It is strange to find yourself in a "career". To look around your cubicle and see people in suits and posters with kittens "hanging in there". Attending meetings with power points that no one pays attention to. Business dinners and kissing ass.
Even stranger still is losing that career. Stepping off the treadmill and trying to remember what inspired you all those years ago when you still thought you could change the world.
As I stand facing my last semester of nursing school, ready to begin what NPR likes to call my "encore career" I can't help but feel breathless and scared outta my mind. We all know that euphemism of "encore career" sounds nice but who in their right mind would give up a comfy corporate job to clean up poop all day?! Where one mistake could kill someone?! All that phrase really means is trying to feed your son as the world shatters and rumbles around you.
A memory comes back to me some nights recently. Poised on the edge of my senior year of high school I was beginning the long process of applying for colleges. I had a 4.0 GPA, was captain of the volleyball team and didn't even know what a lesbian was. Ahhhh simpler times, right? I had sent off for three applications. Princeton, Yale and Duke. As I opened the packets I was awestruck immediately. I had never even seen fancy card stock printing and felt special just writing my name on the top of the applications. My parents weren't paying any attention to me - nor had they even asked about the process. The deeper I got into the paperwork, though, the more they noticed.
They stood over me and watched for all of 10 seconds before starting to tear me down. They criticized my penmanship, the mess I was making as I spread out on the table, and I braced myself for a fight. My Dad paced the kitchen saying that it was out of the question for me to even apply to ivy league schools. He wasn't going to be able to give me one cent towards tuition and thought somehow I was rubbing his face in his middle-class values by even applying. Ever idealistic I told him I could get loans, grants, tuition waivers! If we were as poor as he said I would easily qualify, right?
The discussion turned into arguing and culminated with him taking all my applications and ripping them up. He was insulted those fancy schools even wanted money just for applying and thought "those kinds of places" weren't for "people like us". That beautiful paper was ceremoniously thrown into the garbage as he told me how much better off I would be at the state college in town.
Well I was mad. So I refused to even apply for the stupid schools in town. My mother filled out the application to Florida State and of course I was accepted. My senior year spiraled out of control. I spent most days at the park and only showed up for tests. I refused to even walk in my graduation and I could have cared less about Florida State. So my college experience lasted about two weeks as I drove to campus, parked my car, lit a joint and watched the cute girls walk to class. I never stepped one foot onto campus. Luckily I also never got busted for weed ;)
I think about that moment at the kitchen table from time to time. I wonder what would have happened if my parents would have just given me a shot.
For all the wonderful things my father did for me later in life...he was a total dick those days. And I can't even imagine what happened to his soul that would make him rip up those applications. I used to joke that he had a blue-collar chip on his shoulder. Or maybe he was trying to protect me from what he thought would be catastrophic failure.
I am not sure a girl from Macon, Georgia could have made it at Princeton, but it would have been amazing to try.
