That is to say, that I’ve just completed my tax return and for the first time ever, I made a real salary last year. It’s a huge milestone for me. I’ve spent the last 20 years of adulthood attempting to find a place in society earning a real income free of emotional strain. This has been much more difficult than originally anticipated. I often wondered why it was so difficult for me to get along in the workplace? Why was there always contention with my peers? Why was it so difficult for me to make friends?

It wasn’t until the light of the pandemic shone bright on all of our dysfunction as a capitalist society here in the United States that all the puzzle pieces came together.

I used to feel so insecure about my k-12 education. I learned language but damn near nothing else. Upon looking back it seemed that the only thing that grade school education was really pushing onto children was how to fit into a mold, how to conform, how to contribute, don’t question authority and isolate the different.

I was the different. I didn’t feel different. I didn’t see what was different about me. But my peers were quick and cruel to inform me of my ‘weirdness’. I had thought that somehow that the bullying would not follow me into adulthood. That kids were just assholes and I would go college and find a career path and that part of my life would be over.

How gravely wrong I was.

While I completed a relatively normal college experience once I was out in the world the same problems plagued me. I’d get a job. I’d be myself and slowly but surely the sneaking feeling that people didn’t care for me. I’d go out of my way to be extra kind to no avail. I’d learn of rumors and gossip about me. People would use their position to take hours from me or punish me in other ways. I would become aware that I was target and my self esteem would plummet. Heavy depression would follow. In the end I would leave and seek employment elsewhere.

I career hopped like this for most of my adult life. It’s hard to shift gears when you don’t have income, you’ve maxed out your student loans and your credit is subsequently shit.

I was dumb and got an art degree in a field that not only didn’t suit me but also rejected me. I am educated but it came at the price of having a sum of debt that ruined my credit score. I had no ability to pay it back yet. The notion that one could just get a good job during a recession and start paying back loans was ridiculous and far reaching.

I had learned by this time that maintaining my mental health has to take priority and workplace politics are an incredible strain on it. I had to find a career that was something I could do that didn’t involve actively working with a team, no customer service and allowed some freedom to take time off. Seemed impossible.

Then one day I discovered my local community college had a cosmetology program. I had long thought the cosmetology industry would suit my needs. You provide a skilled service to an individual, no need to get along with people as a team. While it is a service it is not direct customer service, I just need to be congenial and communicative while providing the service, the parts of customer I excelled at. It allows for reasonable time off. It also allowed for self expression. Something most career fields don’t and something that always singled me out.

I had not pursued cosmetology before because of my debt. Typically cosmetology schools have a high tuition, but as it was a community college and I was a broke bitch, in the state of CA that meant I didn’t have to pay for tuition. I just needed to come up with the 1200 to pay for the kit and I was on my way.

Fast forward to Dec 2019

I decided to take my cosmo license and move back to San Francisco however douchey it became, to pursue men’s haircuts and determined to make the city fun again.

Then oh how the pandemic shit all over everyone’s plans.

In the time spent in isolation in the only city that still takes the pandemic seriously I was able to reflect. In the light of the BLM protests I looked at how this country has sneakily been upholding racist institutions, by condemning those who resist authority, early in the classrooms, by isolating anyone that was different, LGBTQ+, by only really focusing children on finding some worker bee position in capitalism. I realized that oppression I received was because of my neurodivergency. I realized that all the systems of oppression were interconnected to capitalism and that capitalism has to keep black people slaves and the different isolated and alone in order to succeed. That the reason I had struggled wasn’t because there was anything wrong with me, but because in order to maintain status quo in a capitalist nation, anyone who doesn’t fall in line needs to be eradicated or enslaved. That all these little popular girls in school all the way up into the workplace were aware of the this system and their role was isolate me and get rid of me.

The only thing they care about teaching children is to conform. That’s why I didn’t succeed in grade school. Because I didn’t conform. I wasn’t trying to be rebellious but the system of education worked so well on neurotypical people that they understood their role in trying to get rid of anyone of color, non gender conforming, neurodivergent, fat, gay or just unwilling to accept a role in building some asshole billionare’s worth in some soul sucking job somewhere.

We will not suck ‘the man’s dick and the Man is capitalism.

As if the government knows that we have no figured this out it is now doubling down on every hateful system of oppression it can.

Record numbers of states are passing laws to eradicate trans communities. Cops have killed more people of color than ever before. The president blocked a union that allowed trains crashes with toxic chemicals now devastating large chunks of the nation.

Clearly voting blue doesn’t mean a god damn thing will change. With a blue house and senate somehow even more republican agenda has been forwarded and it’s all I can do to keep treasonous thoughts at bay.

Somehow in this light I found a job in the cosmetology field and I’m finally making enough money at something I’m good at to pay some debt back and work on my credit.

But this world doesn’t feel like one worth living in. This is the world I’m supposed to fight for? Fascism under the guise or religious freedom and freedom of capital. This country is a hot mess and I’m just expected to keep going?

Suffice it say the milestone feels lost. It doesn’t feel like I have achieved a whole hell of a lot when all around me this nation is suffering. There isn’t a single marginalized community that isn’t suffering. The growing gap between the wealthy and the poor is visible as the homeless encampments start to reach the suburbs and outskirts of the city where they had never reached before.

From every angle late stage capitalism only appears to be getting worse. My heart hurts for all the oppressed. This was supposed to be the land of infinite possibilities but really it was just a colonizer’s scam.

How do we move forward? How do we fight back? They put the televisions in our homes never dreaming that this distraction would become so successful as to suck us into complacency from a screen in our hands.

I finally figured out how to adult here and now I don’t want to be here anymore. Cheers to me.