It was so much easier when we were kids.
Everytime you’re asked by adults what you want to be when you grow up, without batting an eyelash you say “I want to be a doctor” or “I want to be a teacher” or “I want to be a newscaster”.
Then you go to school. You discover Science isn’t just about learning how to cure the sick; that numbers should be left to the alphabet alone. ”Is” and “are” are verbs that do not seem to be in action at all. Really, what are you doing when you are “be”?
Just when the world starts to make sense, relationships, religion, sex - things more confusing than verbs are thrown together to make a not-so appetizing dish. You think your morals are solid. You accept others’ beliefs and try to strike a balance between learning and understanding.
They make you god. Your name is dropped as how one would drop a hot plate - instantly. You try to do everything because they say you could - and you do! But beneath that are schemes and knives stabbed at you one after the other. Why? you ask. All I did was to be the god you wanted me to be.
You get a taste of the life you want once you break the walls of that institution, but that social life-deprived brain of yours says you want to catch up on what you missed the last four years. Boys? Bars? Booze?
So you screw up, or get screwed. So much for morals, huh? You give in to that heart-thumping, blood-rushing emotion called love. Win some, lose some. There’s always a first time for everything, and unfortunately that’s the last of the firsts you get to have at everything. You’re nursing a broken heart now; you swear you’d “never sing of love if it doesn’t exist” - well there’s always that one exception.
Twenty years ago, “call centers” would’ve meant the bunch of operators who took down messages for beepers. You wouldn’t have dared say “I want to be a call center agent” because technically, they still didn’t exist. You refuse to join the bandwagon, recalling this “batch promise” that being in a call center is the last and least of your options. But now your Dad is working in one, what do you say to that?
You look back to your glory days and at where you are now. Sometimes the univers slaps you in the face and tells you you’re not good enough. Your god-status existed only in that moment in time. This is the real world bitch, you’re a mortal like everyone else now. You know in your hearts of hearts that you can do so much yet no one’s giving you that opportunity to. Where are the people now who said your name before they said theirs’?
You hit a wall. There’s a life you want to live, a life you want your family to live but you barely make ends meet.
Admittedly, you don’t know what do with your life.
If this isn’t quarter-life drama, I guess you just need ice cream.