My days of freedom are over. Tomorrow morning, I go back to school. To university. So I can travel down three more English courses along my road to becoming a graduate.
One might safely argue that I have never really been free; since the day I was born to two white-collar professionals—educators themselves—I have been a slave to the written word. Language is my master. It hovers over me, dark and ominous like the shadow of a whip-bearer, ready to strike me with a thousand lashes at the first sign of a comma splice. Or a sentence fragment. {Oh, wait…that was a sentence fragment.}
I am The Hypocrite. Occasionally, I pester my own husband to go back to school…to get a degree; but I never nag for long. I don’t blame him for not wanting to go back. I am the first to defend the pursuit of higher education, yet I turn around and become the first to bemoan my own “fate.” But it’s not fate. I could jump the track—change my course—at any time.
I’ve considered it—don’t think I haven’t. Not a day has passed these last four months that I haven’t wished, if only silently, to drop out. To unroll from my courses. To skip town and head to L.A. where I would work as a waitress {not really a waitress, but a frustrated movie star waiting to be discovered}, living on love but not even that because Poor Kyle would never follow me to California. It is a fantasy of mine, so if you’re an agent looking for unearthed talent, please email me here: camille[at]archiveslives[dot]com. I am good. Let’s talk.
But I won’t do that. English won’t let me. My roots won’t allow me to be a college dropout. Even if I never get a paid job writing like some in-laws who shall remain nameless suspect; even if it takes me twelve years to graduate because I can’t stomach spending $1,000+ per class on a full course load each semester; even if my degree doesn’t launch me to the top of that mythical corporate ladder; even if nobody ever reads a word these arthritic fingers type…
…I still have to graduate. I’m going to do it. There’s no sense trying to talk me out of it. That’s that.
So on this, the last day of freedom I never had, I broke some rules.
First, I alienated myself from approximately half the population of my hometown by proclaiming a political opinion.
Then, I refused to make my bed…
…but only because I never left it all day, instead choosing to immerse myself in e-drama and an old classic…
(…which I’d never read until now).
And when I finally unglued myself from that place of comfort at oh, five in the evening…
I went outside. In public. Wearing white. After Labour Day.
How’s that for sentence fragments, slave master?
I’m all kinds of faux pas these days.
Ready or not, school—here I come.
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