Ten Years Ago
Maybe it's because I'm turning thirty this year, I don't know, but I've been thinking a lot lately about who I used to be at different times, and how I got here, and what I used to think my life would be like. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a complaint for once, just an observation. Ten years ago I was 19 turning 20, in my second year of college at good old SMC, with my first serious boyfriend. What did I think life would be when I was 29?
For one thing I was certain I would have been married long ago, like as soon as I graduated. I was going to do like my mother; meet the perfect guy, get hitched right out of school, settled down to a comfortable suburban life. I was dead-set on having kids, preferably a daughter of my own, but a son would have been wonderful as well. I would write or costume when I wasn't being supermom. Probably chair the PTA and spend a week every summer somewhere overseas before returning to a 9-5 existance. Failing that, I would marry someone with class and taste and be the consumate hostess of countless dinner parties and charity events. Well, I never did see myself as a scholar first. Wife, mother, author, suburbanite; what did I think life would be beyond this kind of banal formula?
The me of now thinks that I've lived a sort of roundabout life, and that makes sense because I always was slow to mature. On good days I think this keeps me young at heart, on bad days I think that I will reach every milestone a little late. But life is at least a lot more interesting than 19-year-old me could have imagined. I'm not jetting around the world being important or fabulously wealthy, but I can at least say what would have surprised me the most; I am generally, daily, happy.
Am I disappointed not to be married? Yes, but life got in the way and messed with the plan a little, and I'd rather have waited ten more years for Thomas than hurry up for anyone else. Kids? As badly as I used to want them, now I fear them. Talk about something that would mess with the plan, I don't see them in my future. My job? It's never a dull day. Thomas talks about creating files and entering the same data every day, my brother Colin complains about editing other people's documents every day. I never know what a day will bring, and the crazier it is the more I love it. I got here by not getting what I wanted, because life messed with the plan. I'm not in a house in the suburbs, and maybe someday we'll get there, but as scary as thirty is, this has been a great adventure, and I hope the next decade is as full and unpredictable as the last one.
I was so afraid to deviate from the plan, I was sure that life owed me something for following the rules, and now I'm someone who likes to break the rules a little. My advice for anyone who feels like they are stuck in a rut is to chuck the plan. Do something crazy, do something stupid. Go outside of yourself, don't figure out how first, just do something. Pack a bag, go to a new city. Ask someone out. Make an irrevocable decision. Change your appearance. Take a break. Take a shot. Introduce yourself to a stranger. Apply for a job that you think is out of your league. Try something you know nothing about. Expand your horizons.
My plan didn't work. My jobs went away. My boyfriends dumped me. My degree wasn't getting me anywhere. I lived at home. I couldn't seem to break into the theatre scene. There was nothing saying it was ever going to get any better...so I went to an event in another state, and I talked to some strangers who became friends, and I packed a bag, and I quit the theatre, and I asked a guy out, and I moved to a new city overnight, and I got a new job, and I cut my hair, and I applied for school without knowing if I had funding; and now I'm looking back on the broken pieces of that old dream and saying, screw the plan. Life doesn't give a damn about plans. Life just happens, and I'm better for it.
For one thing I was certain I would have been married long ago, like as soon as I graduated. I was going to do like my mother; meet the perfect guy, get hitched right out of school, settled down to a comfortable suburban life. I was dead-set on having kids, preferably a daughter of my own, but a son would have been wonderful as well. I would write or costume when I wasn't being supermom. Probably chair the PTA and spend a week every summer somewhere overseas before returning to a 9-5 existance. Failing that, I would marry someone with class and taste and be the consumate hostess of countless dinner parties and charity events. Well, I never did see myself as a scholar first. Wife, mother, author, suburbanite; what did I think life would be beyond this kind of banal formula?
The me of now thinks that I've lived a sort of roundabout life, and that makes sense because I always was slow to mature. On good days I think this keeps me young at heart, on bad days I think that I will reach every milestone a little late. But life is at least a lot more interesting than 19-year-old me could have imagined. I'm not jetting around the world being important or fabulously wealthy, but I can at least say what would have surprised me the most; I am generally, daily, happy.
Am I disappointed not to be married? Yes, but life got in the way and messed with the plan a little, and I'd rather have waited ten more years for Thomas than hurry up for anyone else. Kids? As badly as I used to want them, now I fear them. Talk about something that would mess with the plan, I don't see them in my future. My job? It's never a dull day. Thomas talks about creating files and entering the same data every day, my brother Colin complains about editing other people's documents every day. I never know what a day will bring, and the crazier it is the more I love it. I got here by not getting what I wanted, because life messed with the plan. I'm not in a house in the suburbs, and maybe someday we'll get there, but as scary as thirty is, this has been a great adventure, and I hope the next decade is as full and unpredictable as the last one.
I was so afraid to deviate from the plan, I was sure that life owed me something for following the rules, and now I'm someone who likes to break the rules a little. My advice for anyone who feels like they are stuck in a rut is to chuck the plan. Do something crazy, do something stupid. Go outside of yourself, don't figure out how first, just do something. Pack a bag, go to a new city. Ask someone out. Make an irrevocable decision. Change your appearance. Take a break. Take a shot. Introduce yourself to a stranger. Apply for a job that you think is out of your league. Try something you know nothing about. Expand your horizons.
My plan didn't work. My jobs went away. My boyfriends dumped me. My degree wasn't getting me anywhere. I lived at home. I couldn't seem to break into the theatre scene. There was nothing saying it was ever going to get any better...so I went to an event in another state, and I talked to some strangers who became friends, and I packed a bag, and I quit the theatre, and I asked a guy out, and I moved to a new city overnight, and I got a new job, and I cut my hair, and I applied for school without knowing if I had funding; and now I'm looking back on the broken pieces of that old dream and saying, screw the plan. Life doesn't give a damn about plans. Life just happens, and I'm better for it.