The Scale Of My Ambitions

was set so low they did not seem like ambition
at all: I was meant to imitate my parents, and live
within the material means they provided,
accept as a given the second hand uniforms,
and inatentively accept my inatentive schooling.

There it did not matter if I, or anyone else,
'did badly', the teachers got jobs out of it,
parents got their children minded, whilst
the pretence was they were being taught.
The parents could work and live less impeded
by them being parents. My invite was more
to be ignored, then to be valued, anyway. 

Through being me, I failed even the low level
of attemtion/expected achievement expected of me:
to slot myself into place underneath my parents
as part of local life , as a pre-shrunk ready fit adult.

By the time I was set to seek work,
training had been separated from jobs,
employers were paid to train trainees,
but did not employ those they trained,
who nobody wanted. When I applied for local jobs
I stood no chance: employers wanted married women
who would work for less, and stay, however bored
they might get. They had children to clothe and feed,
the way I had been, indifferently, over the last decade.

I was expected to apply for jobs
I was unlikely to get, with alacrity.

Since I had none, I thought education was the ecsape route.
It seemed like a good thing for keeping me occupied,
even if it did not do for me what it was said to do for others: 
make the educated more trainable/employable.

'Too little effort applied too late' would be what employers
thought when I applied for jobs with what I'd learned. 
What that really meant was that I, or my parents, 
had not been competitive enough to demand for me
what employers wanted: I had the wrong family background.

I escaped this catch 22 situation when I found temporary work
in another town. and worked until the temp work ran dry.
With my time being my own I did personal development work,
where in my isolation I improvised who I thought I wanted to be.

If I had understood what the word 'lossleader' meant
-a thing is sold for much less than it is worth, to inspire
cheap grace in future-I would have written myself off,
by agreement with those whp mis-sold the future
to who they felt they needed to sell it to, far far earlier.

What did not kill me made me stranger.