Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t. – Mary Schmich
Fek me Mary! I don’t like where this is heading.
Do you really want me to perform a slow strip in front of all these people? Do I really have to expose myself, one painful revelation of dumbass at a time? Button by button?
Have I ever known what I wanted?
In High School I aced English and Lit, but my teacher was a smarmy bastard with a porno moustache and squinty eyes. The Graphics teacher on the other hand was young and cute. Suddenly I wanted to be a Graphic Designer.
I walk stage left and begin peeling off one long, elbow length white glove.
I drop it to the floor.
Here’s the problem… I was shite at graphics and very ill-prepared to boot.
I walk stage right and work the other glove…
I’m rolling it down to reveal a smooth bare arm…
I’m peeling it off slowly finger by finger…and then…
I wait for the perfect drum beat,
the perfect dramatic moment to flick it hard to the floor.
At Uni I fell into an English major, stirring in a little education degree on the side. Everyone was convinced that I’d be a great teacher. And at some point everyone convinced me. But at graduation there was regional work and a few nail-biting gigs teaching year nines. The effen little horrors.
Suddenly I was no longer convinced.
I return to the middle of the stage and am grateful for the lights that shine into my eyes.
I begin unbuttoning my blouse starting at the unobvious bottom.
Slowly…I undo them and push one shoulder forward,
exposing pale glowing skin and a peek of cleavage.
Then a job that unexpectedly fell into my lap became somewhat satisfying. Marketing in the pretty-pill-whorehouse of a multi-national pharmaceutical company.
It had never been in my dreams, but there were words and brain usage beyond what I had experienced. And it was a comforting way to pretend it was all I’d ever wanted.
Until the day of the big whoop-it-up congratulations-to-us marketing meeting.
An A-List product had hit a milestone of dollars and sales worthy of tooting trumpets. The product was an anti-depressant. And during the back slapping and champagne corks I felt no less than emptiness.
With pin prick focus all I could see was the sheer volume of money being spent by all those depressives and the irony of toasting the good health of this product.
Hooray! Hooray! For all you sick-with-the-business-of-livings out there!
It was time to go.
I stay centre stage and know it’s time for a bit of skirt…I unzip it at the back and shimmy, shimmy…
I’ve always had this niggle of a feeling, of tickets in my hand that held promises of excitement and adventures to come. But when I look at them I’m painfully startled by the realisation that they are stamped use-by the early nineties.
Well my friends there’s little left between you and me ‘cept for these heels and this ridiculously long and cleverly placed black feather boa.
Fek it.
Sorry, but I’ve never once desired to be the perfect-stay-at-home-mum.
I had itchy feet and itchy palms and an itchy need to find that something I could do, something I could call my own.
But I never picked up my pen.
I answered that call stupidly inhaling the cafes one by one until seven years later I am all coffee beans and gen-y staff and freakin’ cake crumbs. And the deep secret that the thrill of the treacherous learning curve was over, far earlier than anticipated.
I know I’ve wafted through the last seven years of my life under a radar of sorts, dodging the admiration of my friends who all look at me as if I’m some kind of
successful business woman.
I understand why they think that way. But it can only feel like fraud to me.
I’m all feathery black and ivory…
and then suddenly
I’m sick with the realisation of how close to raw-exposure I’ve become.
I clutch at the curtains and wind myself around and around, until I’m deeply wrapped in a warm red-fringed-velvety cocoon.
“Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do” is all bloody well and good Mary.
It’s the guilt you feel when you know what you want to do…and never do it that is the fuck-note of your life.
One day I’ll admit it to myself. Out aloud.
Brave the criticism, the self doubt and the but you’re so, so, unworthy.
And I will have the whole world hold me,
in just two hands.
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