Fear and Loathing...and Control?

I want to be rich in the worst way.  I don't care if I win the lottery or write best-sellers, I want to be loaded.  Filthy, dirty, stinking, nasty, obscenely rich.  I just won't marry some poor chump for it.  I couldn't look myself in the eye if I did.

Why do I want to be loaded?  Well, not just to fill my closet with Louboutins and little red boxes from Cartier.  I want the freedom.  I've done the broke thing all my life.  It lost its charm a long time ago.  When I was about 20 I thought it'd be hilarious to say a prayer to St. Anthony, patron saint of lost items, and tell him that I misplaced $50 million, just to see if he'd buy it.  "...the last time I saw it was when I put it at the bottom of my sock drawer and now I can't find it anywhere..."  I'm sure Tony was amused, but I have yet to see stacks of $100s  in my sock drawer with a note saying, "You left these on the dining room table next to your sunglasses and the TV Guide.  Love, Anthony".

I have some impediments to getting loaded though.  One of which is, I don't know what to do.  I'm not interested in Law or Medicine and I'm definitely not interested in Business.  I'd sooner knot a rope around my neck and kick the chair out from under myself than go into the corporate grind.  It's fine for some but I don't think it would be for me.  Nor do I have much of an entrepreneurial spirit.  I can barely solve a quadratic equation - how the hell am I supposed to invent something or get something off the ground? 

Another problem is lack of confidence.  I'll keep the sob story brief so none of you throw up.  Didn't have the happiest childhood.  Lots of moving around, a shitload of bullying from 2nd-12th grade, unhappy parents, unhappy sibling, money trouble...blah, blah, blah.  Logically, I know that I can no longer get away with blaming the bullshit from the past for my crappy present.  And, logically, I realize that today is a clean slate, tomorrow is a clean slate, the day after that is, ad infinitum.  But I keep going back to the same old argument.  If I wasn't liked/loved/wanted/valued/believed-in/tolerated, etc. back then, how do I know I will be today or tomorrow?  If people thought I was shit then, maybe I still am shit, and will I ever change?  That brings me to another argument...

...Personal power and control.  Dad was a teacher and a musician and worked hellish hours.  An 80-hr work week was not uncommon, and this was long before the days when people had to work 2 and 3 jobs just to buy generic Mac n' Cheese.  Everything always hinged on Dad's schedule, moods, preferences, whether or not he was tired or hungry (he was always both), what kind of a day he'd had, etc.  More often than not he'd come home in a foul humor and make us want to smack him.  We could never make plans because at the last minute, he'd often be called in to work.  There was zero job security, also.  We moved all the time.  There was a stretch where I attended 5 schools in 5 years, 3 of which were in different cities and one in a different state.  Once I got to high school it became, "Will everything be alright today?  Will people leave me alone or hurt me somehow?  Will I get beaten up if I take the bus?  Will I be jumped and killed in the bathroom or on the walk home from the bus stop?".  I learned early that everything in my life seemed to depend on the whims others.  I was at their mercy then and now I feel as though I still am.  I don't believe that I determine the outcome of my life.  I'd love to start believing but I don't know how.

Now, here's where it gets shitty:  I want to write a book.  No, make that books.  Best-sellers, preferrably.  All my life, teachers, friends, relatives, relatives' friends have told me that I need to either work in a bookstore, write for a living, or be a librarian.  Generally, writing is as easy as blinking for me.  I would adore becoming filthy-rich by writing fantastic novels.  But...someone else determines whether or not they get published.  Readers determine if they sell.  I could write my ass off and create novels that would rival anything by Dickens, Austen and J.K. Rowling combined but if people don't buy them, they don't sell.  Again, no power, no control, zip.  Someone else determines what happens.

And it doesn't help that I feel as though time is of the essence.  The car's a heap of garbage, gas prices suck, the grocery bill ages me 10 years in 10 seconds.  I'm scared and impatient and mad as hell.  I want to party my ass off for a little while to make up for my less-than-stellar youth.  I want to get away from the people that drive me crazy.  Frankly, I'd like to put several states between myself and them.  I want to call the shots in my own life as much as possible and realize that I do have power.  I want to stop feeling undesirable, like there's something wrong with me and I want to stop feeling like God's plan for my life is nothing but 80-90 years of failure.  I'm scared stiff.