When are you going to make something of your life?

It is 7:22AM. With the holidays approaching and the possibility of family visits looming I am starting to feel more and more like an embarrassment and a failure. It seems like I’ve been in the same rut for way too long. I’ve been chasing one dream or another since I was 18 and I haven’t caught success.

I know how my family sees me, as the biggest loser. I’m the only one who became a mother at the age of 18. I married a man who makes $9 dollars an hour working in a kitchen in a fast food restaurant (and that’s the height of his accomplishments in life). I only did 1 semester of college and I didn’t even get the credits because I couldn’t pay the tuition. I’ve always lived in crappy places, and even though I’m living in a gated community now, it’s still just a 2-bedroom apartment. Everyone else has a nice big house in the suburbs.

In my family’s eyes I’m a failure. I ruined my life when I got pregnant 19 years ago, then ruined it again when I got married to a man that no woman with an ounce of dignity would ever allow to touch her. I’m an embarrassment to them and an embarrassment to myself.

The truth is, I’m frustrated. I’ve spent the last 19 years trying to make something of myself to prove that I’m no loser, and that no one in my family is in any way better than I am; but I haven’t proved anything to anyone. The only thing people accept as proof of worth is money and status. I have no money. I have no status. I can try to act all confident and satisfied with myself and my life when my family come to visit; but an act isn’t going to impress them. Things will impress them. Alessandria would impress them. They would never again dare to speak my name with pity or shame if they were coming to visit me at Alessandria.

Image: hopelessly lonely and long bitter over her sister barbie’s success, stacie succumbs to the voices in her head and leaps to her death from the balcony of her malibu beach house by iboy Daniel via Flickr