I think it began by choosing the wrong college. I chose the #1 ranked university in the state. I thought rankings mattered. I thought education/learning mattered. Ha! How stupid. In reality, I should have chosen a richer school with wealthier students. No competition but huge connections. Instead, I chose a poor school with poor kids, but super competitive and little benefits. Outside of the state, the school is not known at all.
Case in point- I had a friend who went to my school, was on academic probation, and eventually kicked out bc she couldn’t even manage to keep a 2.0 GPA. She then goes to an expensive private university, gets hooked up with high paying high jobs in prestigious companies, all bc she knows the sons and daughters of parents who have high positions in said prestigious companies. She is literally dumb as a rock, but now she is a DIRECTOR of an entire department, and making bank.
Meanwhile, I am Frank Grimes. I did everything the hard way, and got nothing in the end. Hell, I even joined and graduated from the military- as a female 94lb tiny weakling. Talk about doing all the hard things 🙁
Everyone else are the Homers- got where they are by luck. Or just born into a nice, normal middle class life. I had to eek out a living, started with nothing and NO family and NO help, since I was 7. I started working in a sweatshop at 7. Meanwhile everyone else was still learning their ABCs and their hardest task/chore was to clean up their toys at home.
I am tired of being Frank Grimes. I’m old. Battered. Disabled.
All I ever wanted was a carefree happy life. A life free from stress, money issues, health issues, family issues. A life with love and happiness. That’s all I ever wanted. But no. This universe hates me and has fucked me over since birth.
I’m tired of it all. I’m tired of struggling.
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Oh no my failure echoes back decades into my family, centuries probably. But we’ll start with my birth, I can properly document from there. Despite being born to two fine and perfectly functional and normal people, I was born wrong. There was a time before modern science I wouldn’t have made it out of infancy, and I’m wondering if modern medical science was wrong.
But, modern science said the child will live. There were so many times that recent developments scraped me from disaster. Maybe not death, but maiming and not being forced to try and become a productive member of society for sure. But all that inherited wealth had to go for something, and it was to make this sick child survive into adulthood, with a full education no less, no one would ever call him less than
of course he was always less than. Different is always less than in this culture. You’re either part of the majority or you’re less than, that’s how it works around here.
So now I’ve limped along 19 years, better than I did through the first 17, sure because adulthood is far less arbitrary and stupid than my childhood was. It’s still arbitrary and stupid.
I’m struggling to point to a single point. The issue has always been that I want to do something meaningful, but to do so requires I engage with this blasted social machinery which doesn’t work most of the time anyway. It’s antiquated, dangerous, and harmful to almost everyone involved.
I guess if I wish anything, it’s that I studied a purer science, or a science with a less screwed up funding wise research landscape. I just don’t have the self hatred to be a psychology scientist these days. I wish I was a mathmatician, that would be swell. An economist would be pretty cool too, that’s almost sexy compared to the dreck coming out of journals I used to respect.
But I can’t construct the life shift that it would require for me to be one of those. I would have had to be born healthy. It couldn’t have been. I was born to be sub par, born for a science that can’t help but dissappoint.
Maybe… but the rich school with the rich kids is expensive. I didn’t go to uni with really rich kids, but they were still richer than I was used to…. and it was hard to keep up with them. So I started dealing drugs to make money… and that never ends well. There’s absolutely zero guarantee that the path not chosen was better.
I relate to doing things the hard way. The working class are fed the lie: ‘Work hard, prove yourself, and your talents will be rewarded.’ Even in my middle age I can see it’s not that straightforward, but the brainwashing persists. Even though I know I have to ‘play the game’, networking, playing politics, kissing ass, that working class mentality still rebels, because if the world were fair, none of that would be necessary. I would just be judged on my skill and work ethic. Which is of course the world I want to live in. So I sabotage the game, which only hurts myself.
The ‘carefree’ life you describe is kinda asking a lot. I don’t think it’s achievable in entirety. Every life has struggles, perhaps yours more than most. I’m sorry for that. The only Idea I have is: set low expectations. Small goals. Reaching too high is a sure fire way to feel like a failure if things don’t work out.