Car Euphemisms for Success (About the Career Stuff)

A thought struck me this morning lying in bed alone after The Mr. left to take The Kiddo to the airport that kept spinning and hasn’t stopped. It’s not quite 5:30am on a Saturday and I’ve already got my coffee in hand.

The thought was this: What if I had been raised in a different environment? What if I had been given more guidance, a better foundation and the opportunity to take a different road?

Don’t mistake this as a statement of regret. I have gotten this far by truly believing that it’s all for a reason. I know without a doubt that every detour, every flat tire and every car wreck have been part of my path and mine alone. I wouldn’t be here if I had made different choices. I took the long road and have paid heavy tolls to find a man who truly loves and respects me for all of my misfiring cylinders and rust spots under the pretty paint I keep reapplying… 

Guess my euphemism for the day is car-related rather than the usual food analogies I tend to steer towards.

The thought came about partly due to a profile on OkCupid. The guy is a lawyer that lobbies for reproductive rights and enjoys roller derby and burlesque. The physical attraction may or may not be there; I can’t be sure with the pictures. But he is the first person for whom the word “interesting” is not just a euphemism for… well, for anything where I’m left speechless and attempting to maintain tact. I looked at him and thought of what his family must have been like. I imagined a nice Jewish family where both parents were in the home and while they both emphasized getting good grades and going to college, at least one was a bit of a hippy that inspired him to be passionate about life. Just having that image makes me a little less inclined to respond to his message, simply because it could very well have been nothing like that. He could have come from nothing and had an internal drive to succeed on that front that I have lacked my entire life.

That’s another one of the great nature verses nurture debates that I don’t know has been brought up much. On St. Patty’s Day I nearly went to blows with a woman named Kris who made the statement that women who choose to stay at home to raise children not only do not contribute to society, but are a detriment to it. One of the only valid points she made that night was about how people that are raised to value education and the importance of careers are generally more successful in life. At the same time, her perception of what it means to be successful was a very narrow one that was only focused on college degrees, income and other resume fodder. Kris could not loosen her rigid, logical thinking to examine the possibility that anyone without a career was of any value to the world. She could not grasp the importance of having a home, providing a nurturing environment for children to grow up in, or even being the person to instill the value of education and career for your own children. She was also the self-proclaimed product of an environment filled with emotional abuse where education was the only measure of worth. Had we had that same conversation over coffee and not beer I might have looked at her with more sadness, realizing that her views on life were so far to an extreme that she saw anyone that chose to live in a different manner as worthless and harmful to society as a whole. Looking back I wonder how much of her venom was just slung out of defense for her own cracked foundations.

There I go making assumptions about other people. I suppose that’s one way we as humans try to make sense not only of the mechanics and science of the world, but of those who inhabit it beside us.

That said, it makes me a little sad for myself looking at the lack of guidance and direction I had growing up. Rather than a mother I had an older female friend that showed up every couple of weeks, lavishing my brother with attention and gifts then sharing things about life I was too young to know about. And rather than a father I could respect and look up to, I had a depressed, lonely old man that hid out in the garage tinkering with trucks and numbing himself away with substance until he became little more than a ghost walking around in the flesh. He was afraid of me, and of the strength that resembled the woman who had left him after 12 years of marriage. That woman bore no resemblance to the 18 year old girl he met and made his wife… But that is another story to tell.

For as long as I can remember, I have lived on instinct without a plan or goals. My only focus was on finding love, but I had no idea what that word really meant. It was a snipe hunt that I spent the better part of 33 years on. I would find something that resembled love and then endure the circumstances that came with it. I suffered immensely in an effort to keep something that was not only not mine, but wasn’t even love. I sacrificed myself over and over to maintain relationships that ultimately weren’t about me at all. I continued to lie at the feet of people that claimed to love me then wonder why I was being used as a doormat or an emotional punching bag. And even after I started to stand on my own two feet, I still had no idea what love was about. I added to the list of things I do NOT want, but to this day the other side of the list- the things I DO want, is far too short.

All the while I was searching for all the emotional things that Kris places no value on, but I had no attention left for the things in life that were all she could measure success by. When I finally did attempt the college thing I was just as good at is as I am at everything else I do. My GPA was great and until my divorce replaced my time to study with 2 full time jobs. I was finally on the track to have the pieces of paper that would allow someone like Kris to see my worth but all the emotional things started to catch up to me and it unraveled before even taking shape. Now I am 34 years old without so much as an Associate’s Degree, astronomical student loans given my income and a debt to the University of Phoenix that has all of the work I did accomplish being held hostage. My attempts to do the thing that would have shifted that part of my path in a better direction not only failed, but left me with even bigger obstacles in the way.

I’m not giving up, and I’m not looking back. I just wish there was a route ahead with a little less construction work to slow my progress on this path.

Addendum: 


The Mr. said that this piece felt unfinished because I never say that I found what I was looking for… I said that love, “was a snipe hunt that I spent the better part of 33 years on." 

I was 33 when I met him and that missing piece of the puzzle fell into place. The thing is that there are still other pieces I’m searching for.

This is about success and how people measure it differently depending on how they were raised. By some definitions I have more success than any Disney Princess with my ‘Happily Ever After.’

By other definitions I am an absolute failure.