Me, living in Alabama back in 2015
*Sigh…
I was looking on somebody else’s blog, and they were talking about how everyone in this country only cares about how people are feeling, or what they need help with, and not about their successes.
That whether they succeed or not should matter…
I’m like “I need to live where YOU do!”
I’m from rural Alabama. Where I come from, NOBODY cares about how you’re doing. NOBODY cares about your struggles. Nobody in my extended family in New Jersey or Michigan cares, either. They like to see prosperity. They like to see happiness. They like lies and superficiality.
If you aren’t successful, or content, or happy, then you’d best lie about it. Poverty and mental illness and struggle are weak things. It’s weakness to them. And if you have it, you get weeded out. That’s the way things have always been since I got back to the United States back in 1998. I don’t really believe from my own personal experiences that the opposite is true anywhere in this country.
In any case, I come from struggle. I’m attracted to struggle. I feel that the real you comes from adversity. From the beginning and the middle of the story, more so than the ending. All people seem to care about is the ending! When I’m watching a movie or reading a book, I don’t skip to the end, and if I like what I saw, I’ll review the movie or book based on whether or not I liked the ending. Similarly, I don’t see a person and only care about whether they have a good job or nice house and judge them based on that, either.
Not everyone wins, and not everyone is happy. I don’t believe that this means that they aren’t worth a damn.
I remember Martha Stewart talking about the struggles she had growing up and as a younger woman before she got famous, and I care a lot more about that “real” Martha than the “Miss Perfect” she portrays on TV. And honestly, I would’ve cared more about her before she got famous than after because I can relate to her more as that struggling person than I can as her being a rich famous person.
For me, it’s the same with most celebrities, and most folks in general. I watch that YouTube channel The Angry Grandpa Show, and I like that they came from humble beginnings and hit it big. I like that. And yeah, as somebody who comes from similar circumstances and is trying to achieve similar success, that part appeals to me on a smaller scale. Despite that, their success and popularity and my own desire for the same thing is not what makes me watch that show. It’s not what makes me a fan of theirs. It’s not at all why my mom watches them. The reason we like them is how relatable they were to us when they were first starting out. Even my mom agrees that we are a lot like them, but without the fame (she kicks herself for not having a camera). My mom likes Angry Grandpa because he reminds her of herself. But we don’t think they’re great because they got famous. Hell, to be honest, we don’t even like them as much after they got famous!
That’s not a knock on them. We’re happy for them! It’s just what it is. After they got the “gold button”, it’s like all we do now is watch them spend money, which is fine, but it’s boring. I miss the yelling at bill collectors, and living at the trailer park, and fighting “the man”, and stuff like that. That’s what kept me going back for more.
It’s also like on that show Roseanne: after they hit the lottery, people stopped watching. They watched because the show was relatable. A working-class family struggling together to make a content life for themselves in the middle of real-world economic problems was appealing. Hitting the lottery is an anomaly that most of us wish would happen but probably never will. And all the poor and working-class viewers watching her spend money and having rich people problems wasn’t relatable, and was boring.
Rich people bore me.
Successful people are okay, but to me success is the ending. And that’s not to say the ending doesn’t matter. That’s not me saying that just because people get what they want, that I don’t care what they have to say, or that they don’t have anything to contribute anymore, but it is me saying that I disagree that they only have something to contribute because they’re successful. People followed along with them, or helped them become successes before that person got successful because the journey towards it matters, too.
For me, the journey, the past, the fight, the dreams: they matter the most.
I do care more about how people are doing than what people are doing. But maybe that’s just me.
I’ve said too much, here. And maybe I should end it, but I do want to add something:
I’m a socially phobic person. I have it bad. And I got that way from living in Alabama. And I don’t live there anymore. I’d say that “I got left in that oven a little too long, and my psyche got a little overcooked”. And, of course, there’s this huge 17-year story of how it happened, but for some, I guess, none of that changes the fact that I don’t live in Alabama anymore. I live in Massachusetts now. Whatever awful shit that happened to me down south is over now (you’d think), so I need to just be glad I’m out of there, call the escape a “success”, be stronger from the experience, and move on.
Which is indeed pretty much what my fat, wealthy, pompous aunt said to my mom when she told my aunt that we lost everything in order to flee that situation. “Well, at least you’re in a place that makes you happy now. Just start your life over!” My mom never even got to say how it happened. Nobody cares what happened to us! We’re just supposed to “let it go”! My mom’s 66 years old, and I’m messed up! There’s nothing left of us to “start over” with!
And the thing is, “happiness” had nothing to do with it; safety did. Anyone who thinks “happiness is a state of mind” when your wellbeing is in danger is nuttier than I am! That’s not negativity; that’s common sense!
Too many “Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s over now.” comments from family, and silence from friends about it now, and always nothing to contribute back when it was happening for me to ever believe that this is some “overly caring society” that we’ve got going on for ourselves. It’s the caring while shit is happing that makes me appreciate people, and not the getting out of it on my own that does.
And it’s hard for me to be defined by my success when my success was my ending up in Massachusetts. Most people don’t consider living in another state such a big achievement. Most people weren’t living where I was at before I came to Western Mass, otherwise they might change their mind about that. That’s why the journey and the struggle matters more than the success. That’s why the people who were there during the journey matter more than the ones who show up after it’s over.
But hey, I’m not telling other people how to feel. It’s just how I feel about things. Just needed to get it off my chest, being as how I’ve been afraid to talk or write about it since 2015.
Fuck No, Tony! 