Lifers vs Livers

There are a few types which I will be covering though out the summer months. On Fridays, if it is nice enough, we will go outside and sit under the sun and try to get work done, if not for the bone enriching vitamins of D, but then to tan the upper part of our arms so if we ever have to reach for something far over our heads, we won't look so awkwardly pale above our sleeve lines.

There are a few types. The Lifers are separate from those of us just here for kicks. Those of us who are just trying to survive and get by, trying to hide the sweat stains from our armpits and the marijuana from our eyes and the alcoholic lunch from our breaths. Despite these attempts at etiquette, we still stick out, obviously our futures are meant to unfold elsewhere-- not here.

And the Lifers, if capable of realizing such an esoteric thought as rapid movement without any direction, like the nucleus of electrons, sometimes resent us. When I say sometimes, I essentially mean that Livers are generally resented 90% of the time by Lifers.

Otherwise it was mostly envious awe that other 10%, awe at someone evolving like watching those cheap, mail order caterpillars hatch from their cocoons as sluggish, unfolding butterflies on that Friday afternoon right before school ended for the weekend that time in second grade. Envy at evolution. Those who stay still in a moving world go backwards, depending on perspective.

Botelo was a sad case. She wasn't quite a Lifer, not that many people naturally are, but she wanted to be one. She wanted to be a Lifer. She aspired to rot away in the enclosure and restraints of the repetitive cycle of trivial bullshit, much like Boddhisattvas dealing with the eternal Samsara, but only without the hindsight, foresight, all other sights, and enlightenment to consciously call it what it was--self imposed human bondage.

Botelo could've moved on, could have flown away like those cheap second grade butterflies, but she wanted to belong with Lifers, and I think it was because she never really belonged anywhere else. So she built for herself a secure niche and a nice little lifestyle with a mid paying job and a five year long time boyfriend to be a crutch, and a longing to join the hollow order of the Lifer.

I think she honestly believed that that choice would really help to define her.

Underneath it all, however, she was lonely and scared of the possibility that her own pretentiousness had gone too far, and she'd clutch at anything that would momentarily defy her suspicions that she was actually a loser.

Regards, Esortnom