Self

By Drizz © 2010

A sense of entitlement. For some after a hard day on Wall Street or along the glass enclosed offices of a Fortune 500 company it’s having a three-car garage filled with names like Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, and Bentley or a closet full of Zegna, Ralph Lauren, and Armani. Those are materialistic things that sedate the beast of needing more. Others are happy that the oft broken down 1998 Ford Probe didn’t leak too much oil and was able deposit them into the deep cubical mazes of lower middle management never to see the executive washroom because they refuse to play the office politics game and jerk-off the guy in the corner office after every half-wit Powerpoint presentation about fiscal responsibility.

A person’s sense of entitlement extends however beyond the toys lying in a bank account or taking up sixty inches of wall space to be shown in HD. Those without disabilities may feel entitled to be able to see clearly, use all limbs without pain or in most cases, hear a spoken word without having the origin of the sound repeat it. With a “normal” middle-income life that most Americans live grinding out work for the man and making enough scratch to satisfy the needs and wants, there’s hardly time to take a step back and enjoy this existence.

Thanks to a group of friends that started as nothing more than online counterparts with a similar enjoyment for cards and gambling, that enlightenment happened to me. Started with this motley crew of doctors, lawyers, computer programmers, and spreadsheet jockeys giving me keys to the door to a new life, all I had to do walk through. The first step was the hardest, stuck in a mire of depression and self-loathing; there were several fight-or-flight moments to allow the suck to pull me nine feet underground leaving behind a wife, children, and everyone who gave a shit about the lanky half-deaf kid moping in a corner. A Vegas bender that would result in a free wheelchair ride with a blood alcohol content that nearly matched his age from the New York New York casino’s security staff up to a room with a wife who had left her husband’s soul for dead after a head injury stripped him of his remaining dignity and freedom several years ago.

Once a person has zero sense of entitlement, as I did lying faced down on that hotel bed with $600 in Imperial Palace checks in my pocket that somehow did not get poached by some meth-addled hooker thanks to the above mentioned friends, he/she can start to build their life anew. Learning to laugh again, learning to sit down behind a computer monitor to bang out a few words for others to read, learning to live. Each day now opens a new opportunity, and those details of gaining the ability to drive a car seizure less, to hear semi-normally, to love my spouse and receive the same amount back over the past four years, are better left for daily diary entries.

Drizz is a writer from Minnesota.