, now that the shock and shame of destroying one's concept of self has largely passed (I cannot lose any more) the result is strangely freeing. All my life, people have had great expectations for me. So much so that I have the word "Potential" tattoo'd on me, inside of a hand grenade. Well, all that shit is dead and gone now, and I really can do whatever I want to (once probation is done, hyuck hyuck) I'm enjoying meeting people who are also damaged goods, I'm enjoying no one shaking there head and begging me to go to law school when I tell them I work for a moving company. I'm genuinely happy for my friends when I hear they're getting married or having children, but it's not tainted with the fear that someone will ask me when I'm planning on settling down. There is no reflexive jealous, I WANT to be a weird pseudo-participant in life. I WANT to just kind of observe things, for the most part. And now I finally can, free from being a people-pleaser.