Hopes

Sometimes I feel like I’m running fifteen years late.  I started out so boldly.  Left home at twenty, moved here and there around the country.  And now I feel like I’m turning into my mother and grandmother, telling them about my day, eating at their tables. 

My body is getting older and sicker and flabbier.  I thought maybe the reason I never knew what I wanted to do with my life was because I was going to be too sick to do anything anyway.  Now I’m not sure.  If I was meant to be sick, wouldn’t I be more at peace with it?  Instead, I have pie-in-the-sky hopes and absurd expectations of life. 

Nothing is good enough.  I don’t really want to make friends in Sydney because I want to get out of this hick town.  Yes, I know it’s an international city of nearly five million, but it still feels like a hick town to me.  I don’t want to get involved because I don’t want to put down roots.  I’m destined for bigger and better things.  I want to be where the gorgeous, glamourous, brilliant and soulful people are.  I want to be in the middle of the creative work.  I want to be on the crest of the wave of discovery.  I want to learn in person instead of from the TV screen.  I want to explore forbidden thinking with forbidden thinkers. 

Crazy, isn’t it?  Why can’t I say, "I want to work in retail," or "I want to be an accountant," or "I want to marry an ordinary-looking man and buy an ugly house in the suburbs on a huge mortgage and raise fat sulky children"?