Further Travails of Failure, Self-Inflicted and Imposed

I may be to close to this moment to be allowed to write about it. The general badness of a day is not something that should be measured in the course of that day, rather it should be delayed a week or more to allow the sharp bits to sharpen and the muddled bits to become clear. But for the sake of getting some of that raw nerve purge energy on the page for future study I will succumb to the notion, no matter how inadvisable it may be.

The self-recriminating bit leads me to state that this is not the first time I have been here, it is not the only time I have felt overwhelmed an unsupported by the cosmos in general and by specific friends and associates in particular. There is an enormously annoying quality to finding yourself once again in a predicament that you have faced before. I take a tiny academic solace in the idea that we have a whole Greek tragic figure in Sisyphus to touch stone too and realize that people have been having this issue long before angst became a word.

The Greek's may very well have created the sentiment if not the term, but I'm going to be emotional and jaded and lazy and not verify this claim.

Which is one of those types of segues that leads me to say that I have often been lazy. I have not fought the best fight. I have not bothered to go down a road. I have given up a few minutes in because, honestly, what is the point? And I've put myself back at the bottom of that hill with the rock (Sisyphus, remember) on top of me or certainly about to plunk me on more than a dozen occasions.

I would like life to be as simple and straight forward as all that. It would be easy if I was simply flawed and spent a lot of time being a jerk about it (which is ultimately a true statement, but not all-inclusive). Life is more complex then that and outside factors can drive you right back into the rock-coming-at-you pit as easily as your own merits and efforts (or lack thereof).

I could cite my last week of efforts to find employment and escape the captivity of my small town, no life, living with the parents as I near the age of 30, and how those efforts were minuscule if not non-existent. I could vouch for the amount of writing I did, pages of characters and even manuscript pumped out, blog posts and project journal updates done and done, but those efforts are still less than half of what I'm capable of even in a weakened and discombobulated state.

I could turn it outward and discuss how my parents, fundamentalist Christians with a penchant for rote statements devoid of independent thought or autonomous argument, started my day with a combination of they why won't you just 'Give it All Over to Jesus' and 'Beware the Mark of the Beast' speeches. This, amongst a bevy of questions about why I am not employed six weeks after moving in and reminding me that in their opinion I should have quit going to college seven years ago and just started working a job that paid 'good money' so that I would be eternally happy and healthy the way they are.

Because you will rarely meet people as content and overwhelmingly pleased with their lives as my parents. Striking down all who will not obey Jesus in the way they do with cutting remarks and faux head shaking sorrow.

The way they accept anyone who is making cash as doing well and anyone without cash is obviously not right with God, who is known to test people with various things, but never seems to take peoples wealth or security in the process. All those without cash are woeful sinners, and will be smited as such until they repent and get a gods damned job.

I could say that it is in fact the juxtaposition of these to stances, the internal and external, that have lead me to feeling so thoroughly exhausted and angry and worthless today. There is a comfort in just throwing my hands up and yelling, "I am a failure, I deserve nothing but revulsion," but it isn't true and pretending it is solves nothing. I could blame the parents for being obstinate and uncaring, or if they do care their profound lack of ability to communicate it as anything but "grow up and start living right with Jesus."

Still, no single thing, no precise combination of things, and no act of bad timing or poor decision making on anyone's part takes away the problem. None of it sets the world back on its axis. I still have to fix all of this myself.

The one thing I wish I could demand, the one entitlement I long to have granted unto me, is if I manage to get it all together, fix all of the problems, solve all the issues; could I at least be congratulated on the effort at the end? Could I get a 'good job, we're proud of you'?

I know how these situations play out and I know I will just be given a rousing round of 'we told you so' some 'now that you are okay with Jesus it will all work out' and the brutal 'if only you had just grown up (or sucked it up) years ago then you wouldn't be going through this.'

Is it really too much to ask to be appreciated for my merits and success even a 1/10 as much as I'm yelled at and lauded for my flaws?

Doesn't everyone deserve a lot more adulation for victory and a lot less punishment for failure?