kelland

Right now, right in this moment, I am very unhappy. My face is raw from crying and I am exhausted from the anxiety and the upset.

My dad is suspended from his job -- a job he's only had for two months -- indefinitely. Right now, I don't hate him. But I am very, very disappointed and angry. Right now I do not like him very much. I love him. I don't look up to him.

It is a long story to explain and since I've already explained it to my mom, my sister, and my close friends, I don't feel like typing everything out. Sometimes talking about things doesn't exactly make them better.

But there is a lesson to be learned from this, and I will type that out.

I know a lot of people look at me like I am some stuck-up prude of a bitch. Because I despise drinking and smoking pot, and, you guessed it, using drugs. I have good things in my life because I worked hard to make them happen. I am going to college with extremely little expense because I worked my ass off in school for four years. Am I lucky? Far from it. In fact, I am one of the unluckiest people I know. Unlucky does not mean ungrateful. But yeah, high school. I had fun. Tons of it. I'm still having it. Tons of fun that I don't experience while high or drunk. And no, I'm not the happiest of people. Who is? But I'm real. My feelings are real. My way of coping with those feelings is to face them, and not disguise them or decorate them or escape from them.

My dad is a depressed man with an endless amount of unfulfilled dreams. When he was my age, he snuck out of the house to smoke pot with his "buddies," drink, and listen to records. He did not plan on graduating high school (he did). He wanted to coast through life and get a job with his friend painting houses. On the day that he got his license, he drank and drove, and he got into a severe accident, totaling my grandma's car. It is a miracle from God that he even survived. One time he went to a friend's house and got drunk and had no way home. It was winter, but he walked home anyway. He became very ill and tired on the way, and he passed out in the street. He nearly died of hypothermia. He would have, if my grandma didn't have amazing intuition to know where to look for him. When he met my mom, he didn't party as much and he vowed to change. In so many ways, he did. I smile when I think of all of my happy childhood memories. He was a very proud daddy and he played with Shannon and me as if we might die if he wasn't constantly tickling or cuddling us. On the other hand, my dad has been through dozens upon dozens of jobs throughout his life. In two years, he has had four jobs. He is not able to keep jobs not because he isn't a good worker, but because the jobs themselves are poor. And the jobs themselves are poor because he doesn't have the qualifications for anything better. And he doesn't have the qualifications for anything better because for so much of his life, he didn't want anything better. And that's where the lesson comes in.

Don't sit around and think you're young and free and invulnerable. You're not. You're a human being, you're not special, and you are completely vulnerable. Drink and smoke and snort and pop thisandthatandsuch and DRIVE (because you're fucking retarded). Even if you get away with it now, you are vulnerable to a future that is unfulfilled and apathetic, a string of unsuccessful jobs, a family in perpetual debt and despair, and a daughter that sits in her room and bawls because you're irresponsible and there's absolutely nothing she can do.