Tuesday, November 08, 2005
z.
tired.
i was brought up to believe that the sky was the limit for smart girls who persevered. i have to say that limit actually appears to hit at about the fourth floor.
i know how incredibly fortunate i am, and how good my life is. and i'm not just saying that, even as i'm typing and feeling a little socked in the guts, i am very aware of it.
today, though, "smart cookie" seems like another way of saying "not good enough," and i'm wondering exactly what i spent my twenties doing. and if the answer is something like, "growing up," that's great, but . . .
just but, i guess. but. but i'm older, and it sometimes feels like that decade was a bad boyfriend who didn't hold my hand in public. (although almost half of it contained the monkey, and in that i am inordinately blessed, so that's not really fair.)
i just wonder who the me who stayed in school would have been, and if there would be some pleasant success right now in the place of some of this flailing (grad school! trying to pretend like i can talk school talk! i don't know anything about theory! i don't have a writing sample that isn't seven years old! faking feels bad! this isn't going to work, is it!). this might be the time things were starting to pay off, if i'd invested in something that . . . you know, paid off.
whatever i was doing ran me right into the best one, though, and that is maybe the clearest sign that it was both necessary and valuable. happy birthday, love.
i was brought up to believe that the sky was the limit for smart girls who persevered. i have to say that limit actually appears to hit at about the fourth floor.
i know how incredibly fortunate i am, and how good my life is. and i'm not just saying that, even as i'm typing and feeling a little socked in the guts, i am very aware of it.
today, though, "smart cookie" seems like another way of saying "not good enough," and i'm wondering exactly what i spent my twenties doing. and if the answer is something like, "growing up," that's great, but . . .
just but, i guess. but. but i'm older, and it sometimes feels like that decade was a bad boyfriend who didn't hold my hand in public. (although almost half of it contained the monkey, and in that i am inordinately blessed, so that's not really fair.)
i just wonder who the me who stayed in school would have been, and if there would be some pleasant success right now in the place of some of this flailing (grad school! trying to pretend like i can talk school talk! i don't know anything about theory! i don't have a writing sample that isn't seven years old! faking feels bad! this isn't going to work, is it!). this might be the time things were starting to pay off, if i'd invested in something that . . . you know, paid off.
whatever i was doing ran me right into the best one, though, and that is maybe the clearest sign that it was both necessary and valuable. happy birthday, love.
