an extraordinary person

someone once told me

it takes a long time to make an extraordinary person

i scooped those words up like a dehydrated fool scrounging for water
and i cherished them.
i would only share them on rare occasions.
you know, those times when a loved one is having a break down
because this thing called being-an-adult is a lot more challenging than anyone ever mentioned.
yeah, those moments.

those moments where you cannot breathe because the tears are falling faster than you can sop up.
where you really let life creep in and scare the fuck out of you.

twenty five.
you'll be twenty-five.
you will have spent the last year of your life working away in classes
trying to stand out in applications
and not adding anything of the remarkable sort to your resume.
twenty five.
no pension.
no work experience.
twenty five.
what if you don't get in?

aye.
that is a question that i am just not willing to stare in the face.

but, then again,
what if you do get in?

i cannot answer these questions for myself.
but i can murmur words of encouragement as i rub my swollen eyes


it takes a long time to make an extraordinary person.



there are many things i do not know

and one thing i do.

i am trying.
and that is enough.
damnit, it has to be.

familiarity

because when we first met, i sort of felt like maybe i knew you.
not you, per se. but your eyes were mighty familiar.
they flickered like something i had seen in the past.
i was damn sure of it.
like we had a romance in a past life and i just didn't get quite enough.
so we met again for more.
and, damnit,
i was going to sop it up this time.

on being a dreamer

sometimes i fear that i will never find her.

her (pronoun)- some sort of version of myself that is out there. somewhere. she looks exactly like me except she is established, brilliant and bold. she knows what she wants. and she gets it. 

and, sometimes, i fear that i will.

fear is a funny thing.
so is ambition.
and the force that shoots back and forth between them, sometimes multiple times in a day, is nothing short of exhausting.

it is the fear that perks up and says
why can't you be happy with the life that so many other people live?
a life of 8-5, kids, marriage and a sunday sermon where someone tells me i am a good person because i have all of the above.
why must you aim for the stars?
the stars are far.
the stars are high.

and it is the ambition that says
my dear, you are a force to be reckoned with.
you go after what you want
and you get it.

and somewhere between acknowledging what i want and fearing what i want and philosophizing about what i want, it all becomes too much.

i desperately wanted to be outside today.
today was a day for hands to be thrust into soil, for sun on my face and for finger tips grazing leaves.
but spring, and my awakening, has yet to arrive.
by the time the coy sun disappeared, i had to get some air.

i cranked open the window and lay beneath it.
taking big gasps of cold, supposed-spring air into my lungs.
and damnit, it felt good.
and before i knew it, i felt tears form in my eyes.
at first, i resisted.
and then...

you have been strong for so long.
grant yourself these tears.
these tears are a release.
you deserve a release.

and then i wondered

who made me feel so damn guilty about crying in the first place?
so guilty that i feel ashamed when there is no one else in the room
so guilty that my tears become an enemy. 

instead, they are an opportunity.

with each tear that strolls down my cheek, a very tiny weight has been lifted.
fear streams out of my eyes, down my cheeks and into oblivion.
fear has no place here.

a little while later, i found my face in the mirror.

aren't you just a sight to behold?

and the face peering back at me was surely me. a little bit swollen. but still me.

me (pronoun) - who i am right now. brilliant, bold, and not even a little bit established. dreamer. in love with too many ideas, people, pets and one man in particular. fearful. bold. bold. bold.

in the end, there is no solution.
there is no enlightenment.
not yet.
there is passion and a dream and recognition of that dream.
there is love.
there is a desire for a stubborn i-don't-want-children woman to immediately change into a wooed i-want-YOUR-children woman.
there is a woman who wants it all.
and like so many women before her, has to chose because having it all is not always an option.
and, to be blunt,
that choice fucking sucks.

last week, in a scene dimly lit by the supposed-spring sunlight, i chatted with a friend

i am hoping that when spring comes,  it will bring clarity.

me, too. 

i said as i gave her a big hug and off we went into the unknown abyss we call life.
both fearful.
both bold.
bold.
bold.

the core of it all

when i first told my mom i plan on leaving the province to get an education

she responded with

but what about your boyfriend?

oh, yes. what about him?
as a woman, i am expected to cater to my partner's needs and desires.
but, what about mine?
why is it so difficult for people to grasp that i would be a solo woman in a strange place chasing dreams with no inhibitions.
why is that so problematic?

i cannot help but make the connection between that uneasiness
and the uneasiness that rears its head when i say

kids? sure. but only in ten years. and i only want a month or two off then i want back in the office.

but who will care for your children?

it may be a tad presumptuous, but i assume they will have a father?
i assume they will not just spring out of the earth
and i assume that he will be more than capable to care for them.
yes, i assume a lot of things.

but so do you.
you assume that i will find fulfillment in children and marriage and a home.
you assume that i am not capable of carving out my own path without the hand of a man
and you assume that i need said man to be whole.

but, the thing is,

just because i am a woman does not mean i will plot my life around a man nor will i plot my life around the other things you think i need to be whole as a woman.

and i mean that. i truly, fully, wholeheartedly mean that.
and if that is where this little tale could end, wouldn't that just be simple?

but it is not.
the life of a twenty something is never so simple because
i completely lose my senses when it is 2 am and i wake to the weight of his head on my shoulder
or when i have to stand on my tip toes for a kiss and think that this standing-on-tip-toes-thing ain't so bad

and, truthfully, it might it be nice to have some one say

i will chase you to the edge of the earth just to hold your hand a little bit longer.

yes, i think it might be.

dear fourteen old self,

life will be nothing like you thought it would be.
but it will still be okay.

you will not have those twins and that marriage at twenty-five
and you know what?
you are better off without.
this will become very obvious on that one day you are running late (what else is new?) and it is minus 40 out (what else is new?) and you shove your still wet hair into a wool toque and race outside.
there is no way you could have gotten yourself plus two small children out the door 25 minutes earlier.
and there is something sort of beautiful about that.

to your surprise, you will actually be a skeptic of marriage.
in the end, it isn't for you.
but  you know what is?
love is.
finding someone to really see and finding someone who really sees you back.
that search will outshine any white dress and gold band.

people will hurt you. immensely.
they will not apologize.
forgive them anyway
because, at the end of the day, you are the one who bears the burden.
you are the one who stays up wondering how someone could be so tactless, so hurtful, so terribly rude...
and then, well, then they have really won.
don't let them.
let it slide like water off a duck's back.
they will have to live each day knowing that they are tactless, hurtful and terribly rude.
and doesn't that just burn?

once you walk out of those dreadful teenage years, you will begin to see that only what you think matters.
no one else.
people are stubborn and slightly delusional. they will believe something because they want to. and they will create their reasoning and their proof for that belief in their head. and they will not sway.
and you know what?
it is not your job to make them sway.
you are not here to persuade. 
you are here to flourish.
so do just that.

because i have nothing to say

but so much to ponder...


"And I believe in love. And beauty. I believe that every single person has something they find beautiful and that they truly love. The smell of their child's hair, the silence of a forest, their lover's crooked grin. Their country, their religion, their family. And I believe that if you follow this love all the way to its end, if you start with the thing you find most beautiful and trace its perfume back to its essence, you will perceive an intangible presence, a swath of stillness that allows the thing you love to be visible like  the openness of the sky reveals the presence of the moon"

- Geneen Roth, Women Food and God

seven

7. If you’re employed in any capacity, open a savings account. You never know when you might be unemployed or in desperate need of getting away for a few days. Even $10 a week is $520 more a year than you would’ve had otherwise.

as a child, there was nothing i wanted more than financial independence.
i disliked that my mum had to buy my jelly sandals (am i dating myself here?)
i loathed that people had to care for me financially.
it did not seem fair.
i wanted to care for me.

it was nothing short of frustrating
and i needed a solution.

off i went to my mini kitchen to ponder.
oh, yes, i had a mini kitchen.
i ran a make believe household.
it was practically effortless what with all the non-existent meal preparation, plastic children who did not move nor speak and the spotless, never-been-used utensils.

what is so damn hard about this being a "mom" thing?
it seems pretty simple. 

i played house just as much as any young girl is encouraged to do.
i had dolls that were my kids and i cooed
and i fed and i burped and i changed their clothes
and then i set them down
and i went to work.

yes, that was my solution.
i gave myself a job because i damn well could.

i was a veterinarian.
a very very serious veterinarian.
some times i was a teacher but usually, i was a vet.
and i would pull out my little toiletry case filled with pedicure tools
and i would puncture my stuffed animals (vaccinations!)
and i would wrap their little paws in paper (casts!)
and i would comfort them when their tummies ached (too many treats?!)

even thick into socialization, i made sure i had a job.
and a damn good one.
financial independence was always important to me
and it still is.

i wish i could say that i saved as much as i could
as soon as i landed my first gig a day after sixteen
but i didn't.
i did not think that far ahead.

i was somewhere between a make believe vet and a lost high school student.
but it is never too late.
it is never too late to tap into that young child who was so dedicated to her make believe vet practice that she skipped lunch and fell asleep on the job.
she dreamt of a big breezy office, happiness and the kind of freedom that comes from knowing when to spend and knowing when to save.
it took her years to know the difference.
and, to be honest, she is still learning.

surrendering

i cannot meditate worth a damn.

i tried. so many times.
people who meditate seem so well put together

i could be them.

or so i thought.

my first meditation class can only be described as pure hell.
i was hungry (read: bored)
my foot was asleep
my low back ached
and there were raucous children just outside the window

this is good

the teacher said.

this is good practice. these kids will help you get deeper into what is supposed to be happening here.

in the end, all i wanted was to go was find those children
and open up a serious dialogue about tomfoolery.

i recently tried again.
two minutes in..
my foot was asleep..
i readjusted
another minutes goes by..
my other foot is asleep..
i am cussing in my head
i desperately want a snack.
how do people even do this?
what is the point of being well put together, anyway?
i am a mess.
i am a god damn mess.

i opened my eyes and was pretty damn sure it had been 45 minutes.

it had been five.

you may wonder why on earth i subjected myself to meditation over and over again

it is because i am searching for the voice
there is some sort of voice that functions on some sort of level that appears at some sort of time and says really profound things about life.
far fetched, right?
i don't seem to mind.
i want the damn voice.
and so it came as a shock when the voice appeared rather unannounced.

there was a brief time of my life where i would wake up at 3 am

three in the morning

there was nothing around that would wake me
i would just wake up.
and moments later, the anxiety would kick in
and low and behold, i would be brewing a pot of tea at 3:30 am.

one morning, i awoke

three in the morning

blink blink
and stared at the ceiling
just about to beg and plead and barter with no one in particular

what do you want? what is it? i will do whatever you want. just let me sleep.

and it said

go back to bed, brittany.

and i did.
and the 3 am wake up calls stopped.

yes, i believe this was my sought-after encounter with the voice.
the ever-so-allusive voice.
and i have been thinking about it a lot as of late because there are so many things that i want
so many aspirations and so many goals and so much love
and i just decided...
what if i stop?
what if i let whatever-the-hell-i-am-supposed-to-be-looking-for find me?

to surrender is frightening  but i am not sure i have ever felt so alive.

so...
dear universe,
i am yours.
do with me as you wish.
love,
brittany

five and six

5. Recognize freedom as a 5:30 a.m. trip to the diner with a bunch of strangers you’ve just met.

6. Try not to beat yourself up over having obtained a ‘useless’ Bachelor’s Degree. Debt is hell, and things didn’t pan out quite like you expected, but you did get to go to college, and having a degree isn’t the worst thing in the world to have. We will figure this mess out, I think, probably; the point is you’re not worth less just because there hasn’t been an immediate pay off for going to school. Be patient, work with what you have, and remember that a lot of us are in this together.

these two belong together.
as odd as it seems, their pairing is clear in my mind. 

i remember reading a book years ago about women who studied so hard and thought they would change the world. 
they truly believed they had something viable to contribute that would shift the paradigms as we know it and then they graduated and were met with student debt, rejection and, good lord, were they humbled.

i remember reading this book and creating a distinct line between myself and them.
they, well they just don't have the ambition that i have.
they, well they just don't realize their full potential.
and then i graduated, and, good lord, i was humbled.

let's call it like it is folks.
my "useless" bachelors degree does appear to be useless.
in this job market, no one is interested.

actually, i shouldn't say no one.
after all, i did speak to a few potential employers but they:
a) did not bother to read my cv and had no idea who i was
b) were belligerently rude after i drove through the biggest snow storm of the season to be there
c) called me to speak about a job i never applied for (sort of like a except they did know my name this go 'round)

aye, i was humbled.

but that does not mean i regret anything.
i would do it all over again.
every single class, every single reading, every single break down, every single presentation.
i would do it again.
because in those classes, i found myself and i found my interests and passions and i also found things i did not care about.
those classes shaped me as a person.

yes, it is hard to wake every day and not beat yourself up over the fact that you are an incredibly hard worker, passionate and busting at the seams and yet no one seems to care.
oh, and there is that mound of student debt too. 
sure, it is damn hard.

and that's where freedom comes in.

i knew right away that in order to survive this post-grad abyss with some sort of grace, i would need to turn things around.
i would need to accept that this time in my life may be the only time i have to explore my interests, to read for hours on end, to brew pots of tea and crochet scarves. to live with my parents and laugh with them and care for them.
once life gets going, it may just go fast. 

this may be the time i am given to get to know myself, to find my calling and then to chase it like hell.
and i would be a fool to overlook that.
so i took time that could be spent loathing post-grad life and turned it into light and flighty freedom.

the degree will become something.
some day.
but what is the sense in loathing every minute until it does?

there is no sense in that.
i know enough to know that.
and for now, that is enough.

uncertainty

he says

no one knows where they will be or who they will be there with

and i get lost in the freckles peeking out of his shirt and think

i want to go there