Wednesday will be my fourteenth first day of school, tomorrow my seventh move-in. Eleventh place of residence. Second year on my own. And still I have learned nothing of the world.

It never hurts any less to watch a good person be continually battered and abused by the people he or she loves, purely because those people are too selfish to see past their own situation, their own sob story, their own inherent desire for a good time. The worst part is that these people don't grow out of it.

This whole getting older thing is just so disappointing. As a kid you look around yourself and then you look at adults and you can't wait.
You can't wait until you're allowed into the club where people don't laugh at your shortcomings, or push you in the dirt and tell you you can't do something because you're a girl, or get their scary older brother or parents to fight their battles for them.
You get a little older and can't wait for the time when people aren't passed to the next level purely because they're old enough, for the time when people take responsibility for their own actions instead of blaming the dog or their little brother.
You grow a little bit and are still looking around, wondering when the cool kids will stop being able to call all the shots, waiting for when the authority figures will stop doing everything for you, forcing you to hold their hand as they walk you through something you know you could be perfectly capable of if they would only let you try and fail and try again.

You keep growing, you keep changing, you keep waiting.

Finally you're sitting at work, filling out a dumb little worksheet with what you did to help a customer that week. You're watching your boss fumbling with a system you mastered within a week, all the while knowing she's about to be promoted. The tv is on and a celebrity's dangerous "eccentricities" are allowed because he had a hard childhood. Plus he's famous and clearly better than most of America, including the law. Another law is passed, requiring more red tape and middle men to sit between you and your local government, because it is apparent the American people have no idea how to run themselves. And all the while you're sitting there on the phone, comforting your friend who has married a man who lets her starve because he needs his nightly six pack and his internet service to download porn, and you're wondering where the hell karma is. And you're telling her over and over the things you're supposed to, that he's a jackass, that it's never too late to leave, but you know it's in vain.

Because she's waiting for him to change.

You hang up and all you want to know is where this ephemeral cosmic power is, this omniscient being of Ultimate Judgement who is supposed to be so bitchy and willing to stand up for the little guy.

I mean there's an easy answer to that, and that is that it's nowhere. We sit on our asses our entire lives, waiting for karma or God or the government to step in and say something, put a stop to the grave injustices being served people on a daily basis, forever convincing ourselves that what goes around comes around, and we don't have to do anything because someone with more power, more ability, more bargaining strength, will.

But that's just not how it happens. It's not karma that's the bitch, it's life itself.

Things don't change unless you change them yourself. Fuck karma.

And that is what nineteen years of people watching has taught me.

ink :: graphite