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Definitions

(Something I wrote out of boredom and wanted to share:)

When people ask “what do you do?” I want to rip at them with my freshly-bitten nails, tearing apart the socially-deficient yarn that has been fed into their stupid heads. How dare you, I think. So limiting, so disrespectful, how could you think that I am nothing more than the sum of my occupation? I hate you from the moment you utter those idiotic fucking words you ignorant fuck GET OUT, GET OUT GET OUT
None of this shows on my face, of course, because these feelings stand obediently behind my stronger urge to please people. Can’t have anyone thinking they’ve effected me. Can’t have anyone know how I really feel. If I let someone in, I’ll want them there forever, and they won’t want to stay because they liked the window dressing and they thought I was intriguing but now they see me for all and none of what I am and they don’t want me anymore. I wish I could be certain in the knowledge that I can do the right things, say the right things, to keep you next to me. I don’t even know what I’d do with you if you were there. I just know it feels better than the empty space.
What do I do. It’s a valid question. In all of my indignation, I forget that it’s a valid question. It doesn’t imply anything, really. Just one of those get-to-know-you small talk necessities that are the way of our misguided world. But I don’t know how to answer. What do I do? I breathe, like us all still living. I use my eyes to stare curiously at the world around me. I take in everything I can, so my brain can learn as much as possible before it gets old and needs rebooting. I stretch my toes apart when I feel sleepy. I hunch over when I’m sitting in front of my laptop, which always bothers me, so I straighten my back and try to prevent the inevitable pain of my middle age.
It’s not any of that, though. That’s not “what I do”. Except it is, it literally is. I guess that’s why the question fucks me off so terribly. They should just ask “what is your job?” if they want to know my job, instead of teasing me with semantics.
What is my job. It’s a valid question. No less easy to answer. No less easy because I don’t know what it is that I do. If a job is the thing I do to make money, then I have a job. But I don’t go anywhere. Nobody tells me when to clock in and out. There is no day-to-day routine, there is just this, endless and daunting. It’s not a career. I don’t have a career, I don’t think. Really, I wish I did. I have friends who know what they want their career to be. They have a job, but they also have a career. I envy them and they don’t realise. I wish I could have that certainty. The idea of finding something that you would be happy spending the rest of your life doing, without anything else, seems so simple. I’m pulled in too many directions; I want to try everything because my life is short and my opportunities are many. I thought that was good, but recently, more and more people have been asking me what it is that I “want to do”. And I have to tell them, “I don’t know”. It feels horrible, admitting that. I don’t know what I want to do. Except I do; I know I want freedom, and space, and love, and sex, and the chance to share beautiful things with intelligent people. Isn’t that enough? I can’t pretend to want something that isn’t there. I can’t draw a box and insert myself in it; give me two weeks and I’ll have turned it into a fort.
Still, this man is standing in front of me, and he wants an answer. He doesn’t know how much turmoil the question throws my way. How difficult it is. He expects me to say “student” or “shopwork” so he can move on. He doesn’t even care that much. And it would be so easy to please him, to lie and devalue myself. I do, after all, want to please him. I can’t help that. But my willingness to have people accept me requires that they accept me for who I am. No fabrications. I must be honest.
This is difficult when I don’t know what I am anymore. I didn’t like who I used to be. So I covered him up.
I remember being 13, and shy, with greasy floppy hair and oversized clothes, staying as quiet as I could in school so the more confident children would leave me alone. They would occasionally throw some snark my way, and I would just hide my head, treating them like wasps while I scribbled awful song lyrics into my Year 8 notebook. I thought they were bullies at the time. The sad thing is they weren’t. They were just confident. I wanted that. So that’s what I did. Now I’m almost 22 and people say they think I’m confident, cocky, callous. Lots of ‘c’ words that aren’t really me, because I know inside I’m a little boy who can’t handle being wrong, wants to prove himself and doesn’t know how, and desperately wants people to accept him for who he is so that he can be left to his projects in peace. You can see that boy in my eyes, staring forward, terrified. I’ll hold eye contact with you because it seems like I’m not nervous that you’re beautiful and talking to me. And if I can just have you for one more night, I can prove to myself that I deserve you.

“What do you do?”
“I do whatever I feel like. I take things as they come, one day at a time, and enjoy my life to the best I can.”

That’s the only answer I can give and I see in his eyes that he thinks this idea is attractive. He is imprisoned by his labels, his office cubicle, his wage, his mortgage, while I am parading around the garden outside his walls. The walls that keep him in. The walls that keep him safe.

-alex day