NS June 4th, 2008
A few of my favourite posts this week from blogs I read regularly, because each resonated with me in some way:
Being There — The Simple Family
I know you have a lot of strength left — Jen’s Den of Iniquity
Friendship Anniversaries — ZoesMom
Taking a Job and Taking Our Chances — Potential and Expectations
NS June 2nd, 2008
This evening we decided to do a loft mission — taking things down, putting other things up, swapping out winter clothing for summer…While I was switching out seasonal clothing I thought I might as well decide if anything hanging in my closet could be thrown away or donated. I threw out a couple of tatty old winter coats that no longer had any pocket linings or buttons, a few skirts that I knew I would never fit into again, and a couple of dresses that have long since gone out of fashion. And then, hanging there towards the back, I found it. Something from another time, another era, another me: my business suit.
The last time I wore that business suit was when I began the last job I held before packing it all in to become a stay-at-home mum and fledgling writer in early 2006. I worked at a highly reputable UK charity, in a lovely corporate office right smack between Mayfair and Marylebone. I loved the people I worked with and while the work I did wasn’t exactly ground-breaking, I was on track to be trained and promoted at quite a fair pace. My boss and my boss’s boss loved that I wasn’t afraid to come up with new ideas, even as the new girl. I was tough with our suppliers and other departments when I needed them to come through. I got things done.
I wore that suit to all my interviews after I graduated from uni, with my degree in journalism and politics in hand and a fresh-faced desire to change the world. I wanted to channel all of that hope, anger, energy, beauty and drive into something meaningful, something wonderful. I truly believed that I could make a difference.
I wore that suit when I had a career, or at least the dream of one, within my reach. Before I was ever a wife, a mother, a carrier and bearer of life. Back when I could drink whiskey with the best of them and dance like a diva ’til dawn in the hottest nightclubs.
And so seeing it there — unused, going out of style and gathering dust (much like my CV) — I burst into tears. I held it to my chest and cried for a minute, remembering that woman and that life and what might’ve been.
Then I straightened it neatly, hung it back in my closet and shut the door. Who knows when I’ll see it, or her, again.
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