One guy told me to pursue my dreams because they were more interesting than being a technical writer.
But I could’ve used a steady income to have lived comfortably at that time. It would not have hurt me at all.
Or would it?
So what did I spend the next 15 years doing? Having episodic and severe depressions, in addition to giving birth to my children, following which I sank into lengthy episodic, post partum depression, where I cried a lot (highly uncharacteristic of me) and had the blues.
Feeling alone.
For a long time.
I keep saying if I had been correctly diagnosed earlier, I would have chosen not to have children, because I would not want to wish this on anybody.
Having said that, my kids turned out to be the best thing to have ever happened to me, despite the incredible challenges we have all faced.
Both are highly creative and intelligent. Those two combinations can be volatile or highly beneficent. I have talked to them from Day 1. Not using baby talk, but like I would to any other person, and I adjusted what I said, to communicate as clearly as possible to them.
I can see them on their own road toward self-realization through self-expression.
It’s not a choice really.
It’s genetic.
We need to express ourselves.
We feel dead when we cannot.
Speaking only for myself, of course.
Oops.
Big digression.
Yeah.
Well while I appreciate the insight into me that I do not myself have – but perhaps you are right – it may have upon further reflection been accurate – despite the numbers it took me to get there.
That’s what I would have said now to him.
But the thing that pissed me off then was the following statement:
Plus, it would be difficult for me to not feel the way I feel about you. It would be difficult for me to work with you.
So was that a sexist thing to say?
Perhaps.
His honesty today would get him trouble, right? That part, at least. But in retrospect, I think, he was incredibly helpful. That doesn’t mean I enjoyed going through the incredible challenges associated with that task – of being a free spirit, as one photographer chose to call me, but I wasn’t much impressed that he put it out there.
I mean.
Dang.
Personally though I didn’t give a shit about the emotional crap, I was just pissed because he wouldn’t hire me.
Who knows what my life would have been like if I had taken the other road?
One can speculate endlessly about that.
