I’ve spent the first quarter of my life desperate; desperately seeking the right thing to do, obligingly leaping through academic hoops to prove myself, complaisantly following prescribed directions towards where I should be, and making some disgracefully huge mistakes along the way. And now, armed with 2 degrees at the end of my academic career, I wonder who or what it is that I’m preparing to battle against—and for what, precisely, I’m desperate.
Ah, the infamous quarterlife crisis: you’ve found me at last, you obtrusive little wretch. Like just about everyone else caught in the grips of this crisis, I am acutely aware of missing out on something; though what that something is, I haven’t the foggiest. There’s an undeniable sense that everyone’s on to something I’m not, and since I hit mid-twenties I’ve been cultivating a budding sense of falling behind as though it were my cash crop on the edge of a dust bowl.
You know the story: everyone around me is getting married, having children, and high school cohorts are rumored to be divorcing already. There aren’t jobs for me, though both my degrees are professional and versatile. I haven’t the experience to land positions in my field, at least not any I’ve found to date. I’m too educated for menial labour and am quickly passed over for less educated compatriots, though I’ve shamelessly scrubbed toilets throughout my 6 years in University and have the calluses to prove it.
I’ve come to a point where I’d better jump on the career track or just lie down and wait for the 2:10 to carry me off to the great railyard in the sky. Sure, life is a journey, but it seems as though most everyone has arrived. Every morning I rise my mood is marked with urgency, slathered in it reality, and showered in desperation.
They say that wherever you go, there you are. It’s one of the most horribly abused clichés, and I have a certain amount of pity for it; its medical bills must be pretty high. It seems that most assume it to mean that people who move around are attempting to flee some subconscious scene of torment or humiliation, to run from some Freudian father figure, to disappear from some Oedipal nightmare with a twist of bourbon…
But I wonder why it’s consistently used to support arguments of staying in place, urges to remain stagnant. If the cliché is true, could it not just as easily be used as a defence for moving? For finding a place in which you find peace in order to support your growth and acceptance of self? You’ll still be there, but at least the scenery will give you some solace as you delve into whatever it is that makes your you-ness so unbearable…
To date I’ve been a small scale nomad, moving eastward in jerks and shrugs from Ontario to New England as a child in her parents’ tow, then later in shimmies and lurches across New Hampshire and Vermont as a confused adult. Now I find myself back in the Canadian plains of my youth, desperate for some sense of place or stability… To what end though, I wonder. Life seems to be hurdling me through some warp speed vortex deeper and thicker into adulthood, whatever that might be. Perhaps I just want a handhold in this vessel… Perhaps settling down seems the easiest answer– to find one constant in a problem with far too many variables.
I’ve just been offered a teaching position is Sweden. Therein lies the thing to throw the Queen off her haunches and hurdling into the confused crowd. All my life I’ve dreamed of wandering the world with my backpack, some ever-faithful dog in tow. And here it is, the melding of my wanderlust and my professional aspirations, laid out on a platter with a sufficient salary and a free plane ticket. And there he is, my ever-faithful dog Sam, waiting at my feet for the command: pack the crate, boy, we’re headed for the Arctic Circle. But there too is that ever-growing quarterlife fear of failure and falling behind.
In the past the decision to move has been simple: lease is up, better head on down the road. More recently the move back North of the border has been trying, to say the least. Medical problems that threatened to end my academic career, at least temporarily, plagued me, putting me out of the social scene for months. The familiarity of the Green Mountains has been hiding some 600 miles away, and I found myself crying an inordinate amount for quite a spell.
The adult in me cringes in fear of making the wrong decision. I’ve grown so obsessed with recognizing the difference between right and wrong. Like I said, these decisions used to be so compulsive and easy… But like the Waterboys said, “That was the river, this is the sea.”
“Now I can see you wavering/ As you try to decide
You’ve got a war in your head/ And it’s tearing you up inside
You’re trying to make sense/ Of something that you just can’t see
Trying to make sense now/ And you know you once held the key
But that was the river/ And this is the sea”
This is the Sea, The Waterboys.
