Read I Will Rise for Free Online

trying! Fuck you, I want to work! I want to pay my own way! I’m not homeless. I pay rent. I live in a rat box, but I pay for it nonetheless. And when I get fired or quit (it happens) I’m working the very next day, whether it be day-laboring with the Mexicans or landing a quick fast-food gig.
    I try. Despite my thirty-eight strikes, I try.
    When filling out applications I leave the job history blank and this doesn’t seem to matter because the only type of job I can get doesn’t really care. As long as I can nod my head and give the impression that I can follow orders, I’m hired. Me and the FOB (fresh off the boat). What’s the difference between us? I can speak English. I’m an American. I graduated from goddamn high school. And these are the only jobs I can get? These are the only jobs I’m qualified for?
    Over and over again until my eyes burn with tears: What is wrong with me? These are the worst jobs, the easiest, the smelliest, the slave laborer, hell-on-earth jobs, and I can’t even hold one down!
    Every time my phone rings with news of termination crackling through the receiver, I feel my entrails turning and my brain sputtering and goddamn would someone please give me a gun. Every time an employer approaches with that look in their eyes and dismissal upon their lips, I feel oh so worthless and would someone give me a knife. Give me a thirty-two-ounce thirst buster of Drano. Give me a bowl full of rat poison. Give me a plastic bag. Give me anything, but mostly give me the nerve to get on with it because this isn’t living. I barely have my head above water, scraping by, eking out an existence. This isn’t what I expected, ugly, gimp hand and all.
    Where’s my Honda (okay, since we’re fantasizing here, where’s my BMW)?
    Where’s my five-million-dollar home?
    Where’s my wife? My two-point-five children?
    My money clip?
    My top sirloin and crème brûlée?
    Fame? Fortune? Power? Legacy?
    My purpose? My grand quest? My holy grail?
    Where?
    TV has promised me all of these things since day one. As a child, domesticity crumbling around me, constant upheaval, financial destruction, and shoeboxes for shoes, but no worries because there was always TV. There was always that glamorous glow promising riches. That’s what life is supposed to be about. We all grow up to be rock star supermodels with money to burn.
    The American Dream and I’m still waiting.
    Thirty-three and I’m still waiting.
    Waiting, but I get this sucking feeling in my stomach, as if it’s trying to eat itself, as if it’s trying to pull me in and tell me something: disappear , give up . Somehow I missed my chance or my chance missed me and suddenly (always suddenly) I’m too old and too ugly (uglier with each passing day). There’s little chance of me being in the next big boy band. Career paths require skills I never attained. So here I am: signed, sealed and doomed to minimum wage forever.
    I must have been one evil fuck in a past life. The caste system in full effect. Why not a bug or an animal or a sponge? Stupid question. If reincarnation exists, then it’s the good, worthy people who come back as animals and insects and plants. They deserve as much.
    There are people who tell you that true happiness comes from within and it doesn’t matter what you do with your life so long as you enjoy it and make the best out of it. I agree. Completely, totally. Just look at Anne Frank. Look at Gandhi. Look at the martyrs and the hostages and the oppressed peoples throughout the world who somehow manage to crack a smile and transcend their horrible situations.
    Look at them and remember that they’re not me.
    They haven’t been brainwashed by the almighty power of the living room sofa and Nintendo and MTV and People magazine. They can look within themselves, past the beast, and discover an Inner Light that can transmogrify them into angels on earth. But me, when I look inside seeking refuge, searching for salvation, I realize I am far