The real world. -a prose

[Penumbral]

Just a prose I wrote, but I thought it ight be of some value.   

            This is the end and all I do is smile. There is that bubbling in my stomach that at once I both want to dissipate and grow bigger. Tonight is I guess an accomplishment. Something I have been pretending to strive for. Four years of getting up and sitting in front of the great grind. The prison system for the crimeless the place you go before your rights are handed out. Today is my parole, its time for the illusion of reality.
   “These students are now equipped with the skill sets they  need to survive in the real world.”
   Its hard not to feel a little joy. Everyone saying I succeeded. The great plans. The room full of balloons. Its all for us right. Like we won a video game and this is the credits. No one in this room is prepared for real life, especially not the kids. They are either going to wind up joining the military, going to college, die, or wish they did one of those three. The irony comes when you throw me into the equation. Not one day I spent in the throws of learning, never found a sweetheart, and not once was I found pouring over my books in preparation. I was an escape artist, I escaped from anything resembling work. Regardless of that now here I sat. Fooled by the lack of expectations all party's shared.
   My preparation for the future boiled down to what party I was going to that night. These skill sets I had apparently now acquired would now be put too waist. I was not the only one who took this path. I avoided school, even when it found me. I sidestepped the military. Maybe I was about to die? No see the difference between me and these others was twofold, one I had no delusions of grandeur, no great scheme that had to work, and more importantly I hadn't lost myself to drugs. Not everyone had, but no one thought they had. At this point I never think back to that room full of balloons. Full of proud kids and parents, teachers who had done their job. Now I was making it on my own. The real world had beaconed me away from my apparent wonderland that is high school. Everything I had inevitable picked up was wrong. I did not once measure the angle a latter was in proportion to a house. Not that I expected to but everyday being told these things it was almost like they expected me too. I never had to write a full length application and unlike school I didn't struggle to eat.
   Within days it was time for the me to meat the corporate world head on.  If I hadn't taken economics and verbal communication who knows what would have been different in the business world. Actually it was very easy to tell, absolutely nothing. If I hadn't taken health and budgeting where would I be. No different. Then the fast foreword took control. I was a machine at 18 I was making enough to get by happily. I had my own place and enough extra to through party's when I felt like it. My bed was furnished with clean sheets, and many guests. But then again I was a machine. Or maybe just a piece of a bigger machine, a larger less strictly formed institution of control. I quickly realized that without any effort exerted from me I could do this forever. Free of the pain of struggle of striving and worry I could do this till I died. So I ran. 
   I now find it odd how I without any real dreams had wound up in the town of broken dreams. Los Angeles was sick. A place for the rich or underprivileged a place where you made your fortune or struggled to survive. The roads where full, but there are no people there. A containment of gears easily converted to map of population density, and amber alerts. My job once again is to talk. Its what I do how I find my place. I talk. I get people to listen, but here its different here people have different ears. Different agendas. Its a place where the fantasy of meeting people is stronger then ones desire to get to know anyone. Billboards and marketing are everywhere and peoples values are shown to them everyday. You want this, and watch this. I didn't see those and the people who saw them didn't see me. I got what I wanted a reevaluation of what I wanted. I traveled all that way just to see that I really didn't know where I was.
   Months later I run again. Now the search is for affordable school. School? I ask myself daily is that the place to be? It is almost just a stasis until I once again grow enough in years to get a better job, and actually join the real world. My parole is over as I see that the world dose not want me yet. School it is. I hated the crappy endings to SLC Punk and Trainspotting, but I guess this is the beginning.

[Dr. Cow Ass]

I think I'm in the same situation as you, that is, I just graduated highschool. You made some good points in your prose that I'm sure have been bought up before, but you can't get so dramatic and gloomy about graduating high school. Imagine when real shit happens in the real world. There's reason to be scared and angry, but you can't let that get in the way of enjoying life, especially now.

I suggest you have as much fun as you still can and stop worrying about rights, the machine, or your far off future for that matter. 

I especially liked the end of the prose where you state "this is only the beginning" because your absolutely right. I don't know about you but I'm pumped as hell right now. I'm 18, I got my whole life in front of me. Ten years from now I could be a revolutionary, a drug addict, a spiritual leader, a serial killer, a UPS warehouse worker, ANYTHING. This is no time to get dark and emo. This is the time to stand up w/ a big smile on my face, pound my chest and charge the world head on.

Oh yes, things are going to get spicy in next decade, very spicy indeed.

[Penumbral]

Iv been graduated for a little while. But beacuse of the sprit in the air this is a look back and forword.
Im really not a dark and gloomy guy. That just turned into the theme of the prose. Its over dramatised, and some is not at all how I feel.
Overall just trying to capture the feeling of the way of the world (in my humble opinion.)

Just wait a while.