No one wins. Trust me on this one.
There's the luxury, the money, and let's face it, the women (or men) that you get if you "succeed". It's all tempting, really, it is. The luxury comes with a price. The money doesn't come easily. And those people you get from it, a lover or friends, are usually fake and in it for one thing: The reputation. Let's explore this a little more.
Succeeding means you have to go to school, get a damn good education, get a good job, and retire early. This is all common sense, isn't it? Lately, it's been a little bastardized (Oh, my favourite word.) with the laziness of humanity. It's comes more along the line of, have rich parents, brag and shop your way through school, pay your way into college/university/post-secondary education, find a boy or girl to have beautiful babies with, and take over the family business. Which area requires hard work? I couldn't find one either. My version of succeeding is a little more.. Complex.
I was never good in school. I mean, sure, I passed my classes and understood most of the stuff, but the teachers never gave a rat's a** about me. I was another girl, in another class, in another year. When I was in grade four or five, when you're supposed to learn multiplication, I was never taught it properly. My teacher focused on the richer families. Who cared about the girl living in a big house with a mother who spent the money on drugs, and the dad who invented and engineered some state-of-the-art refrigeration systems? Apparently not her. I "fell between the cracks", as I was to hear for a few more years afterwards, and I still don't know my multiplication tables.
My brothers were the same way. The teachers treated them the same way because they were "gang-trash". They dealt, they smoked, they shot, and they ********. It's how their world revolved. When asked about my brothers' grades, the teachers would reply, "They fell between the cracks". Of course, blame everyone but yourself. However, I know it's not entirely their fault. My brothers didn't apply themselves. But, I'm wondering, how big are these cracks they schools talking about? I hope my kids don't fall in.
I didn't have many friends growing up. I was a real shy kind of girl. My one best friend, Arthur, that I had didn't go to the same school. He went to some Fine Arts school because his mom was an actress in the Theatre and his dad was a real big Lawyer. They were my second family when mine was less supportive. And, I was never the big social butterfly. I'm a bit like that now, but I try to get over it.
The school years were the same. I craved attention, due to the lack of it at home, and I would fake getting sick or spotting needles in the playground for someone to actually socialize with me. This, of course, attracted the wrong sort of attention. The most prominent memories of Elementary school were trips to the Principal's office to have our daily "chats". She was actually just trying to find out enough about me to pull me out of my family. Of course, being a naive kid, I delivered and I still remember meeting a social worker. If I remember correctly, she was a bigger lady with short brown hair and a tan suit. Her questions were brief, and she put on some fake lipsticked smile to try to win me over. Luckily, I was a compulsive liar and pretty damn smart back then. I knew what she was trying to do. And I still remember one to-the-point question. "Do your brothers ever have parties?" To which I replied, "No. If they did, they would tell me."
The social worker tried to decide whether or not my environment was healthy enough. Honestly, it wasn't. My parents would fight until all hours in the morning, my mom smoked enough drugs to supply a prison for a year, and my brothers were never home. If they were, music blared and they would be screaming at my parents. My dad screamed a lot too, and blamed it on his Multiple Sclerosis. Growing up like that hinders you. What ever anyone says about it making them stronger, it's bullshit. I could never get homework done, and I never wanted to. But, the two things I got out of it was the incredible ability to lie without being caught, and being screamed at without showing a hint of emotion. I use the latter more often than not.
I am the only one in my family to have graduated, out of my two older brothers. I plan on moving on to bigger and better things. Not to succeed by modern terms. But to succeed in my own terms. Get an education, learn the s**t you need to know to survive under any condition, learn to know how to love and handle heartbreak, get a good job, get married for love and not money, have kids, teach them and be there for them like your mother never was, watch them grow up, be able to regret nothing. To this day, I regret nothing. What I've done in the past is done. I'm not going to go back and change it. If I did, I wouldn't be the person I am. My world doesn't revolve around "What if" and "Maybe", it revolves around "I can do this" and "Let's do this, now. Not tomorrow." I don't plan on being a teacher when I get older, nor would I want to, but I plan on teaching my children the principles I live by. They will have a choice. They can stray, or they can stay. I'm proud of them already, and I'm not even pregnant.
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Julii's blog.
Well, this is a blog. So, I plan on writing about anything that comes to mind. I usually rant -- Just so you're aware.
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