The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

Martha Dumptruck

I walked through the halls of the school today and it's possible I shuddered. I do not miss those days at all, the constant battle between indifference and a desire to be liked, the stress of achieving high grades, the persistent fear of the future. I looked around at all the young ones, each one looking as uncertain as they did composed, a thin veneer of bravado coating each shaggy-haired boy and every girl trying to look as though they don't care that they're not the prettiest, defiantly wearing ill-fitting sweatpants and heavy black eyeliner. It's like none of them are trying, anymore. At least in the eighties we made an attempt at levity with our fashion and silly or not, at least there was colour. When I went to school, you looked around and you saw a modicum of effort, a bit of thought about how to create an image, rather than this uninspiring trend of everyone looking exactly the same: lazy, sloppy and unwashed. Oh, there were some girls who wore the ballet flats and the skinny jeans with a bit of jewellery dangling from their necks, but the boys were clumsy and hirsute, wearing baseball hats and dirty jeans. I did not see even one that I would have felt any kind of pull toward if I were twenty years younger. This makes me wonder about all those teachers who have been caught canoodling with their students. Why? What is so attractive about a generation of fast-food eating, unshorn, unpolished, video game obsessed, twittering and texting, sloppy spelling, expletive spewing, book phobic, pimply-faced children? Like I said, I'm fairly confident that teenagers in my day had more going for them, but it's possible everyone who looks back will think the same way.

The thing is, I know that it's natural to think we know better once we get older. I remember my parents shaking their heads in confusion over my choices in music, my red and black plaid sunglasses, my bangle bracelets and my eventual transformation from a powder-blue eyeshadowed, bow-haired, sparkly pink lipsticked teen, into a long black jacket wearing, thigh high boot wearing, Siouxsie and Morrissey listening, scowling girl in a locked bedroom. It was part of growing up, the moodiness, the experimentation, the illusion of superiority and through all of it, I felt I was misunderstood. Maybe I was, and maybe the kids at the school across the way are too, but they anger me because I know better now. I can see how their lives would hurt less, what steps they should take and which ones should be avoided, and I know that not one of them would have any interest in listening to me. They're caught up in a time of life that is as difficult as it is great, but the thing that really irks me is that all the advantages and freedoms are available to them at a time when they're the most apt to screw it all up. It leaves those on the outside feeling helpless and frustrated because we know, we know what they're thinking and feeling. We did it all first, and there's nothing original in any of it. I will feel even more frustrated in ten years when I have a teenager of my very own under the same roof. I'm already sad about it.

Speaking as a former 'girl', the thing that worries me the most about my daughter growing older is the eventual and unavoidable stage of boy worship. Now, she might prefer girls and that will be fine, but right now I'm thinking she'll prefer the male gender. I am terrified that she will disrupt her life by becoming too involved in chasing love, much the same as I did. Yes, I had anxiety problems and I often blame my refusal to finish university and the general stagnation of my twenties on that, but if I'm really honest I will admit that it was also about a boy. I wanted everything right away, the love, the relationship, the home together and the future, because that's what most girls at that age want. All of it, during a strange and turbulent time such as adolescence, represents safety, the land beyond the thrashing waves. I could bear the shame of not getting my education and not following my original dreams as long as I had his arms to cry in. He was all I needed, and with him the future would come just as sure as if I had done the things I'd first planned to.

Then, I was thirty. I was thirty and I still had the boy and I had the house and I was absolutely miserable. The boy stayed a boy, and I had kicked and screamed my way into womanhood, and the dissimilarity between us was palpable. His arms felt like shackles rather than comfort, his laughter was menacing rather than reassuring. What I had was a relationship that had stopped working once we grew into ourselves and found there was precious little left to talk about. I had starved myself of knowledge and confidence, and there I was, almost dead from the worry of it all. No, he hadn't tried to stop me from pursuing my dreams, I did, but I had done it because I had made him more important than I was for so many years. He smiled at me and I'd forget why I was angry. He'd give me some flowers and I would feel ungrateful for wanting something more. It was never his fault, either. I had given everything up because I thought it was the best thing for me at the time.

I think about all the girls I know, the ones who we see as women now, and I wonder about how happy they are. How many of them are with the boys they once thought they'd die for? How many of them share a home or a child with the first boy they gave their bodies too? Not many, actually. Offhand, there's only one that comes to mind and she's the type who never had big dreams, content with the basics and the small surprises of life. Every other girl I knew suffered for love at some point or other, some of them holding on with a death grip, losing everything they had in the pursuit of a relationship which ultimately went nowhere. I have known girls who got pregnant before they were of legal age to have a cocktail. I have known girls who have contracted diseases that will never go away. I have known girls who've swallowed pills or sliced their wrists over boys they no longer remember. I have known girls who have been punched or hit by boys who said they'd love them forever, and didn't.

I told my friend A. this tonight when she called, and she snorted on her end of the phone. Face it, you're getting old, she laughed, and I couldn't help but laugh too. Not old, just wiser, I said. Oddly, though, I still own the fear I did back then. I still feel the safest in a man's arms, and I hate that about myself just as much as I love it. I need M. as much as I love him. He gives me reason, he inspires me and pushes me to keep going. What is different about him, though, is that he is a man and not a boy, and he has moved away from his long-haired, experimental, indulgent ways. He wants me to pursue my dreams as much as he wants to accomplish his own. He sees me as a partner, a friend, not just a lover. This is what it's all about, I want to say to the girls in the hallways. It's about loving someone while loving yourself and knowing that the investment is worth it.

I think that if you're young and free, if you're still learning and filling up with ideas and passions, it would be a tremendous wrong to spend all of your time agonizing over how to please a boy who you know does not worry about pleasing you. To spend time crying or obsessing over someone you may one day wake up and see as nothing more than a slight resemblance to someone you used to love once is wasteful.

But, there's nothing I can do or say which will make sense to a young girl with stars in her eyes. All I can do, all anyone can do really, is watch and wait, and be there when she needs a pair of arms around her.

Actually, I am getting old, but I still think wisdom is a part of the process, the only thing that makes the whole thing seem worthwhile.