What good timing for this thread. I hate my job. Been here for 4 years and the pay is OK (currently $2,240 per month after tax), but I guess I'm stuck here now. Fuck the tax man. 2 years ago my dads tax went up from 20% to about 35% but he had no idea and now my parents are being harassed for the money. My parents have had to take bank loans out to cover the intital £15,000 ($24,000) dollars, and they still have to cover another £10,000 ($16,000) for the next year. It's split into two payments but they can not cover the £2,500 ($4,000) which they need for the January payment. My mum has been told that her job is going to come to an end, after 14 years, come Feburary. If they can't raise the money needed then they will have to (attempt to) try and sel their house and moved into a rented place in order to save on the mortgage. I rang her tonight and it's the first time in 25 years when I can remember hearing/see her cry. She's barely eating. It's the first time she's ever had/needed to ask for money. So this year I will be giving up all my xmas bonus (about $1,600 to $2,400) along with £200 ($320.00) every month to hopefully help them get through it. I guess this could/should had gone in the rant/rave thread but it seemed apprioriate for here. RANT: ran out of beer. RAVE: bought 700ml of vodka, so let's see how long this night lasts.
Eh. I take the long way for EVERYTHING though. And I'm stubborn. My parents WOULD help, I guess, if I asked. But I'm disinclined to do so. My independence has become highly cherished.
I got one of those too. Free headphones and radio when you request more info? Huh. Turns out I'm too young for AARP, though I do find solace in my new ear buds.
Realizing that I was responsible for the health, safety and well-being of others...and that shit could go horribly if I didn't put on my big girl pants and step up to the plate.
Maybe it was the first time I moved across the country, for school. Or the second time, for work. Maybe it was when my dad and grandfather died in the same week. After visiting the family back east I didn't really want to get on that plane and return to my new home but deep down I knew it was the best thing to do. It could have been when my best friend committed suicide, but then again I let someone else make the call to tell his brother what had happened. Maybe it was the decision to quit booze and drugs after that tragic event, and swallow my pride and go to NA. Maybe... Wait, no, it couldn't have been that day because then I'd have to ignore how I got here and create some bullshit narritive about "doing it all on my own". That's a story that many claim, but very few can tell it with any honestly. I really can't say. I've been a financially independent, drug-addicted emotional cripple for many years now. Professionally, I've gone from top notch to struggling through a performance improvement plan with the very real threat of termination if I don't produce results. I'm learning how to live life without being fucked up or the prospect of getting fucked up on the horizon. I haven't needed a dime from anyone in the past five years, but I don't know if I could have made it through the last 8 months without the emotional support from my family. I suppose I'm just now learning what it means to really "grow up", and I feel like I have a long way to go.
When one of my friends died freshman year of high school, it shattered the shield my parents had held in front of me for so long. When the counselor came in that day and explained the cause, auto-erotic asphyxiation, we all learned another valuable lesson.
I think for a lot of people it's the first time you get wasted. Your childhood flashes before your eyes, and then you realize that the days of playing Hide and Seek and scorching ants with a magnifying glass have gone the way of the nickel blowjob. You've walked into the fifth dimension: it opens a door in your head that never closes. You discover that this whole time you have this hidden alternate personality that has no inhabitions, super-human strength, is invisible to cops and is better-looking than ten movie stars.
First time I threw it in the butt. No question. After that there was no bright horizon in my sexual future. Sure I might luck out and cop a threesome if my gf gets drunk or high, but I had explored every orifice of the female body with my penis. There was no shiny next step luring me around the corner, if only I could scrounge up the social capital to access it. Everything since has been bills and striving, bills and striving. Yes, my dick factors enormously into my worldview.
This thread reminded me of a line from that movie Josh Ritter did over the summer... "Nobody feels like an adult, its the world's dirty secret."
I think about this a lot. In terms of life events/responsibilities/mental and emotional maturing, I started feeling like a grownup when I was eleven. (It actually started when I was six but at no point between the two was I like "I am so adult as an eight year old!") Since then I've always felt a lot older than I am. I actually casually lie about my age all the time by accident because I say how old I feel like I should be without thinking about it. I kind of can't believe what my actual age is. But now that I'm somewhat in the general realm of adulthood, I don't often feel very grownup even though I feel very old, if that makes any sense. Mentally feeling like a grownup has been the norm for me for so long that it doesn't feel like anything special, but my life in general doesn't feel particularly Adult. There are random things that feel that way - like writing my rent check each month or seeing my name in a byline or traveling alone or, while it's kind of silly, owning this little animal that runs around my house and depends on me completely. But, I usually feel like I'm playing some elaborate game of House. It's a strange disconnect. It has been making me have the type of crises people have when they turn thirty for the past five years or so when I'm not even in my mid-twenties yet. So, I like to think about what would need to happen in order to close that gap a bit, and they're almost all financial, which kind of disappoints me. I thought I would be more romantic than that. But, they're things like: -Becoming completely financially independent from my dad, for starters (I'm still on his phone plan and he pays for medical stuff, including health insurance) -Having a salary that's given by the year, not the hour/project. (Although I think I'll probably be "paid per project" for a few more years) -Owning a piece of furniture that's not from Ikea or wasn't obtained through Craigslist/because people from the building were moving out and giving it away (Or basically any really big purchase in that general realm of adult purchases) - Similarly, getting to that next level of clothes that I buy. As in, being able to afford other stores than the ones I've been shopping in since middle school. Not designer labels or anything, just being able to go out and buy some adult clothing now and then that's of some decent quality. And from the store itself. It's not the same when getting it from a thrift store.