Do Not Feel Bad For Me After Reading This
I am a liar to the world, my family, and myself. I have failed to live up to the very basic expectations I set up for myself. I’m lazy and lack any drive to complete the simplest of tasks. I’m getting fat and out of shape. I’ve recognized the problem and formulated a solution (going to the gym, eating better, cutting out fast food) and yet, with everything set out before me, my drive simply isn’t there. I’m worried about my major. I love music, but is being a choir director really all I see myself as? I feel like I’m so much better than this, but if I switch majors, I’m turning away from what got me into this institution in the first place. I’d be doing a disservice to Doc and Dr. G and everyone in the Choral Music program. I tell people I’m double majoring in a form of business but I haven’t taken the steps to make that a reality. I take the performative steps of sitting down with an advisor and asking questions, but I never follow through. I lose interest or even just set myself up for failure to prevent the shame of failing to reach that goal. Every day I wake up just 5 minutes before class and spend nearly every waking moment in bed or on the computer. I have no activity in my life. It’s a crippling cycle of inactivity and laziness. I love cars. I want to drive them. How could I possibly make a career out of driving normal cars every day? Kelley Blue Book? But then I’d have to write about them. Do I really want to write articles about cars? Or do I just want to drive them and experience the newness of a car? Escape from the mediocrity of my life and cocoon myself in plastic and fabric and screen and steering wheel? I could be a car salesman. But is that really the lofty career my parents are expecting out of me? The career they sacrificed so much for? I want to be a singer. But I can’t imagine the embarrassment of failing to reach that goal. Of asking for a loan from my parents to get me by while I struggle in Los Angeles just hoping for a big break that I know is never coming. I want to sing, be on stage, experience the joy that singing brings me. I want people to sing the words to my songs. To know them by heart, like I know the words to songs from other people I idolize yet have never met. How can I dedicate myself to a life of lackluster success? I want a wikipedia page written about me. I want to have made an impact in people’s lives. The slim minority of people who have made enough of an impact on the world to warrant their own wikipedia page are who I aspire to be. I want people to look to me for advice. I want to be an expert at something. I want to be the leading voice in a topic, but not some obscure thing like frog reproduction in the Amazon. I want to be an expert at something that the world sees as sensational or noteworthy. I don’t want to worry about my future. I don’t want to be afraid of starting a family and not having enough to get by. I want to know that no matter what decision I make in life, I’m going to have the funds to achieve it. I want to be rich to avoid the struggles of poverty which I have never experienced. All these selfish things I want and yet have no drive to achieve. I want to write music, but I sit down for 5 minutes and play a song back in Sibelius and it sounds terrible. I quit after 5 whole minutes. I spend money so people online who create content for me read my screen name off and I get a 10 second rush of validation. I want to be more than what I am. I want to achieve more than I have. I don’t want to let down the people who have helped me get here. I want to prove to them that this isn’t a mistake or a missed opportunity or a waste of money. I want to succeed in life. I want to help others succeed and find where their passions lie. I want to hide who I really am. I want to be that specific normal to avoid the looks, the derogatory comments, the embarrassment of it all. I want to feel safe and happy as I am but right now I can’t. I want my parents to not worry about me because of this. I want them to know I’ll be safe and happy in my personal life. But they don’t. They think what I am is wrong. They think it’s something I can’t possibly know at this point, like I’m just confused and unsure and scared of what the other “option” would mean. I’m scared. I don’t want to grow up. Sometimes I just want to cry. Mourn my lost childhood. Why did I have to move here? Why am I so twisted up, in so much pain? Why do I love someone I’m never going to meet? Why did I write that just to make them feel bad for me when I show them this? Why is my mindset so focused on victimhood? Why do I see myself as a victim of the world? Why can’t I just stand up for once and do something about it? Why am I limiting myself under the guise that it’s for self preservation? I can’t see myself doing anything about any of this. All I see is another wasted day, another can of soda poisoning me. Another day of self hatred and contempt for the person I’ve become. So many things I wanted to do, and yet I turned it all away. So many passions. Do I really want to be a choir boy for the rest of my life? Do I really want to work as an accountant to keep my pockets full so I can fund my next passionless endeavor? What is the meaning of this all?
