Words Left Along

Where am I going?

This question has always plagued me. “What do you want to be when you grow up?
If you had a million dollars what would you do?” they’re all the same. 

Frankly, I have no idea where i’m going. My general plan in life is college; that’s it. 

In 2018 there was no plan. In 2014, I was graduating high school and still had no plan. Hell, I even remember taking a test my freshman year that could tell me what career that might best suit me; I hated the results. 

I think this indecision and anxiety with the question has more to do with how I grew up. I never had the foundation to dream. 

Dreams are luxury items, dreams were for people who had a chance to jump*.

I never had the foundations to dream. I was lucky to even graduate high school. Seemingly for the majority of my life I have to navigate it alone. 

My Mother worked all day and passed away before I graduated high school. My Father was the kind of man who would have sold me as a child if it was something he felt he could get away with. 

Of course, It’s impossible to teach yourself everything. There are many things that my parents taught me that I am thankful for. Similarly, school taught me english and math, both in a quality that was enough to get by. Thankfully, the only reason why I’m as smart as I am is because of my own burning desire to learn more. 

I say all of this not as some tangent, but as more an argument towards foundations. As someone who had to clear the field, dig the ground, learn how to make a concrete form, create said form, learn how to make concrete, create concrete, learn how to pour said concrete, learn how to smooth it, and then do so. 

Finally, after it dries, I can walk to the middle of and take pride in standing within my work. From here, I gaze out and see my peers of a similar age. What are they doing? They’ve jumped, they had their foundations. They have their place to safely stand and build from. 

Way off in the stars, diplomas in hand, laughing and loving, hive minded with the same interests, yet far below, here I am covered in cement and shit, tired of the fight, so mentally exhausted that the idea of even moving hurts. 

Dreams aren’t for everyone and that’s ok.       

*strange to think that I whiffed this back in the day before I came to see that universal personal potential are not all the same. That just because there’s a dream that does not mean one has the opportunity to achieve it.