Bad days

There was a time for me when I was considered an ‘up-and-comer’. Teachers in my last few years of high school couldn’t get enough of my sartorial diatribe, loved my new-fashioned fiction and melancholy poetry. In fact there was one particular teacher who confided in me that he half-wished I would autograph some of my writing for him because then he could ‘prove that he knew me when’. Little did he know that the when where he knew me was the only me worth knowing. Or so it would seem some days.
Because here I sit at nearly 35 (which as everyone knows means you are no longer in your early 30’s) unemployed for the first time in my life. From my work as a bartender. So one could call me a nearly 35-year-old unemployed ex-bartender with no higher than a high school education and 4 children split between 2 fathers under her belt. People could say that because that’s who I guess I am. That brilliant girl with her first play produced at the local Opera House by the time she was 17 is just another person for me to resent.
Not that everything is bad, just in case one of my sons reads this. My kids are hilariously, brilliantly fabulous and I can only assume that, since I am raising them on my own, I had at least something to do with that. They are every tiny bit of providence and promise in my life. But Callum is now 13, old enough to understand what people will say about my being out of work, and more than old enough to start looking at me differently. Ben is 11 and so understanding and warm, but he knows our life will change. Just as I’ve been changing it for the last 5 years, moving them up here to a tiny little town and a tiny little school. And now that they’re just getting settled…what will that mean for them? For us? Because tiny little towns also have tiny little want ads.
I suppose I could move in with my mother - it’s what she wants. It’s what everyone says I should do. Because there are great schools and tall office buildings and movers and shakers all around her. And ‘the Dads’ live there as well. There would be more people cheering for them in the soccer stands. Jack, my quiet, careful 7 year old, would get a chance to start liking his father, something he adamantly refuses to do now. And Nathan - well at 6 years old as long as I’m there and his toys are there, it’s all good.
But how many more ‘fresh starts’ do I need to make before one sticks? I avoid and run and complain that I could be so successful if only I had the time, or if only I had gotten an education, or if only I had a little help. But I’M the reason I’m not successful. I’m so utterly, nakedly terrified of being rejected, of taking that huge step and tripping back down lower than I was. Terrified that the boys will follow in my small, shadow less footsteps.
Apparently I should have thought things through before travelling the road less travelled. Before deciding that I could do it on my own, could do everything. Be a good Mom and volunteer at the school and bake cookies for class parties. Provide a lovely home with a cat and dog. Work and write and bake and cook in our little beatnik house at the edge of the forest. But the thing about roads less travelled is that there are no maps. No one has gone before to show you the best, safest route. To help you find all of the best side roads and little pit stops. So you end up stopping somewhere for a long time when you maybe never should have even paused. But now, I think, perhaps it’s time to move on.