Retreat #10: Choices
In a workshop earlier this month, I asked the women to think of a time when they knew they wanted to do something but chose instead to do what was expected of them. “How old were you? Go back to that time and make a different choice. In your imagination, choose what you longed for, then create a word-picture of what that life might have been like.”
Now by myself, I do what I asked the women to do. When I was 20, I got married. What I wanted to do was live alone and write. I take up my journal and write myself into the life not chosen:
When I was 20, I lived in a one-room attic, where I ate and slept and wrote through the seasons of the year. Couples walking in the moonlight, cats prowling the alley, and men with lunch boxes coming home from graveyard shift before sunrise—all these inhabitants of the night saw light in my attic window. I made occasional trips down the stairs and out the front door, for groceries or to pick up my mail from the post office downtown. At those times, neighbors paused in the weeding of their flower beds and hoeing of their tomato patches to watch me. When I disappeared among the giant elm trees crowding in to shade the sidewalk, they turned their heads to each other and said, "I wonder what that strange young woman does up there in Mrs. Enns’ attic all day and all night."
When I finished a manuscript, my window stayed dark at night. I slept then. During the day, I carted heavy envelopes to the post office. I took a temp job for a week or two or three. I frequented the post office, hoping for good news. Then I started writing another book and the marathon resumed. As rejection slips arrived, I stopped going to the post office. I let my mail pile up until it toppled out of my box and blocked other people’s rented boxes. Then the postmaster called me. “Lots of bad news again?” he’d ask with sympathy in his voice.
“Oh! Sorry!” I’d exclaim. “I’m so into my next book. I’m writing an awesome novel—this time I know it’s the best! But I’ll come down this afternoon and take my mail off your hands.”
Autumn winds tossed yellow leaves against my window. In winter, I welcomed the snow. It piled up along my window ledge, blanketing the roof that sloped down from my attic tower. It softened the light and turned the world into muted surrealism. In spring, birds made their nests in the eave framing my window.
This went on for several years and I was perfectly happy. I lived simply—no telephone, no TV, no social obligations, but connections as I needed them. I walked everywhere. My wardrobe consisted of a few basic pieces that served me well in my temp jobs.
Then one day I got a “we love your submission and we’ll publish it” letter, with a cheque that made my eyes pop. I ordered in pizza, danced naked before my mirror, then sat right down to start another novel.
When three boxes of books arrived a few months later, special-delivered to Mrs. Enns’ front door, I went to a payphone and called all my friends. They brought wine. Mrs. Enns came up with her crystal wineglasses. The neighbors tracked dirt all the way up the stairs, fresh flowers and bright red tomatoes in their hands. I signed books and got tipsy and knew that I am sufficient in myself.