Another Irish Drinking Song

I miss college. I am reaching the point where I am starting to wonder if the whole thing wasn't just a very detailed, lengthy lucid dream I had. The nightmare I had last week is weighing heavily on my mind. I hate this job. Not even the work itself is the worst, though it is awful - no, what I hate is what I feel I am losing. Creativity. Drive. Days of life. This is my last year as a "teenager," and I have barely seen the sun so far. You start to realize how people can spend thirty-five years working this shit job in this shit place, and that's because you get so tired, so worn, so hurt, that it's easier to sit and stay than to get up and run and never come back.

I want to go out somewhere. I want to do all the stupid, ill-advised things I've spent my entire life being too sensible to do. I want to laugh and run and hope and reach out and grasp the stars in my fist. When Sean and I were dating the winter of my junior year, he promised me that he'd show me how to break into the middle school and climb onto the roof once summer came. We broke up in February and that never happened, obviously. I wish it had happened. I wish I could just get out. Eight months away at school and I'd managed to forget how stifling this town is, how stunted your dreams become because of the size of the planter they're grown in. It's worse because I feel like I caught a whiff, a taste of the Big Wide Open World, before coming back here and chaining myself to this job.

I'm quitting after the first week in August. I'm squeezing a summer into those three weeks thereafter, and then I go back to school. I'm not stuck here. I'm not going to be working at Offset forever. But it feels like I am. Deep in my heart, it feels like the past six-seven weeks have been a lifetime, and I've got another lifetime ahead before it's done. I can't imagine what it's like not to have an escape route. When you're little, and your parents say that education will open doors, you don't realize what they mean because you've never gotten a glimpse of what it's like to be stuck behind when the doors shut. I've seen it. It scares the fucking shit out of me. I try to commiserate with my mom, but she has little sympathy for me. I can't honestly blame her. I've had a great life. I'm not going to be throwing bundles for thirty-five years. I know all this. But there's knowing and then there's feeling, and right now, I feel a nameless terror at the sight of adulthood, nearing and leering ever closer to me. My feet ache. My shoulders ache. My head aches. My heart aches. I can barely write anymore.

At this point, I don't even give a shit about the money. I want out. I want out.

I have about forty thousand things to do for school in the next four days (break?  what break?) and I'm afraid of going to college and I'm afraid of not going to college and I can't even think properly anymore and everything is awful all the time and they had better not take LJ away from me.

*f**king cries*

Dear parents:

Okay, here's the deal.  I missed an assignment in a class and turned it in a day late for half-credit.  I got a bad grade in another class, but I redid it for seven points added to my grade.  I did my best on that one.  And I failed to ace it.

I'm not perfect.  You two know that.  You tell me you know that.

What you fail to realize is this: I don't want to be perfect.

I spend time on the Internet because I enjoy it.  That doesn't mean I'm slacking off.

I genuinely forget things.  I genuinely screw up sometimes.  But I always pick myself up and resolve to do better.

You give me lectures and you tell me that you're so disappointed in me.

If I lived my life solely the way that wouldn't disappoint everyone, I'd hate myself forever.

I'm not doing well in school for you.  I'm doing it for me and my future.  So if you think that punishing me will make me do better, I'm insulted that you assume I wouldn't be disappointed in myself and resolve to do better on my own.  In fact, I'm disgusted that you seem to think so low of me.

And if I do badly on an assignment simply for failing to fall within the cute little box of state standards for education?  I don't care.

I've stopped caring.

You tell me I'm so smart that I could do anything I wanted.

What would you say if this is what I want?