Death of the Self can be a transition of Life from one phase to another…
I don’t know what stage I will be at with my plans by the time this is posted, but right now I am at the cliff of a big jump. Yes, I am going to try that school thing again. It’s somethng I need to do, but at my age I am also running out of time in which to do it. How many more years could I wait and still have a viable prayer of getting hired by anyone by the time I get out of a school.
?
What’s the course? Well, it s not one that I ever thought I would get involved with (possibly one that would be popular on this site, though, for visual reasons of who we are and what we look like, though I shouldn’t use “we” since I haven’t gone through any transformation, yet): the course is hair and make-up. Well, yeah, it’s funny. To me, so stereotypical I never would have thought to touch it with a pole of any length (ok, you can all put your dirty minds away now…). But I look at the options. I have a bum leg from several reasons: from being born with a club foot to having sciatica to having the same corrected club foot broken this past year by a car and bicycle accident, me on the bike. Why take the chance of going to a school to learn something that will demand heavy labor work, which I enjoy ( I love coming home at the end of the day tired from physical work all day, it’s the best kind of tired feeling ), or taking that kind of job right now in a field I do know, or have some experience in, like carpentry, and pass up a timing opportunity… well, how many years of hard labor do I have left with a bum leg at the age of forty-two and only a few years of experience at it. It might be a different argument if I’d had the whole last twenty years of that work under my belt, but alas I haven’t.
For the sake of space, let it suffice to say that I have reasons why my decision is a good option (which would be the very reasons why some of you, and me, think life sucks, but maybe this is a lesson in how to deal with and work with it) A very good reason is that in a lot of fields I could study, my age will work against me even if I am brilliant in it. This is a visual business, and I’m not too shy to say that I think I look pretty good, and not as old as I am, yet. The age thing could be a nil issue. There are also broader areas than salons in which to work, like stage and film, modeling and public figures. Lots of options and space to move around in.
But, okay, the main point here is that I have tried to do the school thing before. Maybe it was the wrong thing, maybe it was the wrong time, maybe it wasn’t my idea at the time. Maybe once I started it was a good road, but I made a bad turn as I went along it, got off the path for a moment and got lost and didn’t make it back. I have never really had good support systems like the ones I can take advantage of now, at this point in my life, whether it be online right here at this site, or in the physical with people I have not really tapped yet, like NA groups and such, to keep me on the good path.
But I never cease to be amazed how some people help to throw roadblocks in my way, how those closest to me, like family, will not allow me the space to be a changed person, and always throw the doubts of their own life or the fuck-ups of my own life in my face, and suck the flow of blood in my veins right out of me. Yes, of course, they have their reasons: I have been a fuck-up with good intentions before, why should now be any different? Well, it certainly won’t be with that atttitude… But they have a history too, because everything I have ever tried to do has been cursed by these people. They have thrown the curse of failure onto me, and it is a heavy cross to bear. There’s also the fact that because of my upbringing, which was their doing to begin with, in my twenties I was busy trying to raise myself as though I were a child once again, and then the thirties were spent in the throes of recovering from the first childhood by use of drugs and now, in my early forties, I am recovering from the drug abuse. Now I am ready to move on, to get on with fulfilling who I am, and I can only work with what I have left of myself and my time.
So, the question ends in a place where I wonder, is it me or is it them… and the answer is as much a vicious cycle as the question. So, rather than let myself hang and die on a cross I didn’t make, I just have to pick a spot along the line, and draw the tangent from there. And hope that I can stay the path long enough to prove them wrong, and more importantly, finally prove myself right and have the strength upon which to build a new life.