Girl, Potentiated

I used to live in potential.  It was how I learned to thrive.  To sparkle.

People would meet me.  Struggling.  With a snotty child at my hip, washing diapers by hand. Making biscuits in the kitchen with camping gear. Sometimes in the dark, because the power was shut off. And they would marvel at how such a girl, a machine of practical survival technique, could talk like this.  About Mozart’s Requiem and Balzac, about Liberation Theology and the X-Men. People were always amazed by the fact of my potential. It was a cheap gimmick.  My one trick. I was such a hit at cocktail parties.

I used to think I hit my zenith at 10. The age when people constantly commented on how precocious I was.  I was kind of an anomaly. For 10. And at 20 and 30? As long as I lived in potential, I was particular and special.

I never had to fail. No one would ever realize I was less than amazing.

When life became less hard, that magic time when I was in a two-income household at last, I still stalled and put off going to college, writing a novel, getting a real job or embarking on some artistic endeavor.  I never understood why inertia had me so firmly nailed to the floor.

When I finally went to college, it was community college. Then I transferred to a University close to home. At the end of my B.A., I froze.  I loved undergrad.  At 34, I was a fervent student.  I agonized over proceeding on to graduate school, about trying to reach a level where I could teach.  Then I took the LSATs and scored in the 96th percentile.  And it convinced me to follow the path where I had proven I still had the stuff to be considered special.  I chose the pedestrian route.  Furthermore, I stayed close to home again.  I didn’t even apply to all the lovely places that my percentile and grades made possible. Big ponds. What if I had to face, at last, that I was a small fish?

I hated it from the start.  But it was effortless to maintain a decent GPA, and with a few notable exceptions, I was still the smartest kid in my class.  When I left, I felt adrift. Where was I special now?

Ultimately I had to accept – maybe I had hit a plateau at 10.  Not in my potential, or my intelligence – in my willingness to learn. Seems I spent all my adulthood proving I was special, and I didn’t feel any more capable than when I was 10.  In fact, when I was 10 I firmly believed I could run for president. And be a prima ballerina.  At this point, I was afraid to apply to Stanford. At 10 I would have been convinced that only Oxford would do.

Luckily I found this job. The one I was ridiculously overqualified for, but completely clueless about.  One thing I know for certain: No one is a natural at group therapy.  Or can puzzle out the most effective therapeutic response to a client offering to crack you over the head with your fucking whiteboard. In truth, I’ve spent the last four years just trying not to ruin anyone’s life. Well, permanently.  I hear that is the definition of success in my field.

So the way I knew I was different, not living in potential – I learned something from the bottom up. At normal-people increments. And after four years. I totally rule. If I ruin someone’s life, it is intentional. (And they are not my clients, they are the other ones. The ones messing with my clients.)

Death in Florence

I will always associate Florence with grieving.  I went there in the death throes of my ambition to be an attorney.  In a way, Florence was my attempt to make finishing law school seem possible, or palatable. I spent quite a bit of time roaming around and shopping with a judge who was spending her summer teaching.  She spent much of our time together trying to convince me to return and complete.  My life had already changed too much to stay on that track. It was painful to think that I had taken a wrong turn somewhere and was now on the brink of having a life I knew I would never enjoy.

The trip came hard on the heels of a dramatic and eventful coming out.  Florence was the first place I had room to breathe and think away from the major players in the drama.  My ex of 12 years – who lived right down the street and still contended that our breakup was the most traumatic event of his life.  And my ex of 5 months – the first girlfriend, who dumped me suddenly and awkwardly while we were on a romantic getaway in Seattle. She then spent my remaining time before departing acting almost exactly like a girlfriend and expressing wonderment that she’d left a lovely girl like me without knowing exactly why.  Confusion and guilt on every front.

In Italy, I spent a huge amount of time wandering.  I would get up early with my roommates and walk to classes, grabbing cappuccino on the way.  Class was about a 45-minute walk if you had the luxury to enjoy it, and a 30-minute walk if you were late. Traffic was murderous, and by that I mean crossing the street meant taking huge risks with life and limb. I attended class and got out at lunch time, quite a while before my flatmates, so I would set off for the apartment in a random direction and purposely lose myself in the streets.  My homeward walks took at least 90 minutes, and had no agenda. While most students who spent a summer in Florence can tell you all about museums and art and churches, I never even set foot in the Duomo  – though you had a great view of it if you stuck your head out our kitchen window.  I am used to living in a city bisected by a large river, so I oriented myself by the Arno and the Ponte Vecchio, and I never once felt lost.

So it was, for lack of a better word, a beautiful kind of grieving. The kind that makes you wander the streets of one of the world’s most gorgeous cities feeling strangely energized by sadness.

Then someone I loved died. The first death in three that would happen in the span of a year.  A friend, my brother and then my first love.  June, February, June. This one was the hardest.  I called my ex-girlfriend, who really, really cared about me, but she only responded by asking if I knew it was 4 a.m. I wanted to go home for the funeral, but the ticket was going to cost thousands on such short notice.

Things became grey. I now walked to school briskly, walked home the same way every day.  Stopped always at an internet cafe to check on news and morbid details – because the death was confusing and unexplained. To read messages from other people who were shocked and sad, because I was shocked and sad. As with all deaths, I would forget and be distracted and then remember and feel ashamed of my distractibility.  I think this is when I went to my sole museum and saw the statue of David, and the small painting of the Magdalene where she is all ginger hair covering her nakedness – the most compelling visual memory I have of Florence and art.

Down the street were two lovely gay boys. One a law student like me, and the other his boyfriend, along for the trip with no business in particular to accomplish in Florence.  Jay, was the student and Adam, the boyfriend. But we had all decided early on that we would have new names in Florence.  Secret identities. So we were Carlos and Trev and Violet.  And Brandi, Caitlyn and Ingrid.

Trev began coming over at lunchtime when Carlos, and the rest of the dually named flatmates were still at school.  Often, he would find me lying in bed or on the couch. Sleeping or staring. He would entice me to his apartment with promises of Jager and Red Bull, and once there, he would fuss about my hair and makeup and then try to get me excited for some adventure.  We’d go do something random and then stop in the grocery to buy supplies for our communal dinners.  One day, we decided to dye my hair at least three different colors instead of just the two and spent all afternoon, tipsy in various farmacia looking for hair dye and bleach.  Another time, he asked me what would make me feel better and then spent a ridiculous amount of time looking for a yarn store because I just wanted to knit.  By the time we were cooking dinner and the students returned to eat family-style, I was a little drunk and much more prepared to socialize.  Also, better looking.

I try to regret not seeing all the things a student should see in Florence, but the rest of that terrible year had more grief in store, and the scenery was not nearly as lovely or the company so comforting.

Fucking Bootstraps

I just read this very right-on, and very pointed post about the Occupy New York movement on Antidotal Evidence.  Essentially, the author is discussing the level of privilege many of the protesters seem to have.  A lot of them talk about student loan debt and foreclosure, which means they at least had the means to go to college and buy a house. Once.

They are just discovering what the poor have always known – the system is rigged.  And I get that their outrage is kind of irritating because perhaps it should not have to hit them personally before they see it.  But as someone who has been both the Truly Poor and the Relatively Privileged,  I gotta defend my new class.

If these student loan refugees and foreclosure families were not in the streets, we’d be mocking them for being too desperate to hold what privilege they have to step up for change.  We have to give everyone props for doing the right thing, even if they aren’t among the most victimized.

I believe that those who can afford it should never shop at Wal-Mart.  We should buy local, support organics, support non-profits, spend some of our time volunteering.  Cook real food and buy used, not new. I get that being able to do these things at all is a huge privilege.  I understand that having to make it on food stamps long ago sucked, but that it allowed me to become overeducated and work full time in my chosen field – with health benefits.  Underinsured is not uninsured.  Underemployed is not unemployed. I can go to the dentist. And while these things were not true for much of my life, I lead a charmed one compared to most people who have ever had to rely on public assistance..

And I don’t mean to whine, but…

I have no consumer debt.  None. Nada. Zip.  I racked up a modest amount while transitioning out of my long-term relationship, but I paid it off rapidly and completely.  I never use a credit card. I only have student loan debt and medical debt.  I pay them off as I am able, regularly and on time, but can’t afford the minimum demanded to cover interest much less put anything toward the principal.  Some of my student loan debt is public and they are more forgiving.  A lot of it is private, and they have already sent me to collections because their minimum was about 1/3 of my take home pay and my $150/month was not enough for them. Once in collections, I wondered why I fought it so hard.  To save my credit?

I have horrible credit.  Despite over a decade of on-time and in-full payments of everything, always when I was half of an almost middle class couple.  My debt-to income ratio makes me ineligible for even a $64,000 loan to buy the house I have been paying the mortgage, taxes, insurance and maintenance on for the last 5 years. The collections issue tanks me.

Nevertheless, I love being in collections.  They agreed to a payment I can afford monthly, and it all goes to principal. All of it. No interest is accruing, no fees whatsoever.

It’s kind of a deal. I am considering allowing the rest to all go into collections.  It may be the only way I pay them all off before I die.  I read once that most women who attend graduate school die still owing.  So in order to settle up completely, like a responsible borrower, I may have to do the ‘irresponsible’ thing.  Does this seem odd to anyone else?

How many people already have ruined credit scores, but keep on paying interest-only hoping one day to win the lottery, or have a sudden windfall inheritance?  If we are fucked already, why not admit it and start digging out?  It’s not like my credit was going to heal itself anytime soon. It’s not like the loan companies are attempting to be fair.

I am the deserving poor.  I used welfare to give my kid a decent start. To get childcare while I worked. I went to college, where I worked half time to full time all the way through. I studied hard and got excellent grades while trust funded 20-year olds around me complained that full time school, no kids and no job was ‘too stressful’.  I scored high on my LSATs, I won a lot of scholarships. I left Law School partly because the amount of debt terrified me, and I knew I would only work in social services anyway (i.e. Voluntary Poverty).  I have no consumer debt. I work in a field that only benefits my community, and pays nearly nothing.  I can’t see where I have lacked for bootstrap tugging, hard work, civic-mindedness or talent.

And this is still ‘America’.

So I feel for my overeducated, underemployed compatriots in Tent City. I think this is the beginning of class consciousness in a section of our population that, up until recently believed in the myth of the Classless Society.  I hope that the realization stays with them after things right themselves and their Relative Privilege is restored. It can only bode well for the future, right?