A Moment Before Dying - By Lia Parisyan

Lately, I have been doing a lot of thinking. I am twenty-six years old, I’m unemployed and I’m not finding work, nor have I been appreciated when I have been employed. I worked hard for the entirety of my elementary through college education, I have been an A student for my entire life, and I graduated with the highest honors, and followed the traditional route of entering the Corporate World (Marketing and Public Relations), and did fairly well working in those areas of business. Over the years, I grew less and less happy, and as the economy took a turn for the worse, I took on worse and worse positions with less pay and less respect or compensation for my innovations, hours worked overtime (unpaid), and singular efforts at reforming technical content and presentation of information. I was making money, but I was becoming more miserable each and every day. The grey sterile atmosphere of the office, the same familiar faces with different names, and the monotony and routine and thick-headed “leadership” were getting to me. I took a few years’ hiatus from the corporate realm and went into Hospitality. I worked as a bartender and waitress at a variety of bars and restaurants in New York, New Jersey and even Brazil, but the long hours, the sexual advances, the rampant drinking were taking a toll on me. It was preferable to the dull hours spent in front of a computer screen, but I still wasn’t happy. Was this what I spent 12 years of my life studying, scarifying my health and social life, for?   A chance to compete with the so called silver spoon elite?                          I quit my last gig in the corporate world as a technical/e-Commerce copywriter, and decided to figure out what I wanted to do, which was naturally compounded by a fear of failure ingrained in me by my parents. I was too afraid to study art when I was younger because it wasn’t practical. I had a natural knack for most subjects in school, but I never took a risk and studied what I liked. I switched schools during my parents’ divorce because I wanted to be “practical” and I gave up my scholarship to Clark University, to move back home because I knew how hard and ugly the future would be and wanted to be there for my mother, who went from being a tennis playing, worked-to-keep-herself-busy housewife, who took my sister to every imaginable enrichment afterschool activity and dropped $500 dollars at the mall each weekend, to working overtime, paying my father about a million in cash after the assets had been liquidated, and then never receiving a dime in child support. I went from being a princess to pauperess overnight, but I didn’t complain, honestly, I didn’t want to make it harder for anyone. So, it was okay, despite the major adjustment period. I abandoned my dreams because I was raised to believe that family, blood came first.                          Now, after all that has come to pass, the highs and lows, I am ready to take the first risk ever in my life, I am ready to try and fail. It’s funny that at my most optimistic and in a sense at my lowest point in life (if one looks to societal norms as a benchmark of assessment). I want to use the skills I have -- a huge arsenal of historical information memorized, a flair for the camera, and a decent writing ability, I want to show people this country, I want people to know what else is out there, I want people to see the things, I never knew existed, and was deterred from ever wanting to see. My parents, especially my father (both from Europe), said America has nothing. They never wanted to go to California, the Grand Canyon was a hole in the Earth to these people. Instead we went to Europe, Asia and South America, but my curiosity could not be contained so easily. But since I was a sort of quiet and sensitive child, I did as my parents demanded, and it wasn’t until my late 20s that I’ve mustered the nerve to write or do something unconventional. I probably will fail, but more importantly, I want to try, it’s not about failure or success for me; it’s about doing something completely out of my comfort zone. It’s about doing something I’ve never had the courage to do because it was so frowned upon by the members of my ancient and aristocratic family. Their repressive rule, their expectations, and the burdens of past glory (the road frequently travelled), were a strong reason never to betray their wishes, because not only would I be failing, but I would be failing the entire family.                          Now, at twenty-six, I did what they wanted, I followed their rules, and I ended up falling in my own way. The paradox is: I was a 4.0 student, but I got involved (consciously) with the wrong people, so I am technically success in their eyes, they look at this as a break, a pause, they’re putting pressure on me to get it together. No. Not anymore. I will do it on my own if need be, with no plan, because I have no precedence, with no help because I do not know how or who to ask. I must try and fail, the first thing I want to see is the Grand Canyon.