I am a jealous person. I know this. It's my weak ankle. I know it's there so I keep off it. I avoid situations where jealously could come into play. I hate competition. I don't want to race with you to the car, I don't want to race cars, nada. This is not because I don't want to lose, it is not because I think I might win. If someone else wins, I will be jealous. Regardless of whether I want to be or not. I will, in fact, hate myself for being jealous. So I never ever put myself in a situation to be jealous. All are equal, all is fair.

Let's set that aside for a minute. My grandparents came home tonight from visiting my close cousin at his army barracks where he just graduated from boot camp. Ohhh, I should have seen him. He has such respect. Such discipline. He is planning for his future. He is doing what he wants. He's grown so much.

I could only barely try to smile, try not to say anything offensive knowing two things. One: I constantly fear for my cousin's life since he's probably about to get shipped to Afghanistan where they skin prisoners of war alive. If I sound like I'm trying to sensationalize this, I'm really sorry. I think about this constantly. Two: They are so much prouder of him than me.

I am a piece of shit. I spent all the years from elementary school to 12th grade being the "smart kid", and probably the grandchild my grandparents talked about glowingly. When I was 4 I would walk around parties spelling Rhinocerous. Man I really am I big piece of shit show off. The only reason I ever did good in school was because I thought it was the way I had to make my family happier.

Then when it came to college I freaked out. I saw the prices for those big prestigious universities I was getting into and said "Whoa, there is no way my family can pay for that." I saw the student loans and said "Whoa, there is no way my family can ever pay that off." I saw degree programs and said "Whoa, I don't even care about school. I only did it to make them happy. How am I supposed to choose an interest?"

So I freaked out and stayed in my home town and studied photography, which is really just a cop out. Don't get me wrong, I love photography. But it's still wasteful not to mention self-indulgent. "Look at me I'm going to spend four years learning about abstracts so that I can project my inner pain on the world! eeeeek!"

Do you know what I think when I hear "my brain"? I think "tool to make money for my mom's medical bills." And by those standards I'm doing a fuck of a job to waste it. I've been listening to my gut for two years and between you and me, my guts have shit for brains.

Back to the main idea: I've wasted the last few years of my life. It used to be that all I cared about was making my family proud of me. I've obviously failed at that lately and to top it all off I'm not even happy with what I'm doing. If I'm going to let them down I might as well go all the way with it.

So basically, either I should get myself together and start studying medicine or something really useful to my family, or drop out and do what I really want. Stop being so half way about everything so that none of us are happy.

Stop being jealous of my poor brainwashed cousin.

Somebody come push me off the fence. please.