Warning: Adult language
Something I didn’t think about when I quit my job is that I now no longer have an excuse to avoid eating dinner with my parents. I know I should be excited, in the past I loved eating dinner with the rest of my family. We would talk about how our day was, and how excited we were for the upcoming Super Bowl or iPhone release. But then Covid hit, and we didn’t see each other for almost a year. Now that we’ve started seeing each other again, we can’t seem to find anything to talk about. My parents sometimes talk about work and what they want to do when they retire, and all I can think about is the fact that I will never be able to retire, even if I worked two jobs like a lot of people have to do these days. I know they don’t mean to upset me but eating in their house has become a painful reminder of the fact that they had it so much easier than I did. Or at least, so everyone says.
“What do you think, Ellen?”
“Huh” I say to mom. She’s been talking to dad about something for a while now, and I’ve been too absorbed in my own thoughts to listen.
“Do you think that once Covid passes and things go back to normal, you’d like to go on vacation with us?” Mom asks.
I have to clamp my mouth shut to keep from laughing. Not at the idea of going on vacation with my parents, but at the idea that Covid is ever going to end, not to mention the ridiculous notion that we’ll ever be normal again.
“That might be nice.” I say.
My parents start talking to each other again. I look down at my plate. Apparently, I managed to eat everything without even noticing what it was. I could blame my obsessive search for work, but I think the problem is I honestly wish I wasn’t here. I thought I did. When my mom invited me over, I said yes, but then when I came over dad said, “It’s good to know you’ve learned to put family before work at last.” I almost left right then. I should have left. I got enough of being stepped on by my boss, I don’t need it from my dad.
“I told him ‘I don’t need this job badly enough to work overtime for you. I have a family that needs me. You knew a month ago that we needed ten people in this department, and you didn’t take the steps to make sure we had enough people. I’m not working overtime; I don’t care if we can’t meet our deadlines, I’m not letting you take advantage of me.’ And then I left his office.” Dad says.
“What if they fire you? We have enough money trouble as it is.” Mom says, sounding like she’s about to cry.
“Sweetheart,” Dad says, “They won’t fire me, the department would fall apart if they did. Even if they did fire me, I can walk away knowing I stuck to my guns and did what was right, not what somebody told me to do. If I worked overtime just to keep my job, I’d be compromising who I am, and every day I saw you or Lisa or Janine or Ellen, I’d remember that I let down the people who matter to me the most, the people in my life who truly need me.”
He glances in my direction. I’m trying not to burst into tears. “Where’s Janine?” I ask, to change the subject.
Mom sighs, “She had something come up at work and couldn’t make it. I told her it’s alright, she’s done plenty for us, help someone else for a change.”
I try not to say, “Oh, so it’s alright if Janine shirks family dinner but not if I do it?” But I must look upset because mom says, “Ellen, she’s a lawyer. Lawyers never have a work life balance of any sort. Besides, she’s trying to earn enough to pay off her student loans, and she wants to save enough to open her own law firm. Compared to her, you have it easy. All you have to do is show up, do the work your boss gives you, and then collect a salary.”
I can’t help it, the words, “Yeah, my life is totally sunshine and rainbows right now.” Come out of my mouth in the worst tone of voice.
My father glares at me and says, “I know you had to give up some of your alone time to be with us, but I would appreciate it if you made even a little bit of effort to be polite, especially since you haven’t shown up for dinner in almost six months.”
“I showed up for Lisa’s birthday party.” I snap. Any desire I had to be civil to my father has gone out the window.
“Do you really want credit for doing the minimum I would expect from you? I thought you knew better Ellen. I didn’t raise you to back out of responsibility because you didn’t feel like doing the work. We’re family Ellen. Family means that, from time to time, you do things you’d rather not do, and you haven’t been doing nearly enough. I expect better from you Ellen, and I’m deeply disappointed in you.”
I look him in the eye. I swear, it’s not my father sitting next to me anymore, it’s my awful, cruel, selfish, entitled, monster of a boss, knowing I can’t possibly meet his expectations, but demanding I meet them anyway, and when I fail, demanding I do so much more because he knows I can’t possibly run away. I need his job. I need my family. Oh, heck with it, I didn’t need my job, and I’m sure I can get by just fine without my family to.
“Screw you. Screw you so hard. I don’t care if you ‘need me’. I don’t care if you’re life will fall apart if I’m not there, I’m tired of putting up with your nonsense. I’ve wanted, so badly to just throw it all away and come back here, but now I see that if I do that, I’ll just be trading one cage for another. You don’t care if I come to dinner or not, all you want is someone you can step on, someone so weak she’ll never say no, no matter how tired she gets. And spare me that ‘I’m disappointed in you’ garbage. I’ve done everything I can to make you two happy, and this is the thanks I get. Why do I even bother?”
I look up and everyone is staring at me. “Did I say that out loud?” I moan.
“Yes.” Mom says.
“And I want an apology right this language. We don’t use that kind of language in this house young lady.” Dad says.
“Dad, you say things like that all the time when you think Mom isn’t listening.” Lisa says. She never quite learned when it’s best to keep your mouth shut.
“Okay, I’m sorry I used a bad word.” I say, with the smallest amount of sarcasm I can manage.
“That wasn’t a very good apology, Ellen” Mom says, sourly. “I know you’re busy, but your father’s right, you need to put family before everything else. Even work.”
“Good thing I quit then.” I say.
All the air goes out of the room. “You WHAT?!” My father says.
“I quit my job. It was just me and three other women doing the work of twelve people, and the boss kept refusing to hire anyone. I had enough, so I quit.” I say.
“Did you have a backup?” Mom says, her voice trembling.
“No. Does it matter?” I say, even though I already know the answer.
“Yes it does.” Mom, says, slamming her hand on the table. “What if you can’t find one quickly, you know we can’t support you.”
Don’t I ever? “I’m sorry I upset you, mother, I just felt tired of working from six in the morning until eight at night for an idiot who couldn’t run his department properly. So I did what Dad would do in that situation, right dad?”
“No, you are not right. You don’t quit a job without a back up plan. People in movies get away with that because they aren’t real people and the writers of the show wouldn’t let them starve, just whimper enough to get the audience to feel sorry for them. You don’t have that luxury, Ellen. If you don’t get a job fast enough, you’ll end up on the streets. Your mother and I can’t help you there.”
“I’m not going to starve.” I say, with more confidence than I actually feel. “And I’m not going to let you guilt me for doing what’s right.” I say, standing up and grabbing my things.
“Ellen, what are you doing?” Mom says.
“I’m leaving.” I say.
“We have dishes to do.” She says, annoyed.
“I’ll do the dishes when I feel like I’m an actual member of this family again.” I say, stomping out of the house.
All the way home I keep playing the conversation. Half of me thinks I went to far, half of me thinks I didn’t go far enough. None of me is satisfied. For some reason, I keep thinking of the day Janine graduated from high school. Mom and dad were so happy. She’d worked hard and been rewarded with a perfect GPA and a scholarship to UW. Everyone kept saying she’d go far in life. Did she go far? She did get a bachelor’s and Master’s in law and landed a job at law firm, and she does plan on opening her own firm later on, but so many other people have done that, I don’t know that it’s all that special anymore.
Nobody expected me to go far. I worked hard, harder than Janine because I’m not nearly as smart as she is, but my grades weren’t as good. I didn’t get a scholarship, so I had to take out more student loans to get my bachelors, but at least I didn’t have to pursue a masters to get a job. I went through three jobs after college, she’s only had two, and I’m about to get another one. At least I will if I can find one.
I’ve been applying to every job I can find. I even applied to Target. They won’t pay much, but maybe with my savings I’ll be able to survive. Or starve to death a little more slowly. Either way, it’ll buy me some time to look for a job where the pay is something I can hope to live on.
I arrive home at eight. The first thing I do is collapse on my bed and sob. Less than an hour ago I told my parents of, and now I already wish I hadn’t. I didn’t mean to get so snippy; I was just tired and frustrated with life. Everything about the past two years has been awful, and I can’t take it anymore. If this were the movie that I wish it was right now, a fairy godmother would come in and start a chain of events that would magically bring my family back together, get me the job I always wanted, and give me a nice house to live in instead of this awful apartment.
But this isn’t a movie, and soon I get up and open my laptop. I navigate to YouTube and see the video I posted about my stream. It’s coming up soon. I should be excited, but I haven’t taken nearly enough time to prepare for it. Not to mention my apartment isn’t set up for singing in, and I’m a little worried I’ll annoy my neighbors. Ah well, that’s why it’s scheduled for the middle of the day.
I wonder what Lisa’s posting about. I doubt she’s got a bigger following than I do. I open a new tab and type in “Lisa Thompson Tumblr” into the search bar. It takes me a while to find it, since there’s more than one Lisa Thompson out there and most of them are more famous than she is, but I finally find it, thanks to her using a picture of herself in her Tumblr avatar.
There are fewer posts than I was expecting, and by that, I mean there are about two posts a week rather than fifty posts a day. Most of them seem to be various iterations on the theme, “school is awful, and my parents are making me miserable.” Which, since she’s seventeen, is to be expected. Unfortunately, Tumblr doesn’t show followers directly, so I have to read through several of her posts before I get to one where she brags about having finally gotten to thirty followers. I don’t know if that’s true or not, given that it’s only thirty I suspect it is, but I’m still upset she got to double digits before I did. And that’s only on her Tumblr page, who knows how many people follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
I’m about to log off when the title of the post bellow that catches my eye. It says, “What can I do?”. I realize that, since it’s Lisa, it probably doesn’t say anything interesting, but I still read it anyway. The actual post says, “I remember being in elementary school, thinking I was the coolest person ever. I passed all my classes without trying. My parents kept telling me I needed to try harder and I though, ‘what for’ my sister’s spent all day locked up in their room trying to study and it didn’t make them happy, so why would I want to do that. Then middle school started. Suddenly I had to start studying. First, it was just for language arts. I know, who flunks language arts right? But at least with math if you suck people assume your just a normal person with a stupid brain. If you flunk LA, they know you’re dumb. But all throughout middle school aside from Language Arts and Geography a couple times, I passed my classes without too much hassle. The worst part about it all was the homework. I hate homework and teachers give way too much of it once you’re out of elementary school. It’s like they think you shouldn’t have a life, or at least as little of one as possible. It wouldn’t surprise me if there was a secret order to kill us all and have us replaced with zombies. I was expecting high school to be the same way. And it was. Until Corona virus ruined everything. I was excited when school shut down at first, who doesn’t want to sit at home all day, right? But the longer it went on, the more I missed my friends, and homework just felt so much worse in high school than it had been in middle school. I still did okay at first, but the classes got harder, and they kept pushing more and more work on us, and now I feel like I’m about to snap.”
“What am I supposed to do about it? My parents and sister’s keep going on and on about college, but I can’t keep up with high school, how on earth am I going to manage college? Should I just give up now and take a job at Target or, God forbid, McDonald’s? How am I going to make enough money to live on? Janine works eighty hours per week and has a master’s in law, and she still lives with roommates. Ellen’s been working full time since she finished college, and all she can manage is the crummy apartment an hour away from anywhere else. They work so much harder than I ever want to, and all it’s brought them is endless misery and crumbling drywall, yet they still won’t get off my back about working hard. I am working hard. I’ve got a zillion hours of homework every night, three clubs, community service, and I’m still somehow not ‘working hard’. Give me a break. I’ve been working hard for six years now, and I don’t want to work hard the rest of my life. I want to live on a beach somewhere and have someone bring me drinks in Coconuts. Not really, but that’s about as realistic as anything else at this point.”
The post ends after that. Most of me can’t help but feel this is painfully amateurish. I know she’s still in high school, but don’t they teach you how to write at some point? The rest of me can’t help but think, “It’s high school. High school always sucks. Then you get out and go to college, and that’s a little better, then you get a job and it’s boring and slow but at least you earn enough to live on and do fun things, then you retire and die.” I know that isn’t true anymore, my most recent job proved that, but my parents hammered that into me so hard I still don’t want to accept it isn’t true.
Honestly, if you were to clean this post up a bit and replace every mention of school with work, this could have been something I wrote. Heck, I could turn it into a YouTube video without changing a thing and it would still be mostly true. I remember telling Lisa on her birthday she wouldn’t be successful as a writer, or a social media influencer, and she should focus more on school. I still think that’s true, but these days it seems impossible to be successful at anything. The best any of us can seem to manage is to not die on the streets somewhere, and with Covid even that’s becoming tenuous. Put like that, maybe it’s not such a bad thing that she spends so much time online. If she’s going to end up failing anyway, why not fail at doing something she loves? It’s why I started a YouTube channel after all.
I pick up my phone and tap Lisa’s name in my contacts. I fully expect her to be busy, it is almost nine o’ clock after all, but she picks up instantly. “Hello,” She says, sounding annoyed.
“Hey Lisa,” I say, “I was just calling to say I’m sorry for what I said on your birthday.”
“What, have you changed your mind about me being successful as an online personality?” she says. I can’t tell from her tone of voice whether she’s hoping I’ll say yes or certain I’ll say no.
“No, I don’t you’ll be successful. Frankly, unless you somehow inherit money from Bill Gates, I don’t think there’s any way you can be successful in this day and age.” I say.
“Well, there’s always NFTs.” She says, brightly.
“Even if it were the only way for me to have enough money to live, I’d never get involved in NFTs. They leave a stench so foul people avoid you even if you’re famous. Just look at Julius Corvin.”
“That old washed-up has been you used to listen to? Isn’t he, like, dead now?”
“Unfortunately, no.” I say, “And also, even if he’s not in his prime, he’s still more successful than you or I ever will be, no matter how much we pray to the gods that we’ll rise to the top and topple him.”
“Well, I might. You don’t have any social media presence.” Lisa says.
“Lisa, everyone has a presence on social media these days. Even mom has a Facebook account, and when the pandemic forced me to work from home, I started a YouTube channel.”
“Really? What do you do, vlog about how your job sucks?” Lisa says.
“No, I write and perform music.” I say.
“Is it any good?” Lisa says.
“Probably not,” I reply, “It’s just nice to have an outlet from the stress of work.”
“I know, right.” She says, laughing. “Hey, Ellen,” She says, sounding really somber all of a sudden, “Do you ever, like, think about what it’s like to be really famous?”
“Everyone does.” I reply, “We all know we won’t be, but we all want a taste of what it’s like to have tons of people who all like us, no matter how stupid we are.”
“I know, but, what if you don’t want to be famous?” She asks.
“What do you mean?”
“Like, you put a lot of time into your online life because you want people to see you and praise you and talk about how you’re actually a really good person who just isn’t appreciated by this stupid world, but you keep wondering if you’ll do something stupid and everyone will see it and laugh at you and tell you you’re a dumbass. And you know you’re not that dumb, but you still kind of think you could be, so you try to hide that part of you, and then you realize that means that people don’t know the real you anyway, so you just feel stupid.”
I pause to try and work through what she just said. “So let me get this straight.” I say, “You’re worried you could become famous for doing something stupid, and you’re so worried about that that you feel like you have to hide who you are online?”
“Yeah, something like that.” She says.
I think for a bit, then say, “Lisa, nobody shows their true self online. Everyone knows that if they post something stupid or vulgar, it could cost them everything. And even if you did do something stupid online, there’s so much stupid stuff made by people who are way stupider than you that I don’t think anyone would care.”
“You’re right. I mean, I know that. But part of me just looks at all the people who got famous and thinks, ‘do they ever wish they could go back to normal?’ I know a lot of them wanted to be famous, but some of them became famous because they’re parents forced them to be famous, and now they can’t be unfamous no matter how hard they try.”
I don’t think ‘unfamous’ is a word, but I don’t think she’d care. Teenagers live to make up dumb words. “Lisa, this is the internet. If someone isn’t working constantly to keep somebody’s attention, their audience will forget about them and move onto something else.”
“I guess you’re right.” Lisa says, sounding doubtful. In the background, I hear mom yelling at her to get off the phone. “Gotta go, it’s late and I still haven’t finished my homework.”
“Okay, bye Lisa.”
“Bye, Ellen.”
I hang up. I play our conversation in my head. I meant what I said about people on the internet forgetting you if you don’t pay attention to them, but is that actually true? I read somewhere about the first person who was conceived via in-vitro fertilization. She talked about how she’d gotten used to being in the spotlight all her life. There are a lot of child actors who never act anymore, and they still get thousands of twitter followers. Did the guy who made the “Numa-Numa” video ever manage to move past that? It’s doubtless the first thing that shows up whenever prospective employees google him.
I guess that once you become famous, it’s hard to go back from that. Even if you never do anything the rest of your life, you still have those weirdos who know you because you were involved with something they loved and/or hated more than anything else, and that follows you everywhere. I know I run a YouTube channel, one that I made with the sole goal of becoming famous enough to never have to work a day in my life ever again, because I’d be able to sing for a living instead. But now I wonder if I really want to be famous. I love singing, I don’t want to give that up, but I don’t know if I want everything that goes with being famous.
Then again, it’s not like it matters. Julius Corvin didn’t get famous by singing, he got famous by convincing someone with money and connections to bankroll him into stardom. I have neither the talent nor the connections for that, hence my single digit subscriber count, and there’s so much better music on YouTube I’m sure I’ll be safely ignored for the rest of my days. And in a way, I can still be famous, just famous among such a small group of fans that the chance of my actually meeting any of them in public is astronomically small.
You know, I wonder how many creators became famous just looking for that small group of fans who loved them and only them? Did anyone really start out hoping for fame, or was fame just a “happy” accident?
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