Responsibility meets Reality

I can almost stick a flag in the exact moment when I first began to lose my balance. I had just begun to slip...but of course, I didn't notice. I wasn't paying attention.
It was as soon as I graduated high-school; or a few weeks before. It was the exact moment I began to feel pressured to become a, "responsible adult."
Ha, ha; which you and I know is so rare these days it's almost an oxymoron. We put those two; responsibility and adulthood, together as if simply being an adult makes you responsible. Which is not true.
When is a person an "adult" anyway? When they're 18? 21? Or when they're well...responsible?
Either way, I made the cardinal mistake.

I started observing what culturally appointed; "responsible adults" did, and I assumed that was what responsible was.

So I did what I saw them doing. I put my head down, put "success" first, and ran...as fast as I could. Well, for awhile anyway.

The funny thing about success is; unless you catch it, whatever you come up with instead, is inevitably, failure.

Readers, meet Failure.
Failure, Readers.

I met him by accident. Failure swept into my life so fast he actually surprised me. I was busy chasing after success, I never found her by the way, and instead I kept running into him. Failure.
It made us laugh, how hard I kept trying to find something different. As if by sheer will and exertion I could produce success. We both knew it was useless. So I hunkered down with my two new buddies; Slippage and Failure. They both looked nice together by the way, as I bolted down the hatches and hoped for nothing but survival.

So here I am, sandwiched in a group hug consisting of me, Slippage, and Failure, and I wonder what happened. Where did I go wrong?

Ahhhh...that is the epiphany.

I went wrong from the very moment I latched onto that beautiful, big word;



Not that responsibility is bad. On the contrary it is the goal of adulthood. But when I branded that word on my mind; which I did, as permanently as I could, I attached the wrong definition to it. When I looked around I thought:

Responsible=
- Bachelors degree
- financial security
- working 40 hrs. a week...wait 80 is better
- saving money
- making money

Later I even went a little farther:

- Good job, with degree, 80 hr. weeks.
- nice place
- a relationship
- financial security as young as possible

(You can laugh now, if it suits you.)
As soon as I purposed to achieve these things, (which I believed were "responsible" things for adults to achieve), I ran into all sort of un-forseen, and un-accounted for problems. Like I mentioned before, this is when I met Failure.
I learned the hard way that financial security and a Bachelor's degree cannot occupy the same space. (So I gathered after draining my savings to pay for school.) In fact, neither can a 40 hr. a week job or a nice place. At least not for years anyway.
I also noticed that, even if I attained all these things, (which was impossible to do all at the same time), I still may not be happy.

What if I had no one to care about?
No people to share with?
What if...What if...?

I began to spy just a corner of what I had forgotten to factor into my life-plan. I started, just barely...to doubt.
From somewhere underneath my well-laid plans I began to hear something. I got down on my stomach and pressed my ear against the rough, dry surface of imagined success. Yep, I heard it...questions. Thousands of them being whispered over each other like a debate tournament taking place in a library.

What if you're missing something?
Is this what life is really about?
If this is the "responsible" thing to do, why aren't you happy?
Brittany, what happened to your peace?
Where's your compassion? Your sympathy?
What about your middle school dreams?
What happened to your faith?

And so it began...