I wake up before my alarm most days.
Then I sleep for 20 more minutes until the sound bothers me enough to fall out of bed with a complaint.
The complaint is less about being awake and more about why I’m awake.
Any desire I had to be some hard working by the books guy has long since left. Any that does remain even in smidgens will be given away to others.
Giving away things I care about is part of my job.
Some may call it self sacrifice, others may call it stupidity, but I call it necessity.
I’m not some rich brat. I don’t have scholarships and I live in the States.
So I need a pattern to follow. A job. A routine.
When a routine becomes well, routine enough, it becomes a part of your internal clock.
My routine is not quite normal. I go to work, and I deliver packages. Some days are easy, or they used to be. I lost my easy days because I took them for granted and didn’t work hard enough.
Oh what I deliver. I deliver little cardboard boxes and paper envelopes. They all have a little piece of my dream in them.
One might have my ambition to help people. Those are heavy. Another might contain the very media I want to produce. Another my childlike wonder, my desire to see the world and meet people.
They all have something though, all have a part of my dream. The career I want in some vaguely defined goal I can never seem to set.
The boxes and envelopes all smile at me. Taunting me. Telling me to leave. Laughing at me while I give my dreams away to strangers.
They know I can’t leave. They know even if I could, it might not even make a difference. They know my goals are so unrefined I couldn’t achieve them if the pieces were all there.
I’m trying.
I just want to be happy.
I just want to smile the way I haven’t smiled since I was 9 and I first wondered if I’d be better off dead.
I just want to make my mom proud.
I don’t want to give my dreams away any more. I wonder if I should start knocking on doors, start asking people if they would do the same to survive.
I wonder, is it too romantic to believe that as long as I’m fighting for my dream that it’s okay to die?
Every day once I’m done, I don’t feel done. I feel like I’m just taking a break from an endless cycle. As long as my feet remain planted here, I can’t achieve anything.
I leave soon, leave this horrible place where dreams are packaged and sold with free shipping.
Though I believe this place will leave a permanent wound where my dreams once were, I am excited to not feel empty anymore, to not feel like I’ve lost all my hopes.
My only hope is that once I’m gone, my dreams are still in tact.