I wrote this story on this exact day last year. Tomorrow I graduate. I’ve found my bricks.
So, I’m back in school again, again. Every year or so I’m back in school. It’s like a manageable drug habit or something: I get real into it, have the most amazing time, then something “bad” happens and I feel compelled to quit. Over and over and over. It’s the exact same limbo as any other bad habit, draining time, money, effort, and producing no beneficial results.
I can’t really put “Kicked ass in Ecology one semester” on my resume. In fact, no matter what my experience has been, any schmuck with a bachelor’s degree in basket weaving is a more likely candidate for anything than I am. Let’s not even get into the Allison-has-been-struggling-for-ten-years-to-achieve-this-and-that’s-something-to-be-proud-of nonsense. Caring for your cancer-striken grandmother for ten years is admirable. Spending ten years trying to finish college through a string of unfortunate events and self-made messes is just…. a pile of mess.
My first day back to school this year was an exercise in self-ageism. Looking around the room, all of my thoughts settled upon the ideas that, one, I shouldn’t have eaten so much cake after turning 30 and, two, I have nothing in common with people who are likely to have a One Direction tattoo. I no longer wield the power of youthful, girlish charm that I once considered such a heavy weapon against potential failures of life. Now, I’m just a garish face of academic past-prime, clinging to my withered dreams by my crow’s feet. I felt like everyone was staring at me in zoo-animal wonderment: “What is her natural habitat?” “What region of the world does she come from?” “Carnivore or herbivore?” “Do you think she can even remember the order of operations?”
I would like to clarify that the last question was based on a true story. On my first day of Stats class, the teacher asked me to calculate the answer to a problem because I had been able to identify the correct equation to use. Of course, it having been almost seven years since computing anything harder than a tip, I’ve forgotten some of those math rules. (Not Garvey math rules. One can never forget the Garvey math rules. Adding fractions? Draw a teepee. Multiplying fractions? You go straight across. Quadratic formula? Boom boom boom boom All over 2a!) So I plug the equation into my calculator and come up wrong.
The young man sitting to my left turn to me and not-so-discretely asks, “Did you remember the order of operations?”
Fuck you, I can order operations. I passed calculus while you were still labeling your parts of speech, you turd-born-with-an-iPhone-in-hand, I’m just rusty, it’s been seven years since I’ve been up to bat at the TI-83! Get off my case, jeez, give me a warm up problem will ya?
Poor kid was just trying to be helpful.
In another class, one instructor proposed we go around the room and perform the proverbial ice breaker. Oh lord, I thought to myself, I’m fucking 30 please don’t make me break ice…!!!!! I just found out who Carly Rae Jepsen is and I’m wearing a blouse from Jones New York. Really, what am I going to offer? “Hi, my name is Allison and I’ve spent most of the past 30 years being an under-achieving, over-privileged goddamned piece of work! I also have a son and a dog named Biscuits.” Not exactly a segue to the frat party invites.
At one point I tried to convince myself that being older would give me an edge. Experience, ah, yes, that’s the key. Turns out every open-minded coed watches Bill Maher, listens to NPR, knows how to properly eat sushi, and remembers the fucking order of operations. In comparison, I’ve got nothing new to offer.
Waiting outside a Physiology lecture I overheard an adorable (until she spoke) young girl telling another young guy that she had been pulled over 18 times in the past 3 months.
“I try to get pulled over just to see if I can get out of it,” she vacuously boasted,”That’s what I do when I’m bored!”
Really! Well! You know what I do when I’m bored? Make notes of all the stupidest things I have ever heard.
Ugh, I just couldn’t stop staring at the young man she was talking to, in shock as well as admiration for the fact that he obviously was sticking out that much stupidity in the hopes of getting laid. He deserved it. That was a brutally stupid statement. Even I can’t help but feel embarrassed for that girl when I replay that in my head.
And when I’m alone I think to myself, Are these the people I’m competing with? Sure, I crushed this semester like orange soda, beating out tons of lesser minds with my superior skills of awesome. But is this who I am up against in my future?
I have long suffered this battle. When I get the urge to check up on (stalk) people from my past, I’m more-times-than-not shocked at the amount of dummies doing “better” than me. How did that slut-bag from Rockbar end up as a nurse anesthetist with two gorgeous kids? How did that fat pig from my old chemistry lab marry rich, now living on a sprawling ranch in Telluride? Probably because they weren’t a total bitch like I am. Probably because they had more patience or bigger boobs or didn’t act like a total loon or write over-sharing stories. But let’s pretend we all can’t think up any good reason, and that the world is simply crazy and unfair.
Perhaps I am the most ungrateful person in the world. Maybe, my ultimate life’s struggle is that I am simply more accustomed to chaos. I see all of these people around me. Some of them just get it right, they go about life and things sort out they way they are supposed to and they have college degrees and then marry in happy ceremonies not riddled by soul-crushing doubts and they give their careers time and they enjoy Batman movies together and then have planned children and homes with things inside their homes like matching end tables and interesting serving platters.
Then there are other people, people who seem awkward or hopeless at first just one day do what they should and carry on to a stable life with health insurance and decent wages and weird-but-successful relationships and possibly Jesus.
And then there’s me.
I mean well. I have no patience. I get overly-enthusiastic just to burn out quickly. I have trouble finishing tasks, while the first hyperbolic “five minutes” of every task I start is the most dedicated five minutes of anything ever done. I get sad. I am afraid. I don’t like to repair, preferring to replace everything… from appliances to relationships. I don’t read directions thoroughly, I just “go for it”. Most of the time I feel lost. Those last two sentences back-to-back are telling.
I have made no stronghold. I am the pig who built her house out of straw. So poorly, weakly built that my house doesn’t even need a Big, Bad Wolf. The smallest friction of an unintentional gust of wind is enough to blow my house down.
And there I am, fat, pink and cartoonish.
Exposed.
Still searching for bricks.
seeallisonplay 