Eliza

14

Sorry...My Mistake

The sun rose and everything fell. My dreams fell, my prospects fell, every ounce of dignity that I mistakenly once had ended up leaving in the middle of the night without so much as a note. Having just graduated college, I found myself in my childhood home, completely broke and completely useless. Majoring in elementary education was the main reason that I felt a little bit more suicidal today than I usually do. It was my passion, my livelihood, what I wrote about in my essay to get into college. Four years of studying, pulling all nighters, and a few bouts of trichotillomania which I subsequently solved by taking up a rather successful caffeine addiction to distract myself from my incessant hair pulling. Then I pop out of the completely overpriced school system so broke that I envied the stock brokers from ‘29 for having tall enough buildings to hurl themselves off. I also woke up in the middle of the night with a crippling realization: I don’t like kids.
Not really that I have anything against them but dear God. What has a child ever done for society? I mean other than destroy the mother that it crawled out of while she was screaming, and for the record I have watched horror movies with prettier scenes than the “miracle of birth”. I don’t like kids and I seriously doubt I would enjoy teaching them. I have had multiple teachers that couldn’t care less about their students, and I don’t want to be one of them. But I swear if I had to spend 7 hours a day trying to get them to sit still in their seats and stop eating their erasers, I would most likely have them play a game during recess called “who can kick the chair out from under Ms. Alex?”
And the pay of being a teacher won’t make up for me feeling dead inside every day I wake up; much like today I don’t think I will be able to find the strength to pull myself out of bed. In fact, teachers are paid so pathetically that I would probably have to become a drug dealer’s apprentice just to pay the bills. Maybe in a few years I would work my way up to being a dealer myself, but those kinds of aspirations are reserved for people who don’t lick their glasses clean just so they don’t have to find a sink.
When I really think about it, I’m pretty sure that I would make an awful teacher. Sure I studied hard and I got decent marks in college, but that’s completely different from actually trying to get a child to learn something. The way I explain things has been called “confusing”, “irritating”, “excuse me, why are you talking to my child”, and “who are you to be teaching my child how to read in an Applebee’s”. As much as kids may get on my nerves, I really don’t want to be the one responsible for them going nowhere in their lives. The day that I start dealing to them on the cheap, in exchange for them giving me a McDonalds discount, would probably be the day I realize that I’ve hit rock bottom. Hopefully that will be rock bottom for me.
I really don’t know what I’m going to do. I guess I can just be the teacher who hates her life and looks forward to the weekends solely because she can stay in bed and cry all day. I feel like that may come in the job description. The thing that really gets me is that I’m going to have to work a job that I hate to make money, money that I will then use to pay off the college loans that I accumulated while earning a degree to get a job that I will hate. What kind of sick joke is this? When will Satan get bored? Will someone please kill me? But could they do it for free because as I’ve said, I’m a little tight on cash.
I may as well lean in, suck it up, and go find a job. I honestly don’t know what else there is to do. Maybe I can go back to school in the future, but I’m going to have to find a way to pay for that. Perhaps I could have a child and just collect welfare for the rest of my life. Hey, there’s something that kids have done for society! Alright, I’ll go look for a job now. I’ll check in later.

November 27, 2006

Alex put her journal under her bed and sat up. She allowed herself to sigh heavily as she rose off her queen bed. She noticed her laptop charger, that she thought was charging her computer, by her desk. Alex then remembered that she left her laptop downstairs after looking up different ways to make money without actually having a job. She had come upstairs after debating whether or not getting hit by a car was worth it. Alex needed her laptop to finally look for a job She stepped on some of the wanted ads that her parents kept shoving into her room on her way to the door. She wasn’t sure if she was quite ready to end her wallowing and her self pity party. In opening the door, she would have to face her new life as an adult. Was she ready? Alex stared at the door handle and slowly turned the knob.