The Fail-Son
The Fail-Son
My parents had two kids. I’m the oldest by a year and some change. I also happen to be the one that failed. I’m the fuck-up. I’m the problem. I’m the one they worry about. I believe the prevailing term these days is fail-son.
I’m a fail-son. Being a fail-son is not such a bad gig if you happen to come from money. I do not come from money.
You might think I’m being too hard on myself. Maybe I am but what I’m doing here is telling the truth. I’m giving you the truth even if that makes me look like a feckless piece of shit.
The longest period of time that I’ve ever held a job is six years. I left that job on impulse. I left that job on account of boredom. They were going to fire me eventually. I was on and off FMLA for depression. It was only a matter of time so one day I went in, I fired off an email to my direct supervisor and told them I was resigning and that my resignation was effective immediately and that was that. Yeah, I was depressed and often was burdened with an anxiety that made me feel like the apocalypse was imminent. See, that’s such bullshit. It was always anxiety over shit that was minor. Maybe I’m gonna come in to some snippy email from the boss. Maybe I’m gonna have some awkward social interaction. When I look back, it’s clear to me that the primary motivator for walking was boredom. I gave up a steady paycheck and relative stability because I was bored.
I’ll admit that that wasn’t the brightest thing I ever did.
After that, it was about 5 or 6 years of bouncing around from bad entry-level gig to worse entry-level gig. What I ended up doing more often than not was working as a call center agent. If there be circles of Hell, I’ve very little doubt that one of them is a god damn call center. I did low-level technical support. 95% of problems got fixed by having the inept soul turn the uncooperative piece of technology off and then back on again. You might think that doesn’t sound so bad. Alright. Imagine being chained to a phone for 8 hours a day. Imagine call after call after call after call after call. Imagine doing this at odd, wacky hours. Start at 3 PM and get off at midnight. Imagine sitting at your desk near the end of your shift on your Friday (Your Friday. No one else’s Friday. You work weekends so your Friday is a Tuesday.) and you’re praying to whatever Gods may be that you are not gonna get a fucking call. See, you don’t want a call. You have no idea at all what that call is gonna be. Every time you hear that tone in your ear, it could be a simple 5 minute call that is relatively pleasant or it’s going to be that call that makes you question every single fucking decision you ever made in your life that possibly led to you sitting in that desk taking that call. So many times, the fickle finger of fate poked me in the eye and I ended up talking some guy through installing some piece of software a half hour past quitting time as he gets increasingly more irritable and pissed off. I lived in dread of that. On my days off, I still felt dread. All I could think of was going back to it and a lot of the time, I didn’t go back. I’d call in sick, stay home and live in dread of going back to the shit. I can remember driving to work and having mad envy for so many people. I envied the guy who was out running. I imagined that maybe he’d go back to his home and he’d just chill for the rest of the day knowing that he had already done the hardest thing he was going to do that day. I envied the guy who was out there landscaping. I had no idea what kinda headaches landscapers endured, but sign me the fuck up.
It got to the point where I just could not stand to do it anymore. I could not hold down a job. I could not cover my bills. I had no choice but to return home.
The home I grew up in.
The place that doesn’t quite feel like home anymore. The room I sleep in has a floral bedspread and a statue of Jesus hanging on the cross.
I come home from the office to the Fox News Channel blaring all loud, sinister and mean. The people who raised me to be decent, kind and honest believe in President Donald John Trump. My mother is a Mexican national. She speaks English but not perfectly and with a noticeable accent. This is a woman who waited tables. Fuck. I can remember being ashamed of the fact that my mother waited tables but she did that for me. I hate myself for having been ashamed of that. I denounce Trump and she tells me that I’m jealous of his success and that every woman who accused him of sexual assault was being paid to do it. My dad is a simple man. He never missed work but he bitched about work all the fucking time. When I gripe about the grind, I catch myself sounding just like him. He loves those cheesy, underdog sports movies. I think he sees me as the underdog that’s eventually gonna win. Trump is no spunky underdog but my dad is in his corner for reasons I just will never fucking comprehend.
I hate the fact that they support Trump. I cannot ever let that go. However, I’m undeniably grateful that they opened their home up to me, that they took me back in. I realize that not everyone has family that can take them in when times are tough. That keeps me awake at night.
I’m a fail-son that should be hurting a hell of a lot more but somehow I’m not.
More Posts from Mistahsojourner and Others
I want to write an essay.
What about? I don’t know. I think I can do it though. It is going to take some trying and some discipline from me though.
It’s hard to fake it when you can see the hallucinations of others who have far too much money and can identify said hallucinations as hallucinations. That is an awkward sentence and would make a terrible bumper sticker.
People say, let’s run the government like a business and that’s basically the beginning of The Book of Revelation.
There is a church in Indiana that put Jesus, Mary and Joseph in detention. This has gotten a lot of love on progressive-ish Twitter.
I get it. I appreciate where that is coming from.
I’m definitely someone who is interested in socially conscious interpretations of religion, particularly Christianity since Christianity had a big part in shaping me coming up in this Empire. I’m not sure about God or the supernatural or the efficacy of prayer or anything like that but I cannot deny that Christianity had an impact on me.
Here’s the thing.
I’ve never known conservative Christians to see the humanity of The Other in Christ. I traveled in those circles. I was in that orbit for a long time and I just ain’t seen it. That just is not something they do.
In fact, the humanity of Christ is a tricky thing. Set aside the humanity of The Other (undocumented, gay, indigenous, lots of other categories). I don’t know that they really see too much humanity in Christ period. He’s this righteous messiah character and not much else from where I find myself standing.
At 11 AM, the pledge will be recited
Call the number on your screen to report
anybody who ain’t sufficiently excited
about being free to do what the fuck we tell you
while the red, white and the blue
fly above
and burst your hearts with love
God, guts and glory
goes the story
of a nation that kicked ass and looked good doin’ it
Light from the Lord God spread to the world
by us
Evil and darkness flee
Get your WWIII commemorative pin today
to trigger the snowflakes and the pussies
on your way to church
to hear the padre preach about how Jesus woulda dimed his neighbors out to ICE
cuz it’s the law
If there was anything that Jesus was about, it was the law.
Bless the nightsticks and the guns
Bless the kevlar and the riot shields
Bless the blood in the streets and bless that liquor to forget all that shit
or to get nutted up to lie under oath about it
or to just live here
in the land of the free, the home of the brave
one nation
that got the goods on all of us
Idea
So...
I’ve been thinking about reflecting on The Purge films that I’ve seen and basically writing about them as they relate to the world that produced them.
How qualified am I to do that? Not very.
I believe this could be an interesting exercise for me. I would like to do something other than navel-gazing and quick angry political rants.
Obviously, there has been a lot of commentary on these movies by people that likely possess more insight than me.
I’ve seen The Purge: Anarchy and The Purge: Election Year so far. At first, these movies kinda repulsed me. However, the near-future world of these movies started to intrigue me. I believe there is kind of a clumsy sort of wokeness in these films that is worth exploring.
As far as cinematic universes go, this is one of the more intriguing ones to me.
Dad bod and the mind of a philosopher king.
It’s.. hey. I don’t really think I’m a king. It’s me being braggadocious.
Heavenly Father
When I lose my religion
I come to you.
When hope is just a bitch
Maybe I lose it and I pray.
I reach for the phone and start dialin’ for parts unknown.
Heavenly father,
one more day.
Have mercy on your boy
cuz he’s for sale
and he’s last year’s model.
Have mercy on your boy
cuz maybe today is gonna be the day.
Have mercy on your boy
cuz he never asked to come out of that cave
into this blinding white light screamin’
like he knew exactly what the hell was up.
God damn it.
Have mercy on your boy.
Can ya do that?
If not me, for someone who needs it more.
Amen.
