Taken for Granted

From very early on, when I was just a wee little kid, I had realized that I am a person who is really easy to pick on and be taken for granted. Taken for granted, words, when laid out, don't seem like much, but most of the time, most of us do not ever realize how heavy their weight is. It is not like I haven't done so too, to others, knowingly or unknowingly. It's just when I look at it in retrospect, for me, getting the shit end of the stick has a higher rate than others.

What I wrote above, when not given a context, anyone reading would have a hard time realizing what it means. Let me give a few very simple examples that everyone has faced now and then. Among a group of friends, when we hang around for a certain time, each of us gets a role assigned to them for something we are better at than the rest. So whenever a situation arises, the rest expect the one who's good at it to perform without really thanking them for it. You own a car, and many of your friends don't. So at times of need, you get more buttered up so the rest can use it. As soon as the usage goes away, the pedestal you've been put on gets taken away until next time. Or you are the person who earns the most, so when paying for food, you are expected to carry out most of the expenses. This is not something entirely wrong and extremely selfish, to be honest. As long as everyone else understands the equation and everything is in equilibrium, it's completely fine.

What about the relationships you have that are deeper? What if you face being taken for granted by your loved ones? It's not as easy anymore, is it? Maybe you are the father, the earner of the family. You work your guts from dawn till the sun goes down, get paid with blood and sweat, but when it is time for dinner, you eat alone. Maybe you are the daughter whose future your parents have gambled on so your older siblings could go to a better university with massive tuition while you study in a community college. Such discrimination may create trauma in you which will never ever truly disappear. The next time you have a family feud, you will shout at them in frustration and ask why you were always discriminated against, but the others will never understand what they did wrong. And you'll never truly know what you did to deserve it. And if you are lucky, you'll go through life without ever truly realizing that you have been taken for granted.

What may be even more personal is if you get a similar treatment from the person you are in love with. You do subtle things designed to make them happy if they ever truly notice, but they never do. You sit there for hours, to write a few lines of a poem that come out bad as you are not a poet, but you write it anyway. Just so you can try and make your counterpart smile and brighten their day, you see them never ever really seeing how much effort you put into it. Maybe you are a mom who worked hard every day to cook good healthy meals and see the others at the dinner table never ever utter out one word of appreciation, not even the guy who you married. Things like this happen to you every day, more or less. Look around just a tad bit carefully, and you'll realize. It is of utmost importance that you look carefully. If you don't understand the concept, it's pretty much obvious that you are the type of person who does it too.

This was me talking about individualistic instances. I have observed and have been a part of such instances so many times that now, even when it reaches extreme points where I would otherwise be on the verge of snapping out, I just don't care enough anymore. What I do instead is when I go to bed every night, I think about it for a few minutes, curl up to feel the warmth I myself generate and then move on. These days YouTube shorts are proving to be more entertaining. I have used that app so many times now that its algorithms know what I like more than everyone else in the world who knows me. Funny eh! Some ones and zeros know you better, to the level where you even enjoy customized adverts more rather than talking to your friends about something silly and stupid! Yeah, welcome the matrix.