Pretty Good
Sunday, December 7, 2008 While out shopping for yarn and fibrefill in order to continue on with my foray into the world of structural crochet, I ran into an ex-coworker from a few years ago.
"How are you doing these days?" she asked.
"Pretty good," I told her. It was much easier to lie.
"Are you still working at the same place?"
"Yep, I am," I said. That was another lie. It felt inappropriate to tell her that I am on leave from work while standing next to a large wire cube filled with plush Santas and reindeer heads. That the Santas were allowed complete bodies while the reindeer looked ready for wall-mounting seemed like a morbid joke.
We wished each other season's greetings, or, rather, I started walking away with a sudden need to stop having a conversation in which absolutely nothing was being said, and we both tried to save it by pretending to some interest in Christmas. I felt bad about that. I really do like this woman.
I am being such a Scrooge today. Forgive me. No, don't. I am a Scrooge today. Screw you. No. Ignore that. I think that I am having an adverse reaction to my once-yearly trek into the fluorescent nation of Wal-Mart. Their greeters creep me out, and I swear that they ration the oxygen. That's probably what makes people think inflatable Christmas symbols are a good idea.
It is strange to have these small run-ins with people from my clerical life. I have been on leave from work for a while now for a variety of reasons, and "pretty good" seems like the simplest way to sum up sometimes-I-rock-back-and-forth-under-a-blanket and I-just-learned-how-to-crochet. It's not that I want to tell them the truth. These days, I barely want to accept that I have to be on leave for the good of me and mine . It just feels so damn awkward to smile and say "pretty good" to someone that I truly like and respect in an aisle at Wal-Mart towering with cheap, plastic symptoms of tacky North American entitlement while my fingertips buzz and zap because my psych medication has decided to assert its less welcome side effects over the last couple of weeks.
It would be easier, more tidy, less complicated, if the mould of adulthood I was given to believe in as a child existed, and, if so, I had shaped myself accordingly; to grow up, to go to university, to have a career, to get married, to have children and holidays and a house and savings and a God, to have grandchildren and a home with closets and drawers with decades of family history tucked inside that smell quiet and musty-sweet: the achievement of an assumed line of divine progress like a simple 1950s chronological map of history to a present day filled with comforts and wealth of spirit and amenities would have made "pretty good" seem a reasonable answer that, under the circumstances of my realized today, I cannot give.
It breeds a sense of disgrace in me that I have been unable to shake despite my many successes. I have not followed the line; I cannot feel the comfortable outlines of that old mould around me; I do not yet know how to map myself out within a clean, linear framework which relates also to points beyond my person. "Pretty good" points nowhere; it is a stand-in for the places I do not know how to travel with you; it says I do not belong here, because I feel too much shame for not having understood the process I should have followed, for not being someone who could, and now I am in a position that I feel I cannot share. It tells me that I am not successful, and further, it tells me that all my previous successes were not enough.
This is where the sense of linear progression that was taught to me in history classes and bible studies which followed prominent men at odds with other prominent men falling like dominoes fails me: the perceived singular moment in which I find myself becomes the end-point on a simple graph, the end result of all its preceding points. This is a lie, but a lie whose apparent simplicity drags me back again and again. It is easier to believe that than dig out the intricate webwork within the map and accept the responsibility of moving forward. I am done, I am already the future, I can lie down if the end-point on the line graph is the destiny of all that came before. This misconception of time and events puts all of my personal history's weight on the present moment. As much as I know this view is both apocryphal and impractical, it sits inside my chest and burns hotly up the back of my neck.
It's kind of a major drag.
Life is not simple.
And I am doing "pretty good".
Reader Comments (22)
I think you need to go back to those history lessons and bible studies and look at them from an adult standpoint, and you will immediately notice that this linear progression rarely exists. There are always stops and starts, floods and wars, plagues and jealous brothers tricking each other. Most people would be overjoyed to come close to "Pretty Good."
I'm not saying that I see things this way now when I read history, but timelines were commonplace when I was in school. It definitely didn't force me into that one, overly simplistic mode of thinking, but it is a faulty lens I sometimes default to.
Plus, I think you missed that I meant "pretty good" does not mean "pretty good" AT ALL.
scroogey looks pretty good on you, actually. Pretty sassy
i appreciate so much how much your share of yourself and how beautifully you write. that's it!
you're pretty wonderful. and those conversations are hard. very.
I love the imagery of the mould of adulthood. Yes. It is exactly that.
Hugs. I'm sure that "Pretty Good" is just the starting point (the point where we lie to keep face)and that soon you'll be able to say "Much Better" and mean it.
I'll take pretty good...
Success is not those things, of course.
Not to make you feel any better but I did some of those things and I don't think I succeeded either. Maybe it's just impossible to ever feel that clarity, that sense of rightness and purpose unless you are kind of an unimaginative dimwit who can't always want more. Of course, it's me and I'm a weirdo and did not succeed at these things, really. And I didn't do them all.
I would like that sense, I think. Some days I just will myself to have it--but I did this when I had a crazy housemate and was living alone and not finished with school...on some days--because I had this really awesome tree outside my window. I remember being so impressed that I had my own apartment with a really great tree outside. So sometimes redefinition works. At least when you first wake up in the morning.
It can be such a strange and painful feeling to be following a different path, to be denied (or maybe not even wish) a path that is taken for granted by so many other people. Sometimes I long for a simpler way, as in: why does it sometimes feel so much harder for me to achieve the ordinary, everyday things that others seem to have so effortlessly? But the secret I am discovering is that everyone struggles, everyone has to discover whether their path is what it really means to live their life. Witness the mid-life crises that loom over a mundane path. But you are not required to explain/justify your path to the casual observer. Even someone you really like. Maybe the WallM@rt glitz is all the surface glitter that is the mundane, "typical" life progression. Which makes me wonder... how easily can one be truly "real" in an unreal place? Just some thoughts.
oh honey. I have been there. I have done that. Just now, I came from my foray to FB, where I watched a friend dance with her dad at her wedding, where "people I may know" use a picture of their newborn baby as their FB profile picture, and people are celebrating moving on to other jobs. (writes the single, childless, hoping to transition jobs Sarah Louise)
Two years ago, a five week break became six months of leave, going back part time, and finally returning to full time. You are not alone on this path. (Even though you are.) Ah, the paradox.
What can I say--You Rock! seems out of place, and having been there, I know that other people's words don't always reach the place they're meant to. Hang in there sounds vacant, I'm sure you've heard it too many times. (If I had a nickel...)
So I'll say this: you are enough. And I'm here on the sidelines, cheering you on.
xo,
SL
I went to university, had a career, got married, have children and holidays, and a house, and a God, and I feel totally out of place much of the time.
Unlike most people who rebel against normalcy, and conformity, it's been my mission to try to figure out what it is, since I was very young. Then it was a survival tactic, I HAD to figure out how to look "OK" in order to avoid scrutiny of my home life.
Now I try to curb the urge --the reflexive mechanism-- to pass myself off as normal, or whatever you want to call that mould.
Anyway, I know our circumstances are very different, but I think I sort of know how you feel, approximately. See, I even feel a little weird posting this comment.
I like to recall what that great philosopher Homer Simpson said, "There's no shame in being a pariah."
If you had done all those things, it would still be you. The act of forcing yourself to be something you are not has long reaching consequences. I have seen people play that game and they were far from pretty good.
You seem like a good person. That is plenty.
I'm so glad you said that about the oxygen at Walmarts being rationed. I swear my metabolism starts dropping as soon as I go in there, and after half an hour I barely have enough energy to drag myself back out.
Also, I love your banner and you're a beautiful writer.
This hits home in a way that I can't even explain. Thank you for writing it.
These days "pretty good" are all I can hope for it seems. But I have hope it might get better.
*hugs* lady, thank you for sharing :)
Linear is safe. You know right where it's going and where it's been.
Safe.
And boring. Yet, in a often comforting and secure kind of way.
But sometimes those paths we don't want to take, the ones that force our footing from the straight lines of a vanilla life, those paths . . . well, they can be pretty DARNED good. Even if they suck a bit sometimes.
Oh, and as for the oxygen ration . . . you are so, so right. No wonder I'm such an idiot in Walmart.
I followed the path, I'm still on it, so why does my tongue still stick to the roof of my mouth when asked the question, how are you?
Why can't we just let ourselves be enough, for now, forever, for as long as need be.
I think you are more than...
Hugs
I hear you.
I am childless/childfree (pick whichever you find less offensive) by choice, and have also chosen not to get a driver's license, mostly because life is complicated enough already and I don't feel I have the resources to manage the complications that would come with children, or traffic in Toronto. I always feel torn between the need to be honest with people about my choices (which usually results in them trying to convince me that my choices are wrong)vs. the wish to not have to defend myself to all and sundry. I lean towards honesty most of the time, but it can be exhausting.
even on your bads darlin' you're pretty fuckin' wonderful.
My word for that situation is "Fine", or if it's honesty day, they get "Crap". Do you know how hilarious it is to watch the look on someone's face when you do NOT respond appropriately to their inane and generally insincere query about your very human condition?
heh heh heh Try it.
It's hard not to believe the lies, and even harder to admit to yourself what you don't want to admit to others. Taking the time off is brave, my friend.
I saw these crochet puppets and thought of you, http://www.mossonline.com/product-exec/product_id/44627
As someone who also opted out of what a friend of mine once called the prix fixe menu of life, I too feel that odd sense of having nothing to bring to the table in those odd moments of social discourse. But you are brilliant and digesting your life on a level few are capable of. Our society just doesn't have a scale for measuring that.
Myself? I go for the big lie. "If I was any better I'd have to be twins."
Big fat lie.