I was a very serious child. My mom always tells me I was a happy, jovial little girl. But I sometimes think that is how she wants to remember it. Or maybe she has the benefit of life's experience that she sees the past with different hindsight. Either way, I don't think I was ever really jovial. I was always very solemn. Not necessarily melancholy, but I was very introspective. I saw everything through a blue/green filter. I guess that's probably pretty normal for the illegitimate child of two hippie parents. There was never a black and white. There was never a definitive line. There was never a clear direction. While my parent's probably gave me more to think about than my peers who had two corporately employed parents, they also gave me the curse of thought.
Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't change anything about my childhood or my parents or, for what it's worth, the rest of my life. But I will say this: thinking is really hard. When you don't have someone to tell you how to think or what to do and you have to make your own decisions, life get's complicated. My parents were amazing in that they never placed any undue expectations on me. They would say things like "be the President of the United States or bag groceries at Safeway. Do whatever makes you happy, Angela." Or they would say "Get an education, but don't become a pretensions asshole. What you know isn't who you are." They gave me the whole world as options. They would have been proud of me if I had chosen to shelve books at the library or if I had have gone to law school. They were good that way.
But on the librarian to lawyer scale or the white bag to white house scale, I don't fit in anywhere. Even my hippie parents don't really know what to do with me. I joined the Coast Guard right out of High School, because as much as my parents wanted me to be my own person, they couldn't afford for me to do that. I think they hoped that it was some thing I would do until I could afford to become one of those other things. But I held on to it for 17 years. My parents have told me repeatedly to get out of it. That I can do more and I deserve better. I'm not sure what that means. I'm not sure the I understand the direction I am supposed to take from here. What am I supposed to be when I grow up?
I can tell you what I don't want to be when I grow up. I can tell you that I never want to be the person who hates getting up in the morning because they hate their job. I don't ever want to be the person who has to demand that people acknowledge their importance. I never, ever, EVER want to be the person who has to remind people of decency and human kindness. I don't want to be the person who walks out of meetings because adults can't act like grown ups. I especially don't want to be the person who has to demand respect. Because respect commands respect. And if you have to tell someone to respect you, either you have failed as a human being or...OR..you are surrounded with people who respect the wrong shit.
I will also tell you what I want to do when I grow up. I want to be a gypsy. I want to be wild at heart. I want to have a rebel soul. I want to be that girl in the Karmann Ghia who would drive until there was no more gas. I want to be stuck on the side of the road, on an almost impassible road, waiting for a tow. I want to be the girl who chased the sun down every beach from Fort Bragg to Stinson to Faria. I want to be the person who walks into meetings disheveled and out of place, just to make everyone else uncomfortable I want to be the woman who is so passionate that she doesn't stop to think about rent or employment or jail time before she throws dangerously sharp objects at assholes who think they are better than everyone else. I want to be the girl who was determined to swim with the dolphins and was willing to take out a 2nd mortgage out to finance the house in the stars. I want to be her again.
I have become the person I didn't want to be when I grow up. I fight to take care of people who don't my name. I fight with people who don't care about other people. I make other people look really good, when they would otherwise look like assholes. I am tired. All I want now is dolphins and sunsets and stars. I want hugs and smiles and twinkling eyes. All I want is to be who my parents wanted me to be when they told me I could be anything. It hurts to think about that.
-Inner Peas
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