Chapter 19
As soon as I’ve left Max’s, I realize I have absolutely nothing to do. Nowhere to be. No one to visit. Purely because the alternative is literally wandering the streets, I’m forced toward doing the thing I’ve been hiding from basically since leaving university.
Decide what I actually want to do with my life.
No biggie, I tell myself . . . Maybe it will be easy? Maybe if I put my mind to it, it will only take me one afternoon? Maybe all those years of procrastination were completely unfounded and the answer will come to me straightaway?
I head to the library near Mum’s house. I can’t remember the last time I came in here, but I’m still technically a member. There are two rows of ancient computers with a shocking internet connection, and you have to log on and off every hour in order to restart a session.
I sit down.
OK. I can do this. I can do this . . . Or maybe I should go buy a coffee first?
Or shop online for a new phone case? Mine is broken.
I’ve been thinking for a while that I should probably research new hairdressers because mine is a bit slow.
Or learn how to do it myself on YouTube.
I mean, how hard can it be? I’ve actually got lots of little bits of fluff stuck to my jacket; maybe I should find some tape and get those off . . .
No. Focus, Becky.
FOCUS.
OK . . . Here we go. Seeing as I have no idea what I’d like to do, I keep it broad and search “jobs.” Maybe I’ll be inspired. I start going through random listings on The Guardian website.
Teacher? Hmmm. I don’t really like kids.
HR? I don’t really like people. Therapist?
I’d have to pay patients to take my advice.
Fundraiser for a charity? Sounds very wholesome.
They’d probably be able to sense the vast amounts of money I’ve wasted on clothes and booze over the years instead of helping others and ward me away from the building with salt and garlic.
Tax manager? I’d be begging We Work, You Win to take me back in minutes.
Urgh.
This is hopeless.
What if I’m too old for this?! What if I do find something I want to do and inevitably just get crushed again? Can I really start over somewhere new, at the bottom? But then, I’m literally never going to be any younger than I am in this moment. Current me is the youngest possible me I have left.
I sit back, ready to quit already. I mean . . . I looked at five different job listings. I basically deserve a trophy.
I get up to go, when I am suddenly struck by fear.
Fear is not an unusual sensation for me, but this feels different.
The fear of not finding anything I want to do is nauseating.
The fear of finding something I want to do but being rejected again is crushing.
But, for the first time, the fear of not even trying to do all those things hits me harder.
If I walk out of here, where am I going to go?
I don’t have my familiar, easy routine and comforting paycheck.
I don’t have a place to live. I don’t even have any mates.
I have no other options but to sit back down and keep looking. So I do.
For the rest of the afternoon I languorously comb the internet. Five or six times I end up arbitrarily switching seats with some teenagers doing their A-level homework. But somehow I get more done in one day than I have in seven years. I can’t remember focusing so much since final uni exams.
I trawl noticeboards for jobs. Any jobs. I take tests. SO MANY TESTS.
What job should you do?
What skills do you have?
What’s your personality type?
What scent are you?
What flavor are you?
What are you like?
What do you want?
Who are you?
IF I KNEW THE ANSWER TO ANY OF THESE THINGS I WOULDN’T BE HERE.
About 60 percent of the quizzes tell me I should be a waitress. One tells me I am a “seahorse” and have “deep, magical qualities” that might make me suited to a role in hypnotherapy, conveyancing, or sports coaching.
One quiz gives me results in the form of a voice recording.
The soothing female speaker spends a long, painful fifteen minutes outlining every detail of the problem.
About how I cannot get on the right path because I wouldn’t recognize that path if I was on it.
About how I can’t find work I enjoy because I don’t know what I enjoy.
About how I don’t know what role would suit me because I don’t know myself.
It likens me to a fly trapped inside a house, slamming against a window over and over, able to see the outside world but not access it, not moving direction but repeatedly bashing its head against the glass hoping for a different result.
About how I’ve been that fly for so long I’m almost scared to try a different escape route because not trying and failing is easier to take than trying and failing.
Yes, I think. Yes. This is me. Finally, someone knows what I’m talking about. I am SEEN.
Then it says, “So how do you break the curse of the trapped fly?”
Yes, I think. Yes, yes, TELL ME!
The voice proceeds to recommend that I stop trying to see the end goal and “take small steps.” It suggests I use “measurable methods with specific aims” rather than daydreaming.
Yes, yes, go on! I wait eagerly for clarification of these small steps and specific aims.
. . . It then recommends daily high-intensity workouts, breathing exercises, and buying their step-by-step career guide.
Is that IT?!
It spends fifteen minutes ripping me to shreds, tearing down what little self-esteem I had remaining, comparing me to an insect with a brain the size of a poppy seed, and then suggests brEATHING EXERCISES?
The sad thing is I felt so low after listening to it, I probably would have bought the career guide if it wasn’t priced at ￡74.99 and that wasn’t such a large percentage of what I have left in my bank account.
I even watch motivational videos. But when I get to a guy dissecting a grapefruit by segment in order to demonstrate the components of a satisfying career, I decide enough is enough.
I leave the library feeling quite broken and no less clueless than at the start of the day. All I achieved was applying for one job that I liked the look of and am definitely not going to get, because I am not at all qualified. But I do feel better, because I did something.
It’s five o’clock and the sky is still light. The days are getting longer. Usually that’s a comfort, but at the moment I’d really rather my days be as short as possible. Still, I suppose I shouldn’t complain in case I have to sleep on a bench tonight. It’s a very real possibility.
What do I do now?
I walk around the park in circles for a while.
Past the swings where Mum used to push me.
Past the tree I once insisted on climbing and ripped my trousers on, then refused to come down for two hours because my butt was showing.
Past the bench where I used to make out with Wotsits Walter (he really liked Wotsits and his name made for convenient alliteration).
Past the bushes where Angie, Dami, and I tried our first joint.
Past the bin that Dami threw up in afterward.
There are memories in every corner of this park.
I sit down on a bench and think, in ten years I’ll probably look back on this as “where I sat and moped after alienating everybody I loved and ruining my life.”
A group of kids playing behind the bench sees me sit down and flees in the other direction. They can probably sense my inability to set myself bite-size goals, blocking my path to my ideal role in hypnotherapy, and are running off to play nearer someone more aspirational.
I stare across the grass and up at the clouds. Only the other day I was detonating everything, deliriously certain that I wouldn’t be around to clean up the mess. It’s like trying to clean up a nuclear spill with a mop and bucket.
There’s so much to think about. How much can one brain handle?
I try to separate one issue at a time and work out a plan for each.
Leila: was never supposed to be in my life and we’ll both be better off not knowing each other.
Dad: now that Leila’s gone, I can keep the door closed on him like I intended.
Mum: Ugh. Can I come back to her later? OK, that’s family.
Max: Might still have feelings for me? I just need to find out?
Somehow without humiliating myself in case he was just sniffing my head because he likes the smell of my shampoo?
Fran: Ughh. I hate that Fran is now crossing my mind!
She’s not real . . . She’s a unicorn! Unicorns don’t have feelings.
They gallivant across the world doing charity work and saving children and they dress in edgy wide-leg jeans and crop tops in order to make others feel like lesser beings but they DON’T HAVE FEELINGS.
Dami and Angie: Can’t stay mad forever. I just need to apologize.
I can’t believe I’m even thinking this but, as I sit on this bench contemplating the tangled web of hurt feelings I’ve weaved among my loved ones, one of the motivational videos I watched this afternoon crosses my mind.
It said the best way to get things done was to “do the thing you’re dreading the most first.” OK, so the guy who made it also suggested I “show self-compassion by hugging myself twice a day,” so he’s clearly not entirely sane, but that particular piece of advice did resonate.
I get up from my sad little bench. It’s time to talk to Angie.