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The Great Lie

...that we were all told

By Holly KatiePublished 3 years ago 4 min read
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To say I’m sitting at a crossroads would make my mental state seem more emotionally drastic than it is: a blasé apathy would be a more suitable label. I am complicit in a lie, which I have had drilled into my mind for as long as I can remember, and one that I continued to tell myself. In short, it states that in this economy, the work you put in is directly proportional to the outcome, i.e. income. I can’t think of a great analogy, but the amount of resources invested versus the outcome would be like pouring in the best octane fuel into a gas tank but the results unfold as if coal was stuffed in the tank instead.

The lie seems so innocuous, so intuitive, and so naïvely hopeful, who wouldn’t believe it? Additionally, it only helped that I’ve been a career-minded gal since elementary school, my first great career ambition being a storm chaser who actually had the foresight to build a home under ground in Tornado Alley. As that dream began to take different forms over time, the lie continued to hum sweet hymns that anything could be achieved as long as I applied myself. But like blindness to the rest of the iceberg underwater, I focused only on the tip, unaware of my gouged hull ripping underneath. My health certainly didn’t stay afloat along with my childhood dreams of career goals.

Come highschool, chronic illness, unbeknownst to me, had already made itself cozy in my immune system, which would continue to eat away in undetectable nibbles until I found my whole (meta)physical frame collapsing all at once from the metaphorical damage of being hollowed out. Should I be the one held accountable for it?

As someone who worked odd jobs most of her life since childhood, working was no novelty for the transition into college. A precedent began to be set of barely making above minimum wage, regardless of experience and educational level, in addition to being expected to work as a “volunteer,” i.e. without pay. Additionally, throughout college, the pressure to apply for unpaid internships continuously snivelled at my periphery, and to refuse to apply for them in lieu of keeping that time open for paying work, I felt like a bit of a snob, to say the least.

Fastforward to present year, after COVID has strolled in to announce itself, the unwelcome guest at the ball. The way it has forced the culture and economy to restructure so quickly has been in favor of my working needs by making everything online--a huge relief to someone without a vehicle. However, good change rarely comes without side effects: everyone is online now, and living in a macroscopic mindset, where internet access is still largely considered an enjoyable bonus instead of a basic element to functioning in an advanced society, has left many at the mercy of redlining, and then some. Now add the bitter ingredient of COVID to the mix, the red lines have become an ever-increasing gap, internet connection being at the mercy of both physical climate and political, the actual faulty wiring of this house in this neighborhood coincidentally analogous to discriminatory policy.

What are the side effects of such an ingrained, long-lasting lie, and ultimately, discovering that it is just that? That I, like many others, were born indebted to a nameless amount that we can never seem to pay, with money or blood. One would think they had a say in being conceived and born, signing their soul away in a life contract before they take the first breath with their lungs.

There is no name for the type of hypervigilance that comes with the territory of being born in the red. Everyone and everything are automatically equated to diminutive black holes, absorbing anything that dares come near, eventually stretching it too thin. The shame that is tied in makes the holder so disgusted with themselves, that the only relief would seem to be scratching away at the skin until they become black holes themselves, and only then, maybe the other vacuums would finally stay away. What else could be inferred?

My peers and I have been told our whole lives that if we work hard, and especially go to college, it would help us rise up through the ranks, allowing us to earn more than the “average” person, as if there even is one anymore. And if we aren’t making it, it’s only our fault, by not pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.

Does that even work?

In order to get up when down, if one cannot propel themselves, they need a handhold, from a point higher than themselves. How can anyone get up from pulling down?

For this well-educated woman, it hasn’t worked.

humanity
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About the Creator

Holly Katie

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