The Taste of Success

[Warning Note: Elements of poor mental health, cursing, and self-harm.]

Dinner doesn’t taste the same as it used to.

The mashed potatoes feel more like wet sand, and the steamed green beans like anchovies.

You’re sitting at a table with four other people, and yet, you might as well be alone.

The dining room light feels incredibly bright, and the darkness it fends off, immensely pitch. Shadows stark, table ashen, body cold. The scabs on your back itch, and you want to pick them off to eat yourself again. Your dead skin tastes better than anything on the plate in front of you.

The pain of peeling off the scabs is much more tolerable than the pain of constantly failing yourself and those around you.

How can you tell them that you’re unsuccessful once again? You called, submitted applications, attended interviews, everything. But you’ve come up with nothing once again.

“Go to school. Get an education. Then, you can succeed.”

“Get a job doing what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

“Work hard in your youth so you can rest easy once you’re older.”

You listened to those phrases time and time again in your youth. Your teachers told you these things, meaning well. You saw it on TV. Your parents told you this whenever you asked about work.

Now you’re in your 30s, living at home with one of your parents, and nothing you’ve tried worked out in the end.

Yes, you struggled your way through school, pushing to get the best grades possible. You graduated Cum Laude despite being in a field few others were in, showing that despite your efforts, you still weren’t good enough. But you did it. You graduated.

You also worked during school, attending classes, then going to work at the coffee shop you’ve come to hate. Can’t look at the dark drink the same again when every time you think of making it, you remember the often-hateful people and their fervent demands. You remember the mockery one of them made of you in front of their friends on your first day at work, not knowing how to properly pour the drink they requested.

Hours on end, you did your best, and the result?

The first real job you got didn’t fit the description. The second one fired you out of nowhere since you were an at-will employee. The third shoved you so far out your comfort zone and ran you so ragged, you ended up losing the one thing that kept you going: your health.

So, here you are. A failure, unable to live without the support of others, and unable to move on to do anything good in your life.

…Though, maybe that’s not the best way to think about it.

Oh, no, seriously. You haven’t accomplished a single thing you wanted, and you haven’t done anything your parents, teachers, or the TV told you about. You work menial jobs online to try making ends meet. You aren’t employed doing something you love, much less doing something you truly enjoy. In fact, you aren’t employed at all. That’s not what a contractor is.

Even so, it’s not like things turned out the best for your parents either. One left, not keeping their promise to love the other. The reliable one, the one you live with, isn’t planning on relaxing or retiring until their 80s. They don’t do work they love, but do work that provides, leaving the things they love for home.

You grew up to learn that your teachers are overworked and underpaid, barely able to make ends meet. You also learned that the curriculum continues to change, less focused on the students and more focused on quotas. Teachers old and new continue to fight a battle for themselves and their students year after year.

Television isn’t a very reliable source for much of anything nowadays. The channels are all owned by the same companies, the same mega-groups of mutual interests, all vying for air time. All vying for your attention. Your money…the very money people on the other side of the screen says you don’t deserve because you don’t work hard enough.

You’re part of the Lazy Generation, after all. That’s what the TV says now.

After all you put into your life, into following the advice given to you, after working yourself down with few returns. Now, the TV calls you lazy.

So, really, what’s the truth, then?

Of course you’re displeased. Food doesn’t taste like you want it to because you’re too stressed to truly absorb its flavor. You scratch your back to shreds then eat the scabs because your body needs something you aren’t sure exists. You aren’t sure how to give it to yourself.

But, of all these faults and failures, that’s not you.

You aren’t a failure at all, not when the other four people at the table still look at you the way they do.

Somehow, through it all, you managed to be personable. Sure, you won’t drink coffee again for the rest of your life, but you know how to talk to someone serving you. You give them a smile, remembering that they’re people whose promises failed them, too.

You’re likable enough that the company you work with sends you assignments again and again. Sure, they don’t take the taxes out and you have to pay for your health insurance yourself, but damn, it could be worse, couldn’t it? They still very much like you, and you like them in return. It’s not the pay you want, but you’re getting paid.

You don’t know what your other parent is doing, but the one you have loves you enough to live with you. The three other people at your dinner table either are failing to meet their own expectations or failing to meet the expectations of someone else.

Everyone here has fallen short, but you’ve all fallen short together.

You’re not successful in the way the TV still tells people to be. The bootstraps broke and you fell hard on your ass.

But, shit, you’re still here. Back scratched, health low, disinterested and deenergized for the moment, but you’re still here. You’re still trying.

Maybe you should count that as more successful than you thought.

So, even though your chest tightens and your head feels hot, tears already building up behind your eyes, you still open your mouth and say that you didn’t get the job you wanted.

…Your parent tells you that they missed a good opportunity. The others at your table echo the same sentiment as the shadows lighten up and the light above dims into something more comfortable.

For now, the mashed potatoes and green beans start actually tasting like something good again.