Don't Promise Yourself a Future

I am not an optimistic person. This, obviously, is not much of a surprise.

I do, however, have hope. Little inklings. Dewdrops on leaves. Nothing even so large as a trickle. But, it's most certainly there.

So, when I talk about the future - not now, not even five years, but ten or fifteen, I think of hopeful things. Maybe I'll move to Texas and have an awesome modern house with an open floor plan (I love my house now, but there are things I want that it doesn't have). Maybe TGW will get a great job and I will be able to stop working for a while, maybe I can get a part time job or do volunteer work or go to school, or maybe I'll just sit at home and write and read and sculpt and maybe paint. These are maybes. These are things I want to do.
Maybe I'll travel.
Maybe I won't.
I want to do both.
I want to work at a job that I enjoy - ENJOY - you know, something I love and want to do each day.

Sometimes I talk about this stuff to people - at work, at home, at my parents', with people I know.

The last one there, enjoying my future job, people at work get fussy about.
They hiss "Don't say that!" because there is something wrong with saying "This is not my chosen profession. This is not my dream. This is what I do to make money to live. I put my heart into it, but I don't love it, and I would like to love my work." The reaction - the hissing, the attitude that I should lie about how I feel about my job - I hate that.

When I say the other things - "I hope someday I can stay at home while TGW works.", "I hope someday I can travel.", "I hope someday we have the money", I get this reaction - laughter and dismissive eye rolling. This attitude of "Oh, you are so young and stupid to hope for things you will never have". This "don't expect success or be optimistic!" attitude.

Ya know what? I DON'T expect it. I hope for it! These are the same people who condemn my negativity, but then they laugh when I hope! As if it were wrong to want to be able to enjoy my life sometime before I'm too old to walk anymore. As if it is wrong to reclaim what I missed of my late teens and what I doubt I'll be able to have during my early 20s (most of which I have yet to experience).

I did some of the things before I became a legal adult that one should only do after they are a legal adult, I'll give that. However, there is a big difference between being underage and partying and being treated like you are underage, and being an adult and being out WITH adults and partying, and being treated like an adult.
I have only been treated genuinely like an adult a couple of times in my life - it rarely happens at work (only with a few choice people), it barely happens at school (mostly because the teachers must assume that everyone is as immature and irresponsible as the least mature and responsible person there), and with family and people I know, it's still rare. I'm still often the youngest (although in the most recent group I've started spending time with, I'm at the median age!), or treated like the youngest. It gets old, fast, and drives me crazy because my life typical of someone who is 22. Hell, it's not typical of most 25 year olds.

Why is it so wrong to hope that someday, I might get to experience life without constant responsibility and worries? There will always be responsibility, and there will always be something on my mind to worry about, but I would like it if maybe, there was a chance in the future that I could say that I have some free time - not just a day or a few hours or a weekend, but weeks or months - where I can just do something for myself. For me. For my growth, my spirituality, my education, ME. Not thinking about how I have to make sure I don't drink on most week nights, because I have to work. Not worrying that I can't hang out late, because I need sleep because tomorrow is work and school.

I feel sometimes like it's been way too long since I had times like that.

I get so frustrated when people tell me I'm too negative and to stop being so pessimistic, but then tell me not to promise myself things I won't get. How do they know what will happen? Can they see the future? It's so contradictory.

I just want to have something to hope for. It helps me get through long days of feeling like nothing I do matters and that I'm wasting my life. Why can't I hope?