[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5RrcruaK6Q]
If you knew me at, let’s say, 17…you’d know I have a world I lived in. Within that world, there lived very little I didn’t wholly encompass or feel ownership over. It was a weirdly emotionally charged time in my life, for a lot of reasons I don’t have to go into.
It was, incidentally, the first time someone told me I couldn’t do something I felt, quite passionately, I wanted to do.
In the middle of a loud fight with someone, my opponent said, “you’ll never be a writer. You don’t even finish your sentences when you’re talking to me. You never finish anything”. I lost that fight, because I just stood there, stunned. My mother would’ve called it “a mouth full of teeth”.
Once I’d recovered, I walked inside, to the warmth of my parents’ home and didn’t talk to anyone for two days.
A few days later, in typically post-adolescent rage, I finished something, with that person, just to prove I could, actually finish something. I never really told anyone why I did it, and my parents were quite upset – they’d imagined him to be a nice enough bloke.
It haunted me, for a long time. Every time I felt like I wanted to give something up, move on from something, feel my way through something new…those words would come back and haunt me.
I’d beat myself up about it. I’d stare at my face in the mirror and say “Oh, he was right”.
By the time I turned 21, I finished another thing when I graduated from University.
Mentally, every time I finished something – whether it was a task, a job, the dishes…I’d visualise writing him this long-ass letter of all the things I’d finished since I’d finished with him.
It was, directly and indirectly, because of that conversation and the life occurrences that took place around and beyond it, that I ended up here.
Here, at this desk, on a Friday night, working.
What am I working at? Oh, yeah. That thing I do. I’m a writer.
Some time in the last ten years – I’m not sure when – I stopped keeping tally of all the things I’d finished since he told me I wouldn’t finish anything in my life. I only realised that I’d stopped keeping tally when he, annoyingly, popped up on my Facebook newsfeed this afternoon, as he’d commented on something I’d commented on and…it was a very strange six degrees of separation moment for me.
I don’t think anyone’s been blocked that quickly on Facebook ever before.
There was a naughty voice in the back of my head that shouted at me, though. It was yelling obscenities at his name and goading me on to unblock him…you know…to show him I’d finished a lot of stuff since he’d told me I wouldn’t. There’s a weird little sprite that lives within all of us (admit it…) that really would love to rub it in the faces of people who told us we’d never amount to anything.
Sometimes, life gives us the opportunity to dance on their words of long gone ago, and rub in our achievements. Heck, it’s tempting.
For me, though. A louder voice spoke to me, from within my head. It said “leave it”. It said “it’s almost 16 years later. Seriously. Just leave it alone”.
Which was when I realised that if I did indeed dance around on his words in some strangely petulant shimmy, I’d just tire myself out and he’d barely notice.
So, I left him there, in that little blocked list.
Every time, though…
Every time I write something, I know I win. Every time someone asks me what I do for a living, I win. Every time I get a quizzical expression from somebody when they ponder my life work, I win. Every time I see my name in print. Every time I get paid to write about stuff I feel passionately about. Every single time I write a blog post.
In some ways, this post…
this post is me talking to that strange 17-year old in the road. I want her to know to do her little dance on his words on the road that night. In fact, Catherine (nobody called me Cath back then. Weird, right?)…just do your little dance and go inside. It’ll be okay.
Somewhere, in the very, very past life of me, there’s a teenager on the brink of adulthood…smiling now.