Cutting through the Grey

By the time you're reading this, I might have been fired.

"But I wasn't happy!" I keep yelling to the wall, expecting it to whisper reassurance and rid me of my guilt. But the thing is, I'm not that guilty.

You see, exactly three weeks ago I woke up from long nap, a living death, so to speak. I can't recount many instances from the months I stood awake in slumber, and need to be reminded through the 'Highlights of May' page in my Google Photos App. When I looked to the page for evidence of the passage of time, the 'highlights' Google found were disappointing. The photos consisted of documents, written agendas for meetings I needed to format on Word, and other bureaucratic artifacts. The only thing it proved was that I worked. Where was I amongst all these papers, these pale yellow offices and staples and erasers and pens and keyboards and manila folders and exhaustion and coffee cups and exasperation and monitors?

The realization crept in. First as a slow trickle, like when you try to recall a dream after waking up, then quickening to a chilly liquid coursing through my veins. I was there, I was alive, but I hadn't lived. The secondary realization, that I used such a tired cliché, was equally disturbing.

I've been at the same job for four years. I'm twenty-two. You do the math. The fact that I had stumbled out of homelessness with a high school education and laddered to a position that requires a Bachelor's Degree was astounding. I had achieved a lot, too. I affected provincial policy. I gave speeches on national stages. I won an award. My sense of pride and superiority was the heady cocktail I needed to continue feeling fulfilled. The only problem was, despite my success, I was barely making a living wage. "You're young, you need to pay your dues" was the only sentiment I received when asking for raise. For being treated so childish, why was I determined to act so old?

I seldom used social media, and hadn't posted an image to any platform since I started my employment. I needed a barrier between me and the people I experienced homelessness and been destructive with. I feared that one look at my old friend's page would lead to an 'active' symbol next to my name, followed by a message, and then back to that lifestyle. I was overreacting, but I was protective of my new status in the world. For the first year of my employment, work consumed me. But by year two, I felt strong in my newfound convictions and decided to chance everything by taking a peek. In my sporadic nibbles of social media, I could tell we had all grown, albeit in different ways. Most of my friends were waitressing, some had developed addictions, a couple had gone to college, most just having fun. Photos of house parties and stolen makeup hauls had been replaced by $20 cocktails and overdone lip injections. I got a kick out of perusing their questionable decisions, their apparent lack of direction, their many relationships. I took this as proof I should stay locked away in my office. I tucked these ego-serving morsels of satisfaction away and didn't think about them for a long time.

- - -

The only evidence of how long I spent sleepwalking was by looking at a calendar; it's not comprehensible without solid proof. Upon reflection, the pieces started to click.

My Work Schedule:

• Monday: 9 AM - 5 PM (success!)
• Tuesday: 8 AM - 6 PM (prep for early morning meeting, late conversation with boss).
• Wednesday 8 AM - 8 PM (two standing meetings occurred each Wednesday, one from 8 AM - 11 AM and one from 6 AM - 8 PM, and beyond meetings, work still needed to be done).
• Thursday: 8 AM - 6 PM (success! Expect the entire day was back-to-back meetings, no time for bathroom breaks or food unless I arrived late or left early).
• Friday: 9 AM - 11 PM (grant application due, compelled to work late because of the time wasted in meetings).

This was my standard week, with slight variations. Saturday and Sunday were rest days. By the time I felt I had recharged, Monday would fall upon me. In order to keep the engine running, one must conserve energy elsewhere. Creative Casey lay dormant. Passionate Polly was locked in a basement. Hungry Helena moved to greener pastures. Without creativity, passion, and hunger, only the basic functions of my personality remained.

One afternoon, in the fourth year of my employment, I visited the local art store with my company credit card to purchase supplies for an upcoming focus group. I wandered down the aisles looking for the correct items and felt a hundred eyes on me. Standing there in my frumpy, drab office clothes with my tired eyes and lost expression, I was an outsider. I felt like I had trespassed, infringing on the safe haven for... what was the word? Oh, right: creatives. Whether real or perceived, I didn't belong, and they knew it. I found my supplies, and as I was walking to the cashier, something caught my eye. A shiny, flat paintbrush. No tapered fibers, just a clean, thick, dependable mane, and a shiny blue handle. I quickly grabbed it and stuffed it into my cart, eyes darting around me as if I'd been caught doing something forbidden. As I walked up to the till, the tiniest, mousiest voice I could muster managed to squeak out "This brush is on a separate bill".

That moment had divided reality, in its wake painting a clear demarcation. Every few weeks, I would walk by the art store. The store had a unique gravitational pull; luring me into its orbit. I would wander in, and spend hours staring at the shelves, afraid to ask questions, purchasing items at random. I began nesting. I built a nest of paints and cutting tools and scrapbooking materials and glue and glitter and brushes and sculpting tools. The nest took shape in my living room, specifically on my work desk. I didn't see the irony until later. These small pieces of wonderment began to deconstruct the burrowed lessons bureaucracy drove deep into my cranium.

One night, I got home from work and my eyes landed on the nest. I stood there, staring, for a hundred moments suspended in time. All at once, I came to. A small, smoothed over piece of my brain revealed itself, a fully formed cognition. It was then that I looked down. My hands were outstretched, moving independently of my thoughts. Their needs had been ignored for so long. Snatching, sketching, shaping. A sketch pad, paint, scissors, and magazine materialized under me, products of my fingers gone rogue. Snip. Flick. Graze. They roughed blue paint against a plastic sculpting tool and thrashed it onto the page, no contemplation, no consideration necessary. It was exhilarating and wild. I giggled, the voice of my childhood escaping through my throat. I was possessed by the far recesses of my mind, the areas shattered and beginning to reconstruct themselves on the page. After it was finished, I gazed at it for a long time, a fullness enveloping me. I realized how hollow I had felt. The next day, I dug out a box of old magazines believing they had laid dormant for this exact moment; for their wordy contents to be reincarnated into new meaning. I imagined, like me, their identity sealed with ink for so many years, not able to find new words or meaning, subjected to the same print. We were going to help each other.

This was the beginning of my journey back to the living.

Outwardly, nothing had changed about my appearance, but something inalterable had materialized inside. Before, my life seemed to be marked in two concise chapters, 'homelessness' and 'success'. Now, I could see a third chapter, or perhaps a redefining of the second. 'Success' had meant 'Work'... And now it meant 'Passion'.

I became completely untethered from my professional identity. I knew I wouldn't find the answers I needed peering into a computer screen 12 hours a day. It started to feel so meaningless. Then, I started to recall hobbies I lost. Even during homelessness I was a poet, an artist, a singer. Yet in the last 4 years, those identifiers had been erased.

Now when I browsed social media, I saw my old friends differently. Rather than stupid or directionless, they appeared wise. They were wise because they were directionless. They were young; they were allowed, no, supposed to be questioning and exploring and discovering and in that, learning and creating and becoming. I was young, and I was... so sure of a life that didn't have time for joy. I couldn't remember the last time I laughed out loud, or had a drink with a friend, or made a mess creating art, or had casual sex, or a dramatic breakup, or took a vacation; things that make you feel alive. A few days later, I made another discovery through my untethered hands: I found them flipping through a college magazine. The art I created forced me to see the things I wanted. I wanted to deconstruct hierarchies, reconstruct broken dreams, fiddle and frazzle and ax and spew and wish and create and cultivate and see through my own eyes.

That was three weeks ago. Two days ago, I got accepted to college. Today, I stopped aching with the excruciating mix of responsibility and emptiness that all people unhappy in their field will recognize. Today, I was late to work because my hands made me forget the time, my hands told me, 'This sketch is important. Focus on the page'. Today, I'm distracted at work thinking about what I'm going to create when I get home. Today, I'm considering leaving my stress-laden, 60-odd hours per week job to take up waitressing while I'm in school, to leave more energy for Creative Casey to reign free.

You may think I am stupid. My story may be read in the same manner I once glossed over my friend's social media. But as a young woman, I deserve to pursue self-discovery. If I make mistakes, I will learn and look back and know that I have lived. I want to value my art and education. I want to invest in myself more than my office and my monitor and my ego and my staples. I know what I want. I'm awake to my needs, all because of some acrylic paint, some old magazines, a pair of scissors, and a brush.

By the time you're reading this, I might have been fired. I might have quit. But I'm happy.