silver

Today is the second day of the second month of this new year. I have reached that part of life where you forget how old you’re supposed to be. It’s come much earlier than expected, if I’m being honest. This year I turn 38. I had to count that twice to be sure because the number still feels impossible. I stared at myself in the mirror this morning and said out loud: I don’t want to be this old.

But what is there to do about it? I spend years yanking on the chains of time only to be pulled headlong into one new dawn after another. I love my life but maybe I am bored with it. I love my life but sometimes it feels like one big platitude. I love my life. I just don’t want to keep thinking: is this it?

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G. recently placed second in a dance competition she nearly pulled out of. Always bet on yourself, I told her, even though I have failed for years to take my own advice. The list of things I would do if I were to bet on myself is, for all my faffing around, clear at least. I’m good at my job, I think, but I would quit it. I’d sign up for that class with Ann Friedman. I would give myself two years to give this a proper go. I would be scared shitless every second of every day, and maybe I would hate myself for trying, but maybe I could be happier.

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In my second year of uni, I signed up for a creative writing class. I enrolled late and had to write the professor for special permission to register. Then, after all that pomp, I dropped out. I still remember it all because I’ve never been able to shake the shame. We sat in a circle that first day. My back was to the window. Everyone in class was white, and worse — they just could not wait to share their writing. There were poets, one audacious fan fiction writer, more poets. A few aspiring novelists, two writers who did “everything”. Then there was me, and what did I have — a blog?? I was the English major who hated Shakespeare and barely liked poetry. I skimmed the classics and picked classes I knew I could do well in. So when it came to my introduction, I said I had only ever written for myself. I wanted to learn how to do more, I added, which was when the professor, four seats away from me, deftly pivoted into our curriculum. 

That same term, a professor in a different class told me to consider grad school. She was convinced I had something new to say, and to prove her point, she replaced my final term assignment with a research paper of my choice: carte blanche, no strings attached. Surprise me, were her only instructions. With no guardrails or inspiration, I wound up giving her 5,000 words of a paper I could not even bring myself to edit.

By the time I started applying for grad school, I knew I would never have a career in academia. I was just not good enough. Rather, I was not great enough. It’s easy to write ‘A’ grade papers once you understand the confines of the assignment. But anything more generous in scope? I could only flounder.

Still, I think about that fork in the road all the time. If I hadn’t quit that class; if I had the discipline to think more critically; if I had the thick skin of someone else entirely.

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A lot can happen in two years, or nothing at all. At 17, I was unceremoniously dumped over the phone with the single most devastating line: I’m still not over her. When I turned 18 the next year, I once again lost all honour to a zinger written on the back of my essay: You write well, but lack substance.

Those words continue to haunt me two decades on. The hold they have on me may be ridiculous, but surely someone understands. It remains so easy to read between the lines: Nice try, but not what I’m looking for. Better luck next time.

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E. has a tattoo that reads “never second best”. I would scoff, but I have an hourglass tattooed on my right wrist, so who am I to judge? We think that etching reminders literally into skin will curb our mistakes, and there we go again, drowning in the same sin.

I know the time I have here will one day run out. The question is: how old do I have to be to do something about it?