Under the Sea (world)

I've been slowly (extremely slowly) working on an essay about working at SeaWorld San Diego for a third of my life. It's actually been much harder than i assumed to reopen the wounds. You would think it's just a job, why would it hurt? That's kind of what I'm writing about. Hopefully I will do the things I want to do in this essay and who knows maybe I will try to publish it somewhere. Or publish it myself.
I will say, with all the shitty labor practices and trauma that i've been apart of and witness to, I find it impossible no one else has ever written about what a terrible employer SeaWorld is. I feel like I'm digging into unknown territory, which is both exciting and scary. Everything written about SeaWorld is only from the past 6 years and the controversy surrounding Blackfish and Orca captivity. Which is obviously a high profile issue. My problem with it is that the abusive labor practices (of most corporate jobs/theme parks) are not even a blip, although both have probably been relevant since the park's inception. I get it, no one really cares about the working conditions in low-wage job. To other Americans those people deserve what they get.  Pull your damn self up by your own damn bootstraps, low-wage unskilled laborers. So maybe my piece will illuminate some of these things.
This is something I've wanted to write for years. I left SW finally in 2014, after 11 years. I had no back-up. I thought I'd become a full time student, which never really happened, but I'm the closest I've ever been. I had no savings. I had no job lined up. I was desperate to get away from the toxic, eternally teenaged mindset, and the utter lack of options. I finally feel ready to tackle some of the stuff I dealt with that informed so much of my life and decisions. I also finally have an angle or a hook to examine it from, which I won't go into detail here.
I'm basically procrastinating the writing of this essay by writing this blog post, but I do want to share an early version of this. A short lyrical piece about feeling stuck in a job, a theme park, and artificial happiness.