Earlier this week, I found myself feeling more vulnerable than I have felt in a long time. I’m reading The Awakening by Kate Chopin with my juniors right now. It’s an amazing little book about a 28 year old woman that begins to realize her place in the world and her role in society. Basically, it’s about her journey to self-awareness and just in case her audience didn’t catch that, there is this one little chapter where Chopin lays it out pretty plainly. It goes like this:
“In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her. This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of twenty-eight-perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman.”
My students couldn’t quite figure out this section, so I started to attempt an explanation. Before I knew it, there I was, in front of 24 pairs of terrified and uncomfortable 17 year old eyes, in a breathless rant about my current quarter-life-dilemma. (Crisis is just too strong a word for me to accept yet. A crisis involves nature’s fury, emergency responders, telethons. A dilemma involves close friends, comfort food and booze, good music). I guess this is what happens when you repress things. Kind of like when I don’t clean my dishes. Sooner or later they are going to smell. Sooner or later I’m going to end up in a breathless rant. Basically, here is how it went:
“You guys can’t understand what Edna [the protagonist] is feeling at your age. You’re too young. You still have possibilities; the future is still this beautifully ambiguous horizon. All you see is water because you have no idea where your life is going to end up. But when you get in your twenties you realize that you just made a lot of really important decisions in a really short amount of time without realizing just how important they were and you begin to realize your position in the universe. You might be working a comfortable, steady job with people who started that same job at your age, and have continued to work it for 35 years. Suddenly the horizon becomes clear, crystal clear and it freaks you out. You can see the shoreline. Lights are guiding you home. Your entire life is laid out in front of you and you’re only 26! You wonder if you’ve picked the job that you’ll work at until you retire. That beautifully ambiguous horizon is gone and you start to get all itchy…” and I started to get all itchy…”and you picture yourself suddenly being 65 years old working the job that you started when you were 25 and you stop and ask ‘Wait. What the heck? When did I get here? When did I make this decision?’ and then you stop and you realize oh wait. I made it when I got out of college when I still had those dreadlocks and thought that overalls were appropriate to wear to dinner. And all you want is to have that open water again…” Breath. Breath. Breath. Shrink. And. Hide. Under. Your. Desk. Immediately.
And so there it was. Self-Awareness. Tragic, self-pitying, overly-dramatic, obnoxious self-awareness in the middle of my AP Language and Composition class. But at least it was another piece in this “What the heck is wrong with me lately” puzzle.
I thought about this on the way home from work that day. In addition to this whole roots thing, I think I suddenly woke up to realize that whoa…I had made some pretty big decisions without realizing how big these decisions were. For someone who is so egotistically and obnoxiously self-aware, I certainly do suffer from a serious case of lack-of-foresight, and it has effed with my decision making skills. I spent more time picking out my last car than I did my college. I think I spent more time picking out my last travel coffee mug than I did my college. It’s quite terrifying when I think about how deliberate I am in some of my decisions (do I want soy or three grain tempeh, Swiss or Muenster, kitten heel or pump) yet I’m completely flippant when it comes to the HUGE decisions (do I want a B.S. in English Secondary Education or a B.A. in English Creative Writing). What the heck is wrong with me? How do I not realize the weight of these decisions when I make them? And thank God I didn't feel the need to get a tattoo when I was 19 or 20. My interests at that time in addition to my lack of foresight would have landed me a sweet tat of a kitten peeping through the open lid of a box of pop-tarts on my forearm.
And that is what I am struggling with right now. I feel like I made a bunch of life-altering, life-defining decisions when I was completely ill-equipped and unprepared to make those decisions, and now I’m questioning the direction of my future. And just like with the roots thing, I feel horribly ungrateful and offensive putting this into words, but again I know I am not alone in this. I know that my life is great. I am so thankful for my job that doesn’t even feel like work some days, and for my friends and family that are truly lifesavers. And I know that if I re-read this in like 10 years (or 10 minutes) I will completely laugh at myself for thinking that my life is somehow set in stone at the age of 26. But I can’t help it. At least I’m aware of it now, so I can fight against these ridiculous, panicky feelings and I can work on building some type of foresight.
And hopefully in the future I can fight against slipping into a breathless rant in front of my students.
Once again, I ask you to please excuse yourself from my innermost thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI weigh out every decision to a painful extent -- immediately following said decision. For example, I wholeheartedly believe that this current stint of unemployment (unless you count 2 training shifts at Ruby Tuesday in the past week) may forever change the quality of my resume and thus result in a string of Receptionist positions for the next 40 years. This will of course lead to my inability to purchase a home, a new laptop, or a membership to the Y. All of this, a result of a 1-2 month hiatus in management experience due to a somewhat impulsive move to SC.
Um..... I feel like I could have written this EXACT SAME post (of course, less eloquently). Ugh... can we form a mid-twenties life dilemma support group! I'll be the VP (and I'll bring the wine-- and whine).
ReplyDeletehmmm... i am in total favor of the cat tat.
ReplyDeleteI must be ahead of the curve, because this is pretty much how I felt ages 16-20. You think you were dumb at 21 to commit to a career? The enormity of that decision completely paralyzed me when selecting colleges (it didn't help that I was a Teaching Fellow and so basically felt that I was signing my life away). I'm talking full-blow panic attacks to the point that I dropped out of school about 5 minutes into my second semester of college. I was so completely mortified walking around to every professor to get their signature on my withdrawal forms...I felt like such a failure! And one afternoon I crawled, tail between my legs, into the office of my Foreign Lit professor, and she said "Well don't be sad...you have the rest of your life to do this." All of a sudden, the weight had been lifted. Finally someone had the grace to point out to me that the rest of my life wasn't supposed to be a steady upward climb, that there was no need for all this pressure! I still fret over how life is one step forward, two steps back every now and again. But, had I been footloose and fancy-free at 18 rather than in the throes of my quarter life crisis, I would probably have a degree by now!
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