Time and Place
January, 2000. I was in the middle of 9th grade. I had started writing by then – documenting angry feelings and miscellaneous observations in a basic black composition book – but I hadn’t started putting these words on the internet, so there’s no (legible) documentation anymore. At least no documentation of my prose: at this point I was still writing terrible poetry and utilizing one of the various kid-based publishing websites. I was not in a good place – physically speaking, I was in an all-girls prep school on the east coast. Mentally/emotionally speaking, well, I was 13.
I was traveling a well-paved road – high school, college, real life. The end was a bit fuzzy, but at that point it didn’t matter. This path wasn’t a choice I consciously made, nor was it forced upon me. It had just always been the plan, as though no other option existed. But I didn’t think too hard about it, or think about it at all. Again, I was 13, so my view of the world spanned less than 20 miles and less than a month into the future.
I didn’t like my school, my classmates. And at least for the first year, I didn’t try to like them. I was extremely introverted and mostly unsocial. I had made some potentially good friends at the end of 8th grade when I was still in public school, but lost them over time through lack of motivation. I certainly wasn’t depressed – the few cliched thoughts of suicide that I had were vague and unfathomable – but I was full of undirected angst. I wasn’t where I wanted to be, but there was nothing I could do about it. Welcome to the new decade!
January, 2010. I took the path as far as I could. Through high school, through college. Found myself an office job, found myself unsatisfied. So much for the “real world” I kept imagining. White collar happiness was not the goal I had in mind.
The next step wasn’t gradual. I didn’t eventually think about moving on from the office world and slowly begin to picture myself in other professions before planning and considering my options. Rather, it occurred as a reality-shattering epiphany. One minute, I looked around the room and decided that I didn’t want to know these business people standing around me; I didn’t want to be them. Less than two minutes later, I knew that I was going to become a massage therapist.
So here I am, a few weeks away from leaving the cubicle world behind and starting my own business as an LMT.
When I finished school in September, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do once I got my license. But not because I had no idea. Rather, I had too many ideas, and they all sounded good – working in a hospital, working for myself, chair massage, pediatric massage. Suddenly, anything was possible.
Most of my dreams and plans of the future grew from the path that, from an early age, I knew I would follow. But I’ve jumped off that path now, and I’m starting something new. Wherever I go from here is completely up to me. It’s a lot of responsibility, but it’s my responsibility.