tavie.com

I have a friend. This friend is the most mature, responsible, hardworking person of age 22 that I have ever known. She has been this way her whole life. She learned to drive, got a job, went away to another state for school, got a job there, worked like a mule, did everything that was expected of her whether she wanted to or not, with minimal complaint, owing to her extraordinarily (in my opinion) unhealthy sense of familial duty.

(This is probably not uncommon in most circles, but among my generation-- among young most people I know-- anyhow, among this person's friends, myself included-- an unquestioned sense of responsibility is an extremely rare thing. Most of my friends don't know how to drive and got their first jobs much later in life than what is considered usual. My friend stands alone among most of her peers in these respects.)

This friend graduated from college last semseter. She had been expected to immediately take all steps to enroll in graduate school, with no breath at all in-between. She failed to take the necessary preliminaries, due to her overwhelming exhaustion at the workload given to her as a graduating senior during her last semester of college. Please imagine the enormous guilt and self-flagellation that followed this one entirely human mistake. She is constantly berating herself for this one understandable error. Any trouble she has now, she says, is her own fault and is entirely deserved.

Rather than wait a semester to attend the graduate school of her choice, my friend is being forced to enroll in a community college, because her mother insists that she be in school right now right this very minute and how dare you not be working like a dog as well right now right this very second. My friend, who is currentlyt financially dependent on her mother due to the incredibly scarce employment opportunities afforded by our present economy, feels that she has absolutely zero say in how her life should be going right now (or ever). What her mother wants is what must happen, and she has absolutely no say in it whatsoever.

If it means missing a trip she's been planning on for months-- and having to pay for the plane ticket anyway, mind you-- then that's what must happen.

Never mind that most people take off six months, a year, between college and graduate studies, to learn a little about life, to work at McDonald's or to laze about, to travel to Europe on their parents' money or spend a summer scouring toilets, or what-have-you. Never mind that the early 20's is difficult enough for most of us without having any sense of adulthood or independence, or, indeed, any kind of autonomy whatsoever, be snuffed out by feelings of guilt for, hell, being alive, for not supporting her family, for finding it difficult to get work in New York City in the wake of a national disaster and massive unemployment.

Never mind all that. What mama wants, mama gets.

It's god-damned-un-fucking-fair.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 4:19 PM | shower me with attention