Someone with a past like mine should not spend so much time alone.
When I'm with people, occupied, swept along in the hustle and bustle that is work, social engagements, shopping, dinners, errands, exercise, reading, family, then I'm good. When I get to live life the way a normal person lives life, I am in general a happy and pleasant individual. Which is remarkable, all things considered. Scroll through the archives of this blog and try not to weep at what you find there. Domestic violence. Suicide. Vicious and unrelenting abuse. It was a miracle that I got through all of that more or less intact, got to the point that I could be an agreeable link in a chain of friendship and kin, a typical member of a typically functioning social circle. More or less, a regular dude (or girl, but the point stands).
About a decade ago, I did my first blogger meetup as a college student in the Washington, DC region, and the writer with whom I met expressed a surprised assessment of my character.
"From your writing, I expected you to be really serious and reserved," he quipped at the time. "But you're actually like, a normal person."
Genuinely one of my greatest achievements in life has been to become "actually like, a normal person." It's why I revel in my Starbucks and my Taylor Swift records and my completely indefensible love for Twilight. By all rights I should be a raving lunatic, or barring that a fashionably tortured Gothic misanthrope. Instead I'm a comically typical white girl, cheerful and good natured, like, as one co-worker playfully noted "a little ball of sunshine." Except when I'm alone.
Then old wounds open up. Old shames breathe. And pervasive insecurities whisper in my ear, of all the things I'll never have and never be able to do. There's so much to worry about these days. Whether or not to transition, then how to bear the cost of it if I go that route. Which direction to take to further my career, and whether I'll be equal to the task. How, how in the name of the sweet Lord above, to get out of this village, where I feel trapped: the robust salary and low-pressure working conditions I command here come at the price of social isolation, but to reclaim a more typical life would be to surrender a hard-won economic position that very, very few teachers enjoy.
Alaska teacher pay, even in a city, would allow me to live at least a middle-class existence, but those city jobs are difficult to come by. Everyone wants to work in Iceport or Aurora City. So what's a boy to do? The prospective options--teaching job here, teaching job in another village, teaching job in a city, non-teaching job in a city--for next year are manifold with conflicting and interlocking time-frames, all of which is to say nothing of my long-term ambitions to enter a very specific career path within the federal government. It's all just so much. Through the maelstrom of deadlines and pressure and logistics I can see a glimmer of a happy future worth living in, but it seems so far off sometimes.
I'm going to be spending two weeks in Iceport during Christmas break (something I've elected to do en lieu of a very expensive Yuletide trip to the East Coast) and at least a few things will be acted on then. I have a job interview with a group home for troubled kids sometime around the New Year, and I'll also be meeting with a psychiatrist to get a clinical evaluation that could be my foot in the door with the federal government. Granted, I have yet to find that psychiatrist, but still.
"I can see you've applied for an overseas position," said the federal coordinator to whom I'd been assigned. "But there are domestic positions that are subject to non-competitive hiring processes for individuals with disabilities, and that could be a quicker and smoother path for you. Why don't we get that started? Then we have two irons on the fire and they can proceed simultaneously."
This could potentially be a godsend; I've harbored dreams to embark upon this very specific job track within the federal government for about a decade now, but the barrier to entry is high and the selection process rigorous. A workaround exists in the form of what is called Schedule-A hiring, a non-competitive hiring process in which qualified persons with disabilities are considered in a pool by themselves, apart from the population of general applicants. I am absolutely eligible to do this, but require a letter from a physician to verify the legitimacy of my status.
Hence why I am now searching Iceport for a doctor to confirm the ailment with which I was first diagnosed at three years old and which has altered, in profound and almost universally negative ways, every aspect of my life. It's stressful and aggravating, but if it helps me climb this particular wall then it will be worth it.
Otherwise, I'm going to just enjoy being normal for a fortnight. I've rented an apartment in Iceport for the greater part of the break, and I'm very much looking forward to such exciting adventures as grabbing coffee, going to the movies, and grocery shopping. With a car! Wise Woman, my neighbor from Gori who now lives in a village on Alaska's west coast, is flying to the city to spend four nights and days with me, among them Christmas itself; and Miss Violet, a teacher who lived in Point Goldlace last year but has since relocated to Iceport, is hosting us for Christmas dinner. My father will be up for a few days as well, somewhere between Christmas and New Year's.
Other than that, the time is mine. Hopefully somewhere in the twinkle of Christmas lights and the flash of New Year's Eve fireworks, a little ball of sunshine can emerge again.
