Fuel For The Spite Machine
Everything I’ve ever accomplished has been motivated by spite. It can be an incredibly motivating force— the only downside is you have to keep putting fuel in your hate machine or risk no longer accomplishing anything.
I know, I hear you saying— “Surely Julia, spite hasn’t been the driving force in all of your accomplishments.”
Fuck you, you don’t know me. But also, there is a reason parents say that forbidding your child to do something is the one sure way to guarantee they’ll do it.
I’ve taken that mentality and applied it to the whole world.
Ms. Baker, my sixth grade teacher, was the first to raise my ire enough for me to accomplish something. That was when the boys started doing pinewood derby racers. The boys all got their kits with their blocks of wood and the warning that dad can help, but he can’t build their car.
I wanted in. I wanted to race.
I had no delusions of winning. I wasn’t even all that into cars or racing, it just seemed like fun.
Young ladies, Ms. Baker said in that bandsaw whine of a voice I can still hear today, don’t do pinewood derby racers.
The fuck they don’t.
I did what every young, spiteful person does. I went to the origin of my spite– my mom. One complaint to her unleashed a flurry of harassing phone calls that were completely ridiculous for a pinewood derby race. She made that school feel like a frog with a firecracker in its ass.
I painted my car pink and covered it with stickers of all the great women in cartoons. Velma, Judy Jetson, Smurfette— they smoked every boy they faced in the competition.
And when I won, I dumped the trophy in the garbage.
Because I don’t compete to win, I compete to stick a big middle finger in the eye of whoever deserves it most.
And maybe that was the first sign of a problem I was too young to notice. I wasn’t making choices to make myself feel good. I did things to make other people look bad.
I didn’t want to be first chair trombone, but Suzie Mertz told me she was the best trombone player in school and I shouldn’t even bother trying.
I only went to college because my high school guidance counselor told me I didn’t have the grades to get into a good one.
I majored in journalism because my parents told me it was a dying field and I was wasting my time.
I didn’t take a job after school because everyone told me I had to take a job after school. Well, guess what, me and my B.A. in Journalism have been gainfully unemployed since the day we came together.
You know why?
Because the world says I can’t live my life this way.
Guess who’s wrong?
Not me.
Not by a damn sight.
And now I’m stuck. I’ve done it all, I’ve proven everyone wrong. If someone told me I couldn’t, I told them to fuck off. And if they told me I could, I’d tell them to fuck off.
And now, there is nobody for me to tell to fuck off.
I’ve lived life on my terms. I threw out the script, but I don’t want to become another script. Another “how to live your life” program you can subscribe to for $49.99 a month.
So what am I to do?
Maybe I *shudder* admit that I was doing things on my own terms the entire time and it just seemed like spite because society doesn’t want us to live our lives like this.
If nobody works at Walmart or Applebees what will become of the riblets? If nobody lives in a trailer park what will tornadoes destroy? If we don’t marry people we hate to have kids we hate even more, how will society propagate?
Talk like that, though, reeks of motivational speaking. It smacks of effort and leads to empty-headed lemmings looking for the next easy fix to the life they’ve criminally wasted.
This is not a movement. I’m not a guru. Go carve your pinewood derby racer, and leave me the fuck alone.
Help me grow my audience!
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