Rumblings

Chase your dreams. Once upon a time, these words of wisdom were related to me by a high school algebra teacher. Would he still say the same thing if he saw me today? Would it be because he had changed? Or because I had? Are you ever too old to chase your dreams? Is there a point in life when we should relegate all dreams to the subconscious?

I'm sitting on the couch, wrapped in my fuzzy robe and a blanket, a cup of coffee beside me, wondering what sort of path I'm on in life. I've been through the most amazing (to me, anyway) twists and turns -- I never could have anticipated them. At twenty-eight years old I got to spend two years recapturing the dreams of my five year old self by studying volcanoes. I didn't even realize it at the time, either. Somewhere, in the recesses of memory, there was a picture of a fire goddess, moving through the earth, building up and pulling down the earth. I was fascinated by her.

Somewhere along the way, through wanting to dig up dinosaurs, be an opera singer, save people from burning buildings, I lost track of the fire goddess. I think I was in first or second grade when someone told me I couldn't do something. Not whether or not I should do something -- but that I couldn't. The first time I was ever aware that there was an assumption out there that I was not capable of doing something. I remember the words -- "you can't do that. You're a girl." In response to my desire to be a fire fighter.

The assumption was so easy for him -- not a doubt in his mind that there was any other way of thinking than his. Like I had just said the stupidest thing on the planet, the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard, and it was up to him to remedy that. And in that effort, he dropped seven little words that rocked my world view. It didn't deserve any more attention than that.

I was too stunned to argue with him -- which I had any number of times before when we'd had differences of opinion.

Yeah, we're still talking about me as a first or second grader, arguing my opinions with other first or second graders. My mother encouraged me to have opinions since I could remember, and not only that, expected me to articulate them and defend them, even while other parents looked at her with disapproval. Children were, by and large, to be seen and not heard, where and when I grew up.

In such, my mother was the first one who taught me the true meaning of being rebellious. She didn't go out and paint slogans on buildings, or protest with signs, or scream from rooftops. She rebelled quietly, by staying informed and writing letters, and supporting causes she believed in. It didn't matter what the neighbors thought, or the other wives, or anyone else for that matter. She knew what she thought, and that was what she wanted for me.

So how do we get from dreams, to "you can't," the true art of rebellion as taught to me by my mother? Because I think it's a little rebellious to still be chasing my dreams at the age of thirty. I look at my friends and contemporaries -- they're settled in with jobs, spouses, houses. By most of their standards, I really lost. I am the antithesis of success. I have a dinky little apartment that lets the cold air and rain in in the winter and roasts in the summer, not to mention the God damn shag carpet. I'm currently unemployed. I spent the last two years earning a whopping $800 a month to help a project and a community that still may or may not be helped by what I did (it depends on the powers that be). My significant other, who I have been with for the last eight years -- without benefit of a legally binding piece of paper -- is studying to be a nurse. In the mean time, he's working as a security guard for a non-profit on Saturdays so that a bunch of teenagers can have a safe, clean place to enjoy themselves and make positive connections.

I'm not a house-frau. Ugh. Let me reiterate. I stink at the whole housewife thing. My apartment, tiny as it is, is cluttered. Chaotic even, in certain corners. I feel like I've really accomplished something when I get the bills paid on time. Preparing a good meal, and watching people I care about enjoy it, gives me the most profound satisfaction I can imagine.

I went to college, studies lofty philosophers, wrapped my head around esoteric theories of existence and being. Listened to lectures about people who tried to chase happiness, and define it, and make it fit in a box that conformed to their preconceived notion of what shape and weight it ought to be.

I made myself miserable personally, joyful academically, and resigned myself to every finding a balance between the two. I couldn't see where there was a place where I could be comfortable with both, until I found love where I was least looking for it. By that, I mean, someone who could put up with me when I'm running on an academic rush.

He kept putting up with me even when it was a wild dream for me to walk across the room. I never thought I'd meet someone who was more stubborn than I was. He saw me through more sickness and health than most marriages see in a lifetime.

So should I chase my dreams, still? Is there any room left in the world for the kind of idealism that makes someone seriously think they can become an attorney at thirty?

It isn't just age, though. Thirty years old. Big deal. Forty? Big deal. Who cares? I'll be a day older than yesterday, and not as old as I'll be tomorrow no matter where I am. I know, however, that while I place a minimum of importance on such matters, others will use it as a deciding factor on whether or not to take me seriously. Go to school to be an attorney at thirty? When I have a fear of speaking in public?

Fear of speaking in public that is directly at odds with my instinct to advocate for others and my early training in the importance of opinion.

What am I thinking? I keep hearing a fragment of a voice that says "you can't do that." No disbelief or rancor, just a calm acceptance of fact -- you are not capable.

To which the other side of me says -- "who says?" And I can imagine it's the voice of the fire goddess in the volcano. I've been built up and torn down and built up again -- the destruction of old patterns and habits and relationships laying the foundations for the next level or incarnation or whatever a person might want to call it, depending on their metaphysical state.

So I look at the thick LSAT study guide, and she says: "it's just a test. It doesn't bite."