But I can't

Sometimes I feel like people think I live the way I do because of a choice I made. In a lot of ways, this isn't entirely accurate. I've been told to fall in line my entire life, and believe me, I've wanted to more than anything else in the world. For some reason, it just never worked out that way.

Just fall in line, they would say, in a patronizing way, teachers and parents and my teenaged friends. They pointed to parties where everyone was having fun, and classes where I was doing well. Friends tried to sneak rum in my milkshakes to force me to have fun. Teachers suggested my questions were me just trying to be difficult. I held my tongue, but I couldn't fall in line. I had no furniture in my living room. I had no respect for my teachers, who I imagined lead sordid and lust-driven lives as soon as they left the school grounds. My French teacher took breaks every half an hour to go smoke in her car, and my friend was suspended for doing the same.

Just fall in line, they would moan, completely frustrated. My own parents, my professors, my employers. They saw me as a potential worker bee who had not yet harnessed her ability to spend the majority of her life working away at something that was only vaguely interesting. I slept while they expected. I slept through it all, waking only for classes as each expectation diminished slowly into nothing at all. And I woke, and treading through the soft warmth of zero prospects.

Don't let them objectify you! They would exclaim, in my sociology classes and at feminist meetings. But I was young and pretty, and being an object is better than being nothing at all. I wanted the catcalls and the thinly veiled desire. I wanted the status of being an object.

Just fall in line, they now shriek, my neighbours, my children's teachers. They wring their hands and shake their heads. Well-meaning advice becomes venom if given more than twice. And now that I'm in charge of the rearing of other members of society, concern becomes threefold. FALL IN LINE! Teach them about computers, buy them an ipad, and DEAR GOD HAVE YOU STARTED THE FLASH CARDS YET??

But I can't. I want to be an object of desire. I want to listen to people who aren't hypocrites. I want to do the things I enjoy, like a goddamned hedonist. I want to fit in without compromising myself. I want my kids to be an example that society can be un-fucked. 

It's probably not possible for me to fall in line. Every time I try to get closer, I end up farther away.