Not Gonna Wreck Anything

So, I recently had a realization, one my aunt helped me to, even though she was upset and less trying to help me and more trying to have me stop hurting her, but still.  I had a realization, and I learned something about myself that I didn't realize.

My aunt told me that it seemed to her like I was just doing the bare minimum to not get kicked out, as I am living with her for free, on her and my uncle's generosity.  My first thought when she said that was, "Well, yeah," and my second thought was, "Wait, I can't say that, or she'll really think I'm using her."

It is not my intent to use her, because I don't like using people.  It's cruel and unfair.  I realized that I do simply do the bare minimum to exist, and then I stop.  I'll do what I need to in order to maintain that bare minimum, but I won't actively try to make anything more than that happen.

It's not that I don't know there is more to life than merely existing, because I do, I really, really do, but I have never known, never had the thought, that I can work to make my life BETTER.  Not just livable, but BETTER.  I don't know where I got the idea, where it came from, but there has always been something in the back of my head, telling me that if I do enough to subsist, if I have enough to survive, then the rest will be given to me for doing what I'm doing as hard as I can.

So I do whatever I'm doing as hard as I can, and nothing more.  It never even occurs to me that I CAN do more, that I should go out and find more, because surely my efforts will be recognized if I exist and don't do terrible for long enough, right?

I will confess that it's always been hard for me to do more than one thing in a day, it's something I've known about myself, but it never occurred to me that that was a microcosm of the way I think, "I am doing this right now.  I can't ALSO do that.  I just have to do this, and then I'll wait for the rewards to come to me."

When I was thinking about this, before I put it down as text, I was thinking it was a beaten-down thing, fat, woman, black, something like that.  But now that I'm typing it out, seeing my thoughts on the page, it is probably an entitlement thing, a class thing, maybe internalized classism, but definitely entitlement.

Now that I know I think this way, I can combat it, I can begin taking more and better steps towards having the life I want.

Long story short, if you are subsisting, with food more often than not, and shelter that's good enough, and bills mostly paid, you don't have to ONLY do that.  So if you aren't content with where you live, looking at other places won't make the place you already live any less of a place you are.  If you aren't content with your job, looking into what would make you hireable at a job you want, and honing those skills, won't mean you'll lose your current job.

I know there's not much energy to spare for extra stuff at the end of a long day of work, especially if you take the bus and/or walk, and everything that's not relaxation is frustrating and undesirable to deal with, but it won't wreck what you're already doing if you look at something else, it won't take away from what you're already doing.

I didn't know that before, so I'm sharing it with you.