[546] Equal This

I know I'll have to be careful because I'm angry and want to vent. I'm mostly confused and I think "offended." To maintain a basic level of respect or decency, to me, a certain standard of will and expectation has to be achieved. I don't mean that every person must rise to the same level as every other. I do mean, when the allocation of resources presumes fairness or the same access and opportunity are given, pains should be made to distinguish how each actor responded to what was given.

The equitable footing in this instance is my dad's good will and money. I responded by doing well in school, working several jobs on top of one another, getting my degree under protest, attempting to start a business, and now currently pushing to live efficiently, sustainably, and off-grid. On more than one occasion I've offered to pay back any money offered to me in service to my goals. I still feel burdened to pay friends for things they've helped me with or lent me. I've spent money in service to helping my step-mom and her business endeavors. I don't try to squander good will, leave favors unrepaid, nor unduly burden people with ridiculous asks I can't account for or that would leave them worse off.

To do absolutely anything in life takes an immeasurable confluence of forces, and most of them you can't control. You don't pick your parents or their income level. You don't pick how smart you are or if you can access tools for increasing your knowledge. You don't pick the job market you're thrust into once you get out of school. Despite the forces that may hold you back and the frankly ridiculous nature of your screwed up circumstances, you do control how and whether you approach them to try and do something better.

This means, while one minimum wage job is exploitative and unfair, you can acknowledge this and take up another one, or two, as many parents are forced to do when they put their child's needs above their own. This means that if you're living under someone else's good will and graces, you can mow their lawn, do their dishes, shampoo their carpet, and take the dogs outside. If it never occurs to you to do these things until the years of stress of watching you waste away playing Halo finally catches up, your keepers may be disingenuous, I consider you an asshole.

I managed to find that guilty spark. I never asked for anything that wasn't in service to what I genuinely believed would be opportunities to spread the wealth and opportunity. I didn't just want a business, I wanted enough money and time to help my friends not be middle-management wage slaves as well. I wanted to invest in tools that help condense and disseminate knowledge. I still want these things! And I want them before I'm too old to appreciate them, so I pick means of acquiring money that allows me to work on them the quickest.

I didn't go back home and expect dinner every night. I didn't think daddy and step-mommy should do my laundry and have a room prepared with video games at the ready. I didn't throw tantrums about what is or isn't fair in a setting where I didn't pay rent or for my phone or decide to go back to school. That's what the step family did. When I needed cash to complete the coffee kiosk, when I had the money to pay it back, I offered to. I didn't ask for a loan to help me pay my utility bills and then buy a fish tank, that's what the step family did. I wouldn't lie about some life emergency so I could dump my kids off at grandma's house because that's what the step family does.

When I had a marginal amount of extra cash I put it towards securing my stepmom a website for her crafting business. Good will I had thrown in my face when it was put to me that I was someone raised better than to shit on the kind of people my step family have shown themselves to be. Should you take a handful of terrible behaviors and use it to paint over anyone's being? Of course not. Would I pick these things were they not reminiscent of a series or speaking to a perpetual tradition of disrespectful and undeserving behavior? Not if I'm going to remain feeling justified in typing this out.

I hate the faux-equality game. It erases the identity of behaviors that are hard enough to discern, particularly in our modern political climate, let alone in a collective story of civility. It's poor "separate but equal" reasoning that leaves the person advocating for the general layabout piece of shit in terms reserved for the people who genuinely need a specific kind of help or deserve due consideration for their strained circumstances. I've worked hard, demeaning and exploitative jobs for years and never expected anything from anyone but respect for that and what I use my money in service to. The idea that I owe any kind of debt to someone offering less of themselves is sickening.

Here, you should make pains to separate genuine hard work and self-sacrifice from entitled bitching. I don't presume to deserve anything but acknowledgment. I saw through the lie of hard-work = success a long time ago. I hold no water for old white supremacists with no grasp on their lucky historical circumstances that inflate their ego and send them into a rage. I mean there are people out there really trying. I mean there are people out there who make genuine sacrifices and have worked really hard for their perspective and what they'd like in life. I mean there are people who don't even respect this fact about themselves, endlessly and tragically sacrificial, to the point where they welcome the bites from the beasts who feed off them.

I don't kill myself everyday pretending I'm God's gift to the betterment of humanity. I don't act like I've achieved any more or less than I have. But I will not forget those achievements or what it took to accomplish them. When I see that in the people you reward as though they've acted like me, then they might get respect. And perhaps I'll take a few more beats in considering what to make of garnering yours if I'm nothing more than the shit under shoes you invite to be traipsed through your living room.