Venting.
“I can tell, you can’t wait to get away from here, to get away from us.” I know it would break my mother’s heart to tell her she’s right, but she is. I can’t wait to get away from home, at least the place that I’ve called home these years. Well okay, she partially correct. I just can’t wait to get away right now. I know I’ll reach a point in my life where I’ll yearn to be back here. That time isn’t right now though. I need some space. I need some freedom. I need some privacy.
I’ve been trying to find a job for the summer. My parents keep bothering me that I’m not looking aggressively enough. The truth is, I am looking aggressively, just not for jobs around my hometown, Fort Lee. I’ve been trying really hard to find a job around school. I’ve been trying to not make this obvious to them though, because that would just prove my mom right, and I don’t want her to know that I’m right. I don’t want to make her sad. I’ve been giving a half-hearted effort to find a job around Fort Lee because I don’t want to find a job here and have my parents use that as an excuse for me to stay here for the summer. I want to find a job by Rutgers and just get back there already, because that’s where I feel at home. My friends there feel more like a family to me than my blood family does.
I remember I had a guest speaker in one of my classes this semester, a social work class. She said that when it comes to to careers, there are two types of people in the world. There are the people who will do something for the pursuit of money and gain. The other is the people who are social workers at heart. They may not go into the field of social work, but no matter what field they enter, they’re in a position where they’re helping people and this is their driving force behind what they do. I’m the latter type. I think I’ve known this for a while now, even before I listened to this speaker. All the fields I’ve ever considered going into have always involved helping people. However, with this knowledge has come a fear.
During my senior year of high school I took a creative writing course. One of the assignments we were given was to write a narrative that described where we saw ourselves at the age of thirty. Where did I see myself in the future? The way I put then was “a hero to world, unable to hold down the fort at home.”
My fraternity means a lot to me. I’ve only been a brother for one semester, but I’ve done a lot for it because I care for it so much. My brothers might as well be related to me my blood, they mean that much to me. Actually, the care I show probably wouldn’t be the same if we were related by blood. My parents think I hate them. They think I hate living with them, being around them, speaking to them. None of that is true though. I just….I don’t know, I just can’t bring myself to show the same care for my actual family that I can for everyone else in my life. I think I’m just subconsciously taking for granted the idea that they’ll always be there for me no matter what. I want to show them that I care for them. I don’t want to get irritated by them so easily. I don’t want to hate living with them. Everything they do for me means so much to me, I just can’t bring myself to show my gratitude. I don’t know why, but I just can’t.
So my fear: hero to the world, unable to hold down the fort at home. I think I’ve already managed to achieve that. I’ve achieved it and it disturbs me so much. Why can’t I show the same love and concern I show to total stranger to the people who should mean the most to me? I want to, I really do. I just don’t have it in me though. I think I just need some more time away from home, some more time to come to appreciate what I have waiting there for me.
