My mother said that she feels so bad for me and my sisters because we are the first generation who will earn less than our parents. The economy had been on an upswing, but it climaxed, and now we're on the way down. It hit me hard when she said that. I always believed I'd be able to give my own family what my parents gave us. I thought I'd be able to give them more because I thought life worked out that way. The idea that I could be wrong spiraled me into a thousand new thoughts about life, and I'm not too happy with these discoveries.

When you're having a dream, even if that dream were simple and uncomplicated, it's amazing how different the world feels when you wake up. You hadn't known you were living in your mind. You didn't realize that you were floating, it was all relative until your eyelids peel apart, and you try to lift that heavy hand out from under your comforter to turn off the piercing buzzes of your alarm. Real life tastes different. Everything smells and feels so vivid compared to your dreamworld, and you only noticed when you were finally awake. Graduating from school feels like waking up from floating. I'm sure there are a series of these rude awakenings like death, marriage, pregnancy - the life-altering occasions. I think there's something to be said about finishing school. I mean, I was in school since before I was forming memories. I did two years of nursery school. I started a year earlier than I was supposed to because I was bored. I may have been two. My whole life, a year began in September, not January. My world revolved around the classroom, the crazy Friday nights, the finals. Now that it's over, every detail feels much more vivid, clearer, harshly focused. It's like an airbrushing of existence removed. Life transformed from smooth curves and gliding lines to rugged corners and grainy surfaces.

I started to wonder if my life has been so easy because of me and the choices I've made or because of my parents and their pocketbooks. They were well off and it was well earned. Not everyone born and raised in a third world country live so comfortably as my dad does now. We had luxuries, and it is what I assumed I could easily give to my children one day. I was coasting. It wasn't like I was ungrateful for how little I had to think about money. I knew it was generous, and I appreciated it. No, I don't know what it's like to have it hard, to bust my ass from the age of 16 to get by. I won't apologize for my good fortune. My problems are mine, they are relative to me. Some people think I have no right to complain because they had it harder than I did. Well, there will always be someone worse off and someone better off. In a way, no one AND everyone has a right to complain. This is my story, and my situation. These are my discoveries that scare me because they're mine. For the first time, I am poor. I am a poor girl with generous parents. I'm not in a bubble. After having so much being easy in life, I find myself counting quarters because I'm no longer just a student whose job is to get A's. I'm a woman in the world who begs for more shifts because I'm trying to not abuse my father's generosity. He gives because one day, he won't have to, and I'll be helping him out when he's old. He expects that I do the same for my kids because I should not have this generosity if I don't plan on being as generous to others.

The fact is, I'm not used to living off myself. I'm not used to having to budget as much as I do now. Now, everything is measured in bartending hours. I get my hair colored, and I think how that's bartending a concert. I get oysters, that's a Thursday club night. So much busting my ass for little things that come and go for a second. So, now I can't have those little things. I don't go shopping because I'm riddled with guilt. This is all new for me, and it's hard. I can do it, I'm fine. I'm not doing it all on my own just yet, but I'm getting there. I know it isn't really that hard. I really am doing okay, and if I cut out all the shit I don't need, I am totally on my own, and that does feel good. I love depositing my tips in the bank. I just love it. I feel like I'm getting there. I'm working, and that feels so good.

Sometimes I think that bartending isn't a real job. There are no benefits, I'm not paid by the hour. I don't want to make a career in it. You don't move up. You don't pick your hours. My mom says it is a real job, one that pays more than most. I never really thought about how lucky I am to have this job. One that pays enough in four night shifts to get you by and leaves your day free to go on interviews if you do try to find a job that seems like one of those "real" ones. Problem is that I don't work that much, and though I could make enough in four shifts to live off of, I'm not. I work on shitty bars and I can't seem to make enough.

I do worry. I think about how I've been on this earth for 24 years. I've had so many interests. I have so many passions. I am a good learner, a fast learner, and a hard worker. I love creativity, I love being enlightened. I love being inspired. I love working hard and being proud of what I accomplish. So, how could it be that I don't know what the fuck I want to do with my life yet? How could I not have a clue? How is it when someone asks me what I want to do if I could do anything, I don't have an answer? My sister said, "Well, just because you have a job doesn't mean you know what you want to do. Most people who are working don't think that's where they want to be forever. They don't know what they want to do with their lives either, they're just working a job until they do know." And just because I know how to sing doesn't mean that singing is all I want to do with my life. People seem to force that dream on me - they tell ME that I need do to this and that to pursue it, but when did I ever tell anyone that I want to be nothing but a singer. All I've ever said is that I feel like I have to be singer because it's the only thing I know how to do at this point. Maybe it ISN'T my dream, and I don't like it when people think they know what's in my heart and try to force their ideas on me. Singing may NOT be in "the plan." My friend RK gets upset that he doesn't have a backup plan. My mom said, "Most people in this world don't even have a plan, much less a backup plan."

I thought about this. So many people are doing their job because it's a job…it's what they can do to make money, but that's not what they want to do. They don't love it, they just do it. They can't leave it to find what they love because they need the money, they need the benefits, and they don't know what they would love to do anyway. Now, they don't even have the time or the wherewithal to try and figure it out. They're too busy doing their current job, and too tired when they get home.

There just seems to be so many horrible options out there. Some people are doing what they love, but they don't make enough doing it. Some people are doing things they hate, that have them working 92 hours a week with no life of their own, and they're making shitloads of money. Some people are working jobs that leave them feeling unstimulated and uninspired and still not making enough money. None of those good. They're practical, they're realistic, they're what we have to do, but I think that's leading me to learn the scariest lesson I've had to learn about life so far. You can't have it all. I mean, you could try, but if you don't sit back and recognize the fact that you might not end up with every detail you thought was a part of growing up, you'll be depressed. You are dealt hands, not a deck. Even if you have the best hand, that's just one round, and life is more than that. It won't be perfect all the time, and though I always knew that, I thought that there was an end. I thought things "ended up" right. It never ends though, does it? It keeps going. I don't know if it ever gets easy, maybe there are times when things are easier than they were, but never easy. And I don't know if I would have rather known that or not. I don't know why I ever thought life would just be handed to me and I wouldn't have the troubles I have and the ones I will continue to have. You grow up watching Disney and half-hour sitcoms, and it's ingrained in our heads that there are happy endings, happily ever-afters. Logic never matters because you still FEEL like a happily ever after will come. It doesn't.

I don't mean to say that things will never be good or that I'll never be happy. I guess I just have to learn that I will be happy and I can be happy as long as I understand that I have to make the best of everything I have and try hard to get what I want without expecting that I'll get everything I want. That's hard. When you're young, you're not willing to compromise with fate like that. When you're young, you make demands on life, not requests. The adjustment from one to the other aches in your heart, feels like growing pains.

Let's take the happy endings out of the movies and TV for a second and just look at the middle parts and the beginnings, the parts that resemble real life before the movie writers fix it for them. Everyone is worried. Things look and feel hopeless. Pretty Woman's Vivian didn't think she'd get off the streets before she met a white knight to carry away. Joe is Joe Verses the Volcano spent three years in a dreary life under fluorescent lights for a mere $300 a week. Nothing was going to change. Pure misery, completely trapped in a damp basement gazing at a musical lamp with a tropical scene painted on the lamp shade to remind him that there is beauty in the world even though he'll probably never see it. Lucy of While You Were Sleeping worked in a toll booth in Chicago - had no family, few friends, a crappy apartment, and no sense of style. She had nothing at all, just dreams that her prince would sweep her away. Even Aladdin wasn't sure if he'd ever be more than a street rat before he found the Genie.

It seems like every movie and TV show is talking to me. I don't mean that in an ego-centric way. I mean that it all seems to be about this very subject: What our lives turn into and how it's never as we've planned. Even when we plan thing perfectly and spend every hour following those schedules - it doesn't always work out to feel like we've planned it to. That's what we can't ever plan on, and that's what it's all about - how we feel. Isn't it?
In the first season of Ally McBeal, maybe even the first episode - Ally has a nervous breakdown because she just wanted to become a lawyer, have a husband, a few kids and a nice house in the suburbs. After this explosion of emotion, she turned to the mirror while her eyes welled with tears and said, "And now look at me. I don't even like my hair." She did everything the only way she knew how, but it didn't all come together yet, and she's wondering if it ever will.

Riding in Cars With Boys - granted her situation is quite dramatic. Much more complicated than my simply graduating from school. Still, she works her ass off to get into school, to pursue this dream she's always had, to utilize her love of academics, to become everything she wants to become. In a painful scene, an opportunity to accomplish this dream is squashed by her husband's irresponsibility. He says, "Don't worry Bev, it'll work out." She looks at him with an expression of desperation, a look of heartbreaking self-realization about the brutality of realism, of actual life and replies, "No, it won't." At the age of 18, she discovers that life doesn't work out on its own. We pay for our mistakes, and sometimes, even if we don't make a mistake, life isn't working out. Like I've said before - fate doesn't care about what we want, it exists without negotiation.

I got my nails done the other day. You know, because I can afford those luxuries <small face>, and the woman who works there is named Sandy. She does everything there, the waxing, haircutting, manicures, pedicures - the works. I asked her about it since it's my newest hobby to understand why people do what they do for a living. She said that ever since she was a little girl, she's loved the beauty industry. Though her mother disapproved of Sandy's passion, Sandy continued to pursue her dream. She would beg her family to let her do their hair and nails. She would sneak over to the salon after school and beg them to let her sweep up the hair and take care of people for free. So I said to her, "This job now must be your dream come true." "It is," she replied. "You have to do what you love," she told me. "That's true, you do," said the man whose hair she was cutting at the time as my nails dried. It made me think a lot. It made me jealous that Sandy's always known what she's wanted to do, and now she's doing it.

I'm scared. I'm scared all the time. I just…don't feel a part of anything I know. Again I need to discuss this feeling of awakening, but a harsh awakening, not enlightenment. I don't feel "enlightened" by these discoveries. If anything, I'm more in the shadow now than I ever was. This dream state I was in - I feel like I've woken up and the dream that was so real and so long that I can't recover from the disorientation. I have a hard time explaining what this feels like. I keep saying that I'm scared. I mean, I know what fear is, I know what fear feels like, but it's like some new breed of fear that only first develops after graduation. It's a strain of fear that I've never received a vaccination for, and I'm completely defenseless. I'm afraid of every day. I feel exposed and extremely vulnerable. I have no safety blanket, no guarantee. I don't know what tomorrow is going to be like. I don't know how I'm going to feel at the end of the week. I don't know how I'll do at this new job. Sometimes I have total faith in myself, and sometimes I wonder if I'm good at anything at all. I wonder if I have a knack for any one thing, if I may ever discover what that is. I wonder if I can even do this bartending shit. What if I suck at it? I know it's easy, and I'm MUCH better at service jobs than when I was younger. (I need money more now.) I know I don't plan on being here forever, doing this job forever, but in the meantime, I want to learn something. I am a bartender, and part of my job description is to talk to people, to be a familiar face. I can talk to every person at my bar about their jobs until I hear something that clicks with me, something that gives me an idea.
I just wonder when it'll start to feel…like life, you know? God, then there's part of me that's afraid for it to start feeling like life, because what happens if I get too comfortable? How am I supposed to move and start over? Will it be harder or easier? Does it ever feel like what I thought it would feel like? Will I ever love my routine and my day? Will I ever feel satisfied and content with what I'm doing?

Sometimes you don't plan. Sometimes you just go with the flow and things work out nicely. My best friend found a job right before she graduated that began right after she graduated. It was a nice job doing nothing she ever knew she wanted to do, but she liked it. She fit in. She was making good money. She found an amazing apartment. She bought the car she always wanted. She was content. She was satisfied. Then, out of no where, she came into work and was laid off. No warning, no idea the company was having lay offs. Everything was going well, things were easy. They weren't perfect. She was scared too about her life, about what she was doing, about what that all meant. Life was not smooth sailing, but she did like it. And then, it was taken away. So now what? She narrowly escaped what I'm going through now, and then it punched her in the face and robbed her of security. What can we rely on these days?

This lesson becomes clearer and clearer to me as I write: we cannot rely on things outside of our control. We need to pay attention to what we can control, to our feelings, to our relationships, and we work on what we can work on. When a wave comes to knock us down, we have to know what we have in life, and use our support system to pick ourselves back up and start again. Our support system can range from boyfriends to our own sense of self-respect. We have to utilize what we have, which may not always be a lot. Even if I find the perfect job, I may not be able to keep it. I may discover I want to do something else, I may discover a lot of things that makes my life nothing less than pure complication and discomfort for long periods of time. Maybe if we KNOW that life has this weakness, this brokenness and unreliability, we can come to expect much less of it. I'm not talking about cynicism and thinking the world sucks so if ANYTHING does go right, it's a pleasant surprise. I am talking about having an understanding that life won't always go your way, so that when shit does hit the fan - though it will still suck a lot, it won't be the end of the world. We will KNOW that life does go on, because sometimes we allow too many things in our life to feel like life or death. It's not healthy, and it's not help helping.
Growing up seems to be about gaining the ability to draw the line between illusions and dreams. Wisdom becomes learning what it is we need to let go of, and what it is that we need to pursue. We should fight to for everything we want, but know that getting everything we want won't ever achieve perfection. Perfection is about balance, not pure gain. It's a good thing to know, but it's a shame we all have to discover this the hard way.