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October 31, 2004
Again
Again
Elizabeth.
She’s been part of my life for so long, I can barely remember when I first met her. But it was a week before she started working at the nursing home, and she was then only engaged to the nightmare of her husband-to-be. It was an inexorable process; no matter how much she wanted out, the wedding had been arranged, the house had been bought, and her life with him was fixed. She was far from happy with her fiancé, but things had been too meticulously planned for her to be able to back out.
Though we’ve spent so very many hours on the phone over the years, my strongest memory of her is from three years ago. I was working in Social Services, and ours was the only team without internet access. Due to my colleagues’ conspiring against me, I’d have to spend my lunchbreaks at the internet café, returning again after work to quickly check in before my dance class. I don’t remember what she said in that particular email, I only remember being so upset on her behalf that I could barely dance that night. Normally my dance classes took me away from the everyday world; that evening, all I could do was feel her pain.
I don’t know why I don’t stay in touch with her. I’m so proud of what she’s achieved over the years, leaving her husband and her subsequent boyfriend, despite the convenience he offered. She’s suffered so much in the years that I’ve known her – despite my frequent absences from her life – that all I want from her is to be as happy as she can be, preferably surrounded by many Scottish men with to-die-for accents, and for her to glow at their attention. Failing that, just to be content, and proud of what she’s achieved over the years. She has done nothing to deserve being buried in a Canadian hick town, and for all she’s survived, she should be entitled to buy one-way tickets for herself and her son to Edinburgh, check into a luxury hotel for a night to give their new life the best possible start, and take it from there. It can hardly work out worse than what she’s been through so far, and, at best, offer her all that she’s missed out on through giving her heart to the wrong people.
Maybe I’m one of them. She’s known me for long enough that she knows of my tendency to disappear for weeks or months at a time. A few months ago, we spent hours on the phone; I was upset about a good friend at work who’d announced that she was leaving, she was upset about her boyfriend and life in general. She had an entrance exam the next day, but in the course of our many-hour phone call, we decided that she’d ditch the exam, and move here. Over the next few days, the two of us were in a websearching frenzy, for her to get set up here rather than in Canada. We stayed on the phone for so long that the exam didn’t stand a chance, and she happily missed it anyway. We spent the next few weeks planning her move to England (as that’s where I was, as opposed to Scotland with the sexy accents), when I was offered an interview for a job in the States. And, despite whichever outcome of the interview, she realised I wouldn’t necessarily be here indefinitely for her. And we’ve not spoken, and barely emailed since.
Since then, my work situation has been so hectic that I’ve not been able to stay in touch with her. I’ve never stopped feeling guilty for her missing her exam, for her being stuck in Orangeville after all her plans, for me not being able to commit to being her anchor on a long-term basis. A friend used to ask me, what with all these women I was counselling and helping, who was helping me? – but, ultimately, as there wasn’t anyone, I’d have to retreat so as to protect myself. And of everyone I know, Elizabeth is the main victim of my absences.
I’m not sure why I’m so upset tonight. I keep remembering that night in the dance studio, having read an email from Elizabeth shortly before, feeling too heavy with misery on her behalf to be able to dance.
I’ve only known Ana for a few weeks. I’m looking for a flatmate; similar to Elizabeth, where she and her son Anthony, in an ideal world, would be living somewhere in the Scottish Highlands or Edinburgh, Ana would be far away from her boyfriend and getting on with her life. The problem is, she’s not ready yet. I know that something bad, something far worse than what she’s yet experienced has to happen before she’ll leave for the final time, but as I told her last night, I so don’t want her to go through that, to have to process the trauma of whatever event that is in addition to the last two years of her life. Although I only met her for the first time yesterday, she has become such a vivid person to me through the emails she sends me, and it seems to me that she has so much passion for life which is only slightly suppressed by her boyfriend’s influence. I fully accept, however, that she’s not yet ready to leave him, and being with him is the only lifestyle she’s really known since moving to London, whatever it costs. Maybe it’s because I’ve not yet met Elizabeth, but to have met Ana, to have spent hours talking to her then help her leave her boyfriend, I can’t help but feel that, even if I can’t be involved in her ultimately leaving her boyfriend, I can at least try to help guide her towards leading her own life and making her own choices. I gather that she doesn’t have the sort of friends who know and understand what she’s going through, so, upsetting as it may be for me to be there for her when she needs it, at possibly the worst time imaginable for me – her difficulty at separating herself from her boyfriend of about a year and a half versus my difficulties in separating myself from close friends at work of a similar length in time – I want her to know that at least someone understands what she’s going through, and for all my feelings on the subject, I won’t judge her choices, as her boyfriend is doing more than enough of that as it is.
I’m just feeling upset. I’ve had an exhausting week, we were up till almost 5 am this morning, and when I got up from a nap this afternoon, she was jittery and anxious to return to her boyfriend. I’d given her a book to read, which I’d hoped would help her reassess her feelings, and a piece I’d written years ago, a few months after I first met Elizabeth, but in her rush to get home, she left both behind. As well as a pillow. I don’t know why I’m feeling so upset, but maybe it’s because of her getting so far, then retreating, to a situation I don’t want to even picture, despite how she’s described it. I knew last night that she wasn’t ready to leave, so her phone call at about 2.30am came as a shock, but I’d really hoped that she’d have been strong enough to stay, to resist the urge to return to a horrible situation she shouldn’t have to be involved in. At 20, she shouldn’t have to deal with things outside her control or which are nothing to do with her; her boyfriend’s problems aren’t hers’; her relationship isn’t an endurance test.
I don’t particularly remember being 20, therefore I can’t try to imagine being in her situation at her age. I do know that any man who tried to treat me the way her boyfriend treats her would be in hospital, or possibly a morgue, but being with her boyfriend is something she needs to do, something she needs to get out of her system before she’ll be ready to move on. Maybe that’s why I’m feeling so upset; she’s so lovely, so vital, yet she’s willing to put that on hold to support someone who doesn’t appreciate how lucky he is to have her support, who takes it for granted and screws things up all the more, secure in the knowledge that she’ll be there for him.
As with Elizabeth, I want her to know that she’s not alone in this any more, that no matter how bad things get, she’s got someone who understands what she’s going through and doesn’t shock easily.
Normally my maternal feelings are confined to my harp; it’s taken Ana, so young and with so much ahead of her, to make me feel the same for a non-wooden, flesh-and-blood object. I guess I’m not so much upset that she’s returned, so much as the prospect of what she’s returning to and what she’ll have to endure until her next break for freedom.
I know that the statistics are that one woman in four lives like this, and that that one woman in four returns seven times till she leaves for good, but when you get to know that one woman and see her off, back to her abuser, there’s not a whole lot that can make it any easier for the person seeing her off.
I’m tired and drained. Though I’ve got zero desire to be a mother, maybe this is what it’s like – to stand by helplessly while they make their choices, conscious of the emotional and psychological costs, but all the same, helpless to intervene.
Posted by chantal at 12:36 AM | TrackBack
October 24, 2004
Brave New Job
New job, new industry. This time it’s education, and I think I got the job largely on the strength of having two (adopted) sisters who are both teachers. They don’t need to know that I’m no longer in touch with one of them, and that the other lives and works in Holland. Much less that I never experienced the state school system in England, so I have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about most of the time. Two days of it was enough for me to phone my mother to thank her for never subjecting me to a state school.
I had the interview Monday afternoon, and started Tuesday afternoon, following an interview for ABN-AMRO based in Paris. Lewisham Council has the most rigorous security system I’ve ever come across, apart from IBM; you even need a swipe card to enter the toilets, and as I found out today, the swipe cards are even gender-specific. I don’t have a swipe card of my own, nor a PC, nor desk, nor even a login, much less to the various databases I’m meant to be working on. I arrived at work at 8am yesterday, and ended up reading a book for an hour before anyone arrived to log me in to a computer.
I do have, however, someone I walk with to Tesco to get lunch, and who I chat with lots during the day (a fellow musician, with a strong interest in dance), also a rather camp smoking buddy, whose main passions seem to be Holland and Dutch pop music, but who swipes me into the 5th floor smoking room, and also the very friendly administrator with whom I had a lengthy gardening chat today. Apart from the head of the department, who is widely regarded as a cross they have to bear, they’re all extremely friendly, relaxed and chatty. It’s a healthy work environment after the traumas of leaving Network Rail, but I’m still torn between being upset over how my job ended, and missing my old crowd like hell. And being upset that I don’t hear from them nearly often enough.
One of the hardest things is explaining the uniquely bizarre work culture that was Network Rail; though I became less sociable over the last year, I was completely immersed in the Project till the very end – to the extent that I wouldn’t stop working in order to jobhunt - and it’s hard to describe how we were all expected to put our lives on hold till the Project (or our jobs) was over, and how our colleagues were expected to replace our families and friends. How we were expected to work so hard we’d barely have the stamina to get home, but never question it. And above all, how we’d form a close-knit unit based on ‘sharing the pain’ of the Furball.Much as I resented Ian when he first arrived for his loud phone calls, he’s actually one of the people I miss the most; this morning my train ceased to exist, and its follow-up was delayed; I pictured him spluttering with laughter as I’d spit, ‘I hate trains’ as I arrived. Or him trying, and failing to contain himself as Matt would mutter away while the Furball would brag about himself over the phone. Which would be swiftly followed up by emails between Matt, Jenny and I, which I’d then cc to Ian, the Furball clueless as to why we were all helpless with laughter, much less that he was the source of it. Today, analysing a database from hell, I bashed my head repeatedly against the desk, pulled endless faces, and kept waving my hands in frustration; I would have had any of them sympathising and enquiring within seconds, whereas instead, the administrator simply handed me her swipe card without a glance so I could go for a cigarette. Although my mini rainforest is now filling the kitchen windowsills and the top of the fridge, not arriving to it every morning seems wrong, as does not having friends visiting me at my desk or phoning up to chat at length before they came to some work-related point. Or emailing for days after they’ve reached that point.
So I’m full of anecdotes, and I’m sure they’re fast getting bored of them, especially when I talk of Network Rail in the present tense. I never thought I’d believe it, but Lewisham’s IT infrastructure actually makes Network Rail’s look impeccable, and having spent nearly two years either wanting to throw my computer out of the window or shoving my foot through the monitor, I’m familiar with most of the problems they’re having. But a lot of the time, it feels like I’m at the pub with Gary or Tim, and I’m simply recounting the events of the day, in other words, being full of all these stories I need to share so that my new colleagues know where I’m coming from. But then, we had to attend a leaving presentation today, for a woman who was leaving after 19 years, and it reminded me that after almost 2 years, nobody raised a collection for me, nobody really bothered to say goodbye, and that none of the good friends I’d thought I’d made over the last 20 months actually cared, in the end.
So, new job.A week ago, I signed up at a temp agency, and I’m currently earning the minimum rate they offered me as a secretary or adminny-type person. My only interest in taking the job was that at least it was a technical role, and not vaguely secretarial, and though I occasionally have to do the crap the Furball’d inflict on me, I don’t let myself resent it at much, probably because I have no commitment to the job, illustrated by applying for 43 jobs on Thursday. Theoretically, there’s a 1-week trial in which both I and they are meant to decide if it’s going to work out, but I’ve not received any indication that I’ll be out of work again at the end of Tuesday. So far, I’ve met two databases – one SQL Server, the other in Access – the former has strengthened my resolve to avoid SQL Server at all costs, and both are without question the worst-designed databases I’ve ever come across. I’ve not yet asked how much the former cost. Zak, the database guy, firmly defended his complete rejection of naming conventions, or even understanding of basic database design. He even argued with my identifying lookup tables and subforms as such. When, after much egg-sucking, I reminded him that I’d worked with Access for years, he replied that he had too; nothing in the database I’d spent Friday analysing gives me any indication that he has the slightest clue as to what he’s doing. I’m reminded of the quote that a full version of Access is extremely dangerous in the hands of someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing…
Like Network Rail, I’ve spent the last few days not really knowing what I’m meant to be working on, who I’m working for, much less what I’m meant to be doing. I don’t like SQL Server, I don’t like the databases, I’m clashing a bit with the database guy, but …. at least the people are friendly.
Okay, back to Network Rail, and I’m silently livid that Donna (Elsa) has managed to keep her job, while her pettiness and childishness cost me mine. My mother has always cautioned me not to be bitter, but I can’t help it, not after she told me about her relationship problems the first time I met her, her pregnancy scare, her relationship and sex life problems, her one-day stand with Dougie, then drastic improvement – then Carla started and she had a new friend who didn’t silently criticise her work habits, and I no longer was her friend. I’ve wondered if it was about projection – my silent disapproval of her overly chatty, playground bully personality which turned her against me, leaving her to feel she had to pull rank just to justify her role, ill-defined as it was. I don’t waste that much of my time thinking about her, but when you compare a person who works as hard as she can – pausing only to water her desktop rainforest – and someone who chats for at least 4 out of the 6 hours she can be bothered to work, I’m almost demoralised that I have to question which one gets to keep their job.
Maybe I’d be coping better if I’d had more clarity about when my job would end. Rob, the person who appeared to control the fate of my contract, mid-morning on my last day, stressed that he Didn’t Do Ambiguity, but never gave me the chance to remind him that he’d offered extensions for two separate projects. Up until about 11 am on my last day, I was fully expecting that I’d be back at work on the Monday, and given how hard I’d been working till then, I’d not had the chance to start distancing myself from my immediate colleagues and the job itself. It’s all too easy to settle for Rob picking that day to be my end date on purpose out of spite – a weekend when most of my friends had chosen to go on holiday, and when the rest would be at any of three other parties scheduled for that evening, meaning a grand total of two people would be there to say goodbye to me, even if one had to backpedal quickly to get to the party arranged for herself at a bar which I’ve always hated with a passion. The Furball was off sick, Rob was off for some vague reason, Geoff was otherwise engaged, which meant that none of the potential candidates for my final boss were actually around to say goodbye after almost two years’ dedicated work. Matt may say that that’s how contracting goes, but he’s never involved himself the way that I did.
I’m very clear that I want my next job to be exactly what I had at Network Rail – the freedom and flexibility – but without the insanely unhealthy work culture of the Project. When Dominic (Tesco buddy) told me that people didn’t go to the pub, I was relieved; I don’t want to bond with colleagues again to the extent that I’ve done over the last two years. The reality is that few of my closest friends ever went to the pub after work, and that I rarely saw most of them, and nevertheless never stopped caring for them deeply, but that’s more than should have to happen in any job. If, of all of those I’d made friends with over the two years, they’d made the effort to turn up to send me off, I’d maybe be less bitter, but I find myself starting my new job haunted by memories of everyday life there, and the half-hearted attempt at a farewell.
I never believed that the day would come when I wouldn’t have Ian to my left, Matt to my other left, Simon beyond Ian, Jenny diagonally across from me, and the Furball to my right. I never let myself imagine a future without Ian, Jenny and Matt, even if we all knew it would happen someday. I’ve worked for so many companies that I strongly believe in my definition of professionalism, but I never expected to suffer from certain managers’ lack of the same. As I’ve said, on the Project, we were expected to give everything, and now, when I’m shivering outside Lewisham Town Hall while smoking yet another cigarette, my mind is caught up with memories of what was, not wanting to engage with what’s my present and future.
Posted by chantal at 04:00 AM
Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon
Pulp Fiction. That scene where Uma Thurman overdoses while John Travolta is talking to himself in the toilet. In the background, Urge Overkill are singing ‘Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon’.
I heard it for the first time in early ’95, while watching MTV with my sister in Breda, Holland. A few days later, I heard it again in a bar with a then-good friend, who I thought would recognise it, but he didn’t. I hear it on the radio roughly every 18 months, and it’s one of my all-time favourite songs. It was several years before I realised it was a Pulp Fiction track, and now, whenever it’s on TV, the challenge is to tune in in time to hear it play.
Sammi started texting me about a week ago, and since then, it’s been in my head every night before I go to sleep.
Sammi’s 16. I barely remember 16, but through our emails and texts, she’s sort of become a younger sister to me, and I’ve been trying to remember what it was like to be that age. Given I’ve not yet met her, I often feel embarrassed by acting like an older sister, but what I feel, above all else, is the desire to give her some guidance and help her to live the best life she can. I never spent much time bothering to be a teenager at the time, so maybe I’m the last person to be advising her, but I want her to know that there’s so much more out there awaiting her in a few years’ time.
I remember having a choice between two high schools, one which was nearby, but where they piled the pressure on excessively, and another, further away, where the reputation was higher and the pressure was more subtle. Having attended a primary school where they’d had to scratch around for extracurricular projects to keep me occupied, and let me skip as many year groups as needed, all I felt at the latter school was a profound lack of interest in my classmates. During my A-levels, I eventually chose my subjects based on the relevant teachers, and spent the rest of my time teaching photography, or working. As soon as I finished my exams, I flew to Holland for a few days, then on to France to work.
It’s two and a half weeks later now, and 2 o’clock in the morning. I spent nearly an hour on the phone to Sammi earlier, and chatted to her a few times earlier in the week. I’ve suggested she put herself up for auction on the Fuerteventura Forum, as I get concerned about her home and school situation, but maybe it’s simply that she’s a different type of teenager from when I was her age, and that the generation gap is simply too large. I’ve often discussed with friends over the years about the differences between what was available when we were growing up and with present-day kids and teenagers, and she truly brings it home to me.
So I’ve become her surrogate big sister. She’s the age I was when I met Katie, who took over a lot of the mothering my mother wasn’t around to do. I remember asking Katie a few years ago what I was like when she first met me, as I no longer remembered; though I don’t remember what I said, I have a vague memory that I was busy rediscovering the world and London in particular, whereas Sammi is stuck in a village outside Sherborne and hating it.
I’ve been thinking over the last few weeks how I’d develop this piece, and I figured it’d be advice to the teenager that Sammi is, to the teenager I was who is still somewhere out there.
Anybody who knows me knows I dislike my grandmother – for who she is, for how she treated my mother, and lastly, for her feelings towards me – but when I was 14, I heard some valuable advice from her, not that I particularly appreciated it at the time, only now: ‘Don’t be in such a rush to grow up. You’ll be grownup for so long, enjoy being young while you can.’
Over the years, I’ve reminisced over my school and university years, kicking myself violently for not appreciating them more at the time. I’ve chatted with Sammi that, yes, I disliked most of the girls at my high school, but rather than get involved with their petty obsessions, I ignored them. I had so many friends in the years above me that nobody was that sure which year I was actually in. But as my family knows all too well, I’d happily blank anyone I disliked. It may have meant that I left with few ties, but at least I was able to give myself the freedom to be friends with those I chose, as and when I wanted. I was also lucky to have a near-full-time job outside of school, and I fast built up friendships with my colleagues and the customers there, to offset the daily teenage angst I never had any time or patience for. Sammi’s assured me that there aren’t any ‘outsiders’ to hang out with at school, but I’m hoping that, in time, they’ll emerge, and she can find healthier friends to spend her time with, those less obsessed with the petty minutiae that constitute the teenage world, and those too involved with their pain.
She’s bored with me nagging her about considering university, but I accept that that’s part of where she is now, and that not going to university in 2 years doesn’t necessary mean that she’ll never go. She’s so disillusioned with her life as it is now, and what it has to offer her, that I want her to understand that two years of working hard, really trying, opens up options for her and would give her a shot at leading the life she wants to lead, as opposed to an extension of the life she’s living now, and is clearly dissatisfied with. Not only that, but university is a wonderful experience, something that she would fully deserve after 18 years in Thornford, or whatever her village is called. The world consists of more diverse people than the ones in her high school, village, Sherborne and Yeovil, and it’s overly shortsighted to assume that that constitutes the entire world. Maybe university does represent an enormous amount of hard work to attain the necessary grades, but as she knows, I don’t believe that any excuse is acceptable in selling oneself short just to save themselves the extra effort and work involved. We all have dreams; I find it hard to believe that anyone could dream to end up a receptionist in Yeovil, at best.
I think what I miss about high school and university, besides not having to worry about rent and bills, was the freedom I had to explore anything I wanted for free, the opportunities which were on offer which I ignored, always expecting I’d take them up the following year or once I’d finished studying. Not all schools or universities are as well-funded as mine, I accept, but at least there you could get a head-start on what you enjoyed the most, so that you could continue after graduation with a hefty background behind you, if not an advantage over other candidates, at least a wealth of positive memories. Whether it was photography, acting, journalism, music, dance, (or extreme sports), they were there for the taking – as was an open-handed ‘Yes’, as opposed to the ever-present ‘No’ that London specialises in. It’s too easy to take those opportunities for granted at the time, if only because we believe that they’ll always be there. I’m old enough to not expect a world where rent, bills, catfood, cat litter and unexpected debts don’t exist, but, for all the holes in my memory, I won’t forget the days when none of those mattered, that the money I earned was my own, and that the endless stalls at Freshers’ Week seemed superfluous.
Finally. Sammi’s read my piece ‘Wallflowers’, so she knows how I feel about people experiencing the world they create. There is no need to hate the world you are in, unless you genuinely want to; the only thing or person to be affected is yourself. If there are elements which hurt you or which you dislike, then discard them. If that’s not an option, then reconcile yourself to them in whichever manner it takes to leave you at peace and somewhat happier. If it’s the overall situation, then do what you can to make the most of it, to take from it what you can, and to prevent it from hurting yourself too much. Nothing is forever, not living at home, bitchy friends, problems at school, crappy jobs – it’s up to you to decide what you want and how you want to achieve it. But when you get bogged down by the little things, you reduce yourself to the only options available to you at that level. If that’s what you want, then so be it, but it’s a shame, as life is too short as it is to waste it by selling yourself short. Apart from crappy recruitment agents, the main thing holding us back is ourselves.
Okay, so that wasn’t quite ‘finally’. Eckhart Tolle wrote that most of human dysfunction is based on too much focus on the past or future, and not enough of appreciating the present for what it is. I’ve never managed to read too much of his book – some tasty fiction luring me away every time – but there’s also a danger of becoming too immersed in the present to the extent that you can’t envisage any future. Or allow yourself to dream of a future other than the one you’re currently building for yourself. The days of job-for-life are over; everything is short-term – school, friendships, plans, dreams. So put your energy into that which matters, that which makes you happy, and avoid the toxic elements which are there for temptation. Think about what’s good in your life, and about what you want, and don’t let anything tell you you can’t do it.
Posted by chantal at 03:57 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack