Middle America/Success

”To laugh often and much. To win the respect of intelligent people and
the affection of children. To win the respect of honest critics and endure the
betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty. To find the best in others. To
leave the world a bit better, whether by a garden patch, a healthy child, or a
redeemed social condition. To know that even one life has breathed easier
because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” –Emerson

0 0 0

I know who I’m going to be. It’s inevitable, almost, and I’m not quite sure whether to embrace this future or be wary of it.

Once I graduate high school, I will go to college. Not because I particularly want to go, but because to get anywhere these days, one must have more than a high school diploma. For four years or more, I will slave through painful, four dozen page papers on specifically dull topics no one cares about, pay a hefty tuition and room and board and hundred fucking dollar books (Why the hell would a book be worth a hundred dollars?) and drink lots and lots of booze.

I am going to be Middle America. I am going to work a 9-5 job, five days a week. I will most likely hate this job. There will be bitchy, incompetent co-workers who will get under my skin and a boss who’s an ass. The pay won’t be the best, but will be enough to get by, to live comfortably. I doubt my job will be anything remotely close to what I dreamed as a child: I want to be a detective… a chef… a vet… a writer… an actor… a journalist… But this is life. So I’m going to settle.

If I’m lucky, I will get married. He won’t be my soul mate, our love story won’t be epic or worthy of a TV show. He won’t be devastatingly good looking, or perfect. But for whatever reason, I will love him and he will love me. Who knows if in two or twenty years time we’ll get divorced, but with the divorce rate as high as it is, I wouldn’t be surprised.

Maybe, if we’re both willing, we’ll have children. I’m not too fond of the actual pregnancy or stretch marks part, but if we’re both able, adoption is probably not an option. I will spend the rest of my life trying to get rid of those damn stretch marks—and failing miserably.

No one knows how to be a parent. Some things are instinctual, sure, but discipline and loving and nurturing are all things that come with experience and time. Maybe I’ll be a good parent, maybe not. If I’m lucky, I will be.

I will pay taxes and groan about taking so-and-so to sports practice and picking up what’s-his-name from the after school clubs and I will fight with my husband and wonder if I’m achieving anything in this monotony called life.

As I grow older, it will be harder and harder to retire, and I will have to work more and more to save enough. Social security will be nothing—damn the government, damn you George Bush—so who knows if I will ever retire. I will need the money and the insurance though, because one never knows what illness will pop up in my old age.

If I am lucky, I will die peacefully at an old age. If I am lucky, I will have lived a long life with few regrets and knowing that I have accomplished something. But if there’s one constant in life, it’s that nothing is constant and that surprises are around every corner.

I’ve heard fascinating stories where the characters travel aimlessly around the country or the world, where they do drugs and smoke and drink and live life and their jagged views are so beautiful and honest and so much more vivid than Middle America. But I could never be one of those people. Who knows all of those underground punk bands and dress in rags from Value Village (and yet somehow makes it look good) and not care about school and spend their lives learning through experience and not hundred dollar textbooks.

I could never be one of those persons because I am a Good Girl. I am the future Middle America and it is inevitable. I’m not sure whether to be resentful of this fact or relieved because I know what to expect.

But for now I am only sixteen, at a stage in my life where I want to cling to my naivety and what is left of my childhood, and yet I want to explore the scary world of adulthood and hope, pray to god, that it is not as cynical and bitter as I make it out to be. Many of my dreams won’t come true, I probably won’t succeed in the ways I will originally want to, but dreams change as people do, and success, as someone wise once told me, “is a state of mind.”

0 0 0

Notes: Don’t ask me where this came from, because I wouldn’t have an answer for you. Perhaps it’s cynical, but read the quote at the top.

But seriously. Tell me what you think.