Pain Simmering in Your Muscles

2009, May 26

Feeling: Trapped, Angry, Helpless, Lost, Suicidal
Doing: Mourning
Wearing: Jeans and a Tank
Current Book: Skunk Works
Lyric of the Moment: Among bullets and pages from trade magazines...

For all our childhoods, we are told we have the capability to do great things, change the world, and be amazingly successful. What they don't tell you is how hard it will be emotionally when you figure out that not everyone can be a doctor or a teacher; that not everyone will have an easy time of it in school...
They never tell you that every single day you'll face the challenge of forcing yourself up and out of bed to face the challenges of days where everything and anything goes wrong; days where someone else's decisions control your life.
What the adults never tell you when you're a little kid with big innocent views of the world is that you start out in this ratrace eight lengths behind the ball, and hindered by that same idealism. They never tell you that there will be things like requirements and propositions to come in and snap out your hope's light. They let you sit there and think that life can be all these things, when in reality...
It's only true for the barest fraction of people.
In reality, there's this horrible thing called politics and this other, really bad beast called religion. The two don't normally get on very well, but nobody ever warns you that sometimes the latter can overtake the former and segregate you to a point where you feel like you have no feelings because, really, you are a segregated part of a segregated population.
In case you're still confused, think for example- of the supreme court's decision on Proposition 8. If you want to get down to it, they basically said 'We accept this seperate-but-equal terms, but in the process, we'll let this select group of them have what they wanted.'
Just to clarify, we're talking about a thing that has the power to bend and destroy dreams.
And nobody ever tells you that someone beside you could hold that power; nobody ever warns you that sometimes a group of people get together and heave one BIG idea together and team up to make it work- to let it trample your own dreams. The fact that nobody tells you about these things; that nobody warns you...
is it simply a mistake?
Are they trying to protect you?
or did they plan it this way?
Did they mean for it to hurt this goddamn much?

-Pathetic Otologist