In a Hard Place

If I haven't said so before, let me state the plot of this stage in my life.

Young woman has no savings; her job has stiffed her two months pay; her libido and sense of romance have shut off; she is attempting to finish off a degree (or two) while making money at a respectable job and getting herself and her family out of severe debt.

Her family means well but is mired in problems. Health issues and money issues dominate their priorities. Their decidedly un-Americanness makes it hard for her to find a common ground to stand on: how is she to deal with problems? Who can she trust? Who understands her plight?

Currently, she is thinking about her boss lady, and the other hands that've lent help: Is she wrong for believing that white people have a profound and real sense of entitlement, which minorities (subconsciously) feed into? That, as such, none of them could ever really know what she's going through, despite their golden intentions?

She wishes that she'd foreseen this stage of her life, so that she could've finished off her degree in one fell swoop, ending at least one part of her journey; but she knows that it's useless to utter one's coulda-woulda-shouldas. She likes to think that nothing was for nothing; but secretly she wonders if her optimism is unfounded and trife.

She knows that she's not regressing, but finds it hard to believe that her present state is progression. Maybe she's in the eye of the storm, and all seems static but everything is really changing. She's almost certain that that's right.

There are things she knows now that she once was weary of. Like her habit of leaving things "unfinished" or "unresolved." She is positive now that she has taken away all she can from events that seem half-done. She no longer feels the need to question her motives; this is do or die; she must think fast and worry about consequences later.

There are people she trusts, with whom there is mutual love and mutual respect. She is thankful for these people, but also weary of the ones who shape their schedules and routines around her. She knows that inevitably, she will let them down, and although she understands that the changes in their relationships will be for the best, she does not want them to change.

There are situations looming on the horizon that look like nothing she has ever thought of. She feels her tendons tightening, her muscles readying, her brain whirring consistently to the beat of her heart. For the first time in her life, the future is wide open. There are no safety nets to catch her fall, no set in stone boundaries of school, career, family, friends. Everything seems up in the air, like balloons that may or may not fly to Heaven. Like Icarus's wings, apt to melt.

This is the part of her story when it becomes a tragedy or a comedy, and for the first time, she does not entirely feel like the writer.