Every now and then I find myself staring at a little laminated piece of paper pinned to the corkboard above my desk. I wonder if I would make the same choice now (yes), I wonder if I would have when I was young and invincible (no). I wonder when I changed. When I quit reaching for the stars and started staring at them longingly, knowing deep down my place is on the ground. 

In my eighth grade honors English class, we read The Giver. For those who might’ve skipped that depressing lesson, the book is about a ‘utopian’ society that was really a dystopian society with a control issue. Everyone in The Giver is assigned their career - for the rest of their bleak and colorless life - at the age of twelve. Obviously this was one of the more dystopian qualities of the narrative’s society, but it still posed the question of how well that would work in our world. As a personal project, the teacher observed us throughout the month that we read The Giver, and at the end of the unit assigned each of us a job mentioned in the book. While none of us were twelve or about to discover apples are red, we were all young impressionable teenagers with no real clue about the future. 

I have always liked knowing what a figure of authority would describe me as. I want to meet the version of me that other people know. No matter how different I think it is, that assessment is still a part of me. One fragment of a larger personality that’s broken into bite-size pieces made easier for others to digest. If someone - particularly someone with authority - really likes one particular piece, I’ll let that part get bigger until it slips into other conversations and becomes my entire personality. Eventually, someone will come to like just one part of that personality, and it fractures again and so on. Of course, it’s always a bit fun to see how long I can keep multiple personalities going with as many people as possible. Like that time in middle school where… 

Well anyway, some people got Laborer, some got Birther (a unique career choice to present to a 13-14 year old girl in my humble opinion), and I got Doctor. The teacher took a whole class period just to announce our jobs. We would clap and cheer for each other, even when someone got Laborer, because it didn’t really matter all that much. This whole ordeal was something the teacher thought would be fun, nothing more, and it gave us all a period to relax. The assignment wasn’t an indicator of how our lives would play out down the road and by no means a fortune telling. After giving each of us our paper, the teacher allowed us to switch them with others. I suppose she wanted to see how accurate she was, a way to grade her work. And she did well. Majority of the class was satisfied and stayed put in their seats. There existed a select few, however, who felt otherwise. Who weren’t content to be Birther and would rather live the life of a Laborer instead.

When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be a veterinarian. Seriously, look up an old Christmas list of mine and you’ll see “a REAL vet kit”. I obsessively watched Dr. Jeff: Rocky Mountain Vet, The Vet Life, and Animal Precinct. Often, you’d find me sitting on the living room floor with a stuffed animal following along with my fake vet kit, wrapping an imaginary broken leg with gauze I stole from my mother or suturing a nasty wound from a fictional fight. Some time after that, I wanted to be a rockstar. To give myself some credit, I could write some small songs, and I could certainly sing along to Kidz Bop well enough. I’d hold my own private concerts in the living room, climbing up onto the sofa and leaping down for the chorus of “Wrecking Ball”, stuffed animal still in hand. The fact that I couldn’t stand to ever cut into a real animal - even to save their life - or that I was absolutely terrified of being on stage - to the point where I quit hip hop dance class - didn’t matter to me. I was possessed by this unwavering confidence that I could do anything. If I wanted to be a veterinarian, then it was just going to happen when I was older. I had fears but they existed momentarily, blocked out by the blinding self-assurance that inhabited a younger, and bolder, me.

So when the teacher told us we were able to trade our assignments, I immediately traded mine away. No hesitation, I got up out of my seat and traded with the first person I came across who was looking to trade. Actually, I don’t know if he even wanted to trade, but when I went up to Zachary Beaver and asked him if he would give me his Fish Hatchery Worker for my Doctor, he said yes. 

If that decision caught you off guard, then you’d be in the same boat as my teacher. I’ll never forget how confused she was when she came to me and saw I had given up being a Doctor to be a Fish Hatchery Worker. I had aced her class thus far, always paid diligent attention, and always went above and beyond on writing projects. Sometimes instead of going out to eat lunch with the other students, I would eat lunch in her room and do more work (although that stemmed from a different problem entirely). Reasonably, she said, I was smart enough and determined enough to put in the work to be a doctor. She was so serious when she asked me to reconsider my choice. To consider reversing my trade and returning to the bright, blinding future that was: Doctor. It seemed like she thought I was throwing my future away, like the scenario was real. Like the small slip of bright-colored laminated paper foretold my fate.

The scenario was so much simpler in my mind. I told her that being a doctor and putting people’s lives on the line every day was just too much pressure for me to handle. I told her that I seemed smart because I liked her class, but that there was no way I was smart enough to be a doctor. I told her that I wasn’t driven and motivated enough to make it through medical school, because there were (are) some days where all I can do is sit there staring off into space, begging myself to actually start working. She had a pitying look on her face, as if I was making the biggest mistake of my life, but dropped the subject and it never came up again. 

Back to the original question: what changed, and when did it happen? Obviously, I had started changing well before that class, but I can’t help but think she was right. I was making a mistake, putting the final nails into the coffin. How do I get out of that box now? My mental prison made up of the ideology that I will never be able to achieve my dreams, so why even try? Reminds me of a conversation I had with my mother not too long ago that ended with her saying,

 “Please don’t give up on all of your dreams before they even start, please believe in something.”

The look on her face spoke volumes more than those words ever did. It told of years trapped in an unhappy marriage, in a small county she just couldn’t manage to stay away from, watching her dreams slip further and further away until they finally vanished on the horizon. It was the echo of the look worn by my grandmother when I told her my plans for college. When she realized that I was going to end up with a better life than she had given her daughter. When she realized that I grew up never having to worry about helping my mom with the utility bills. When she realized that I was her wildest dreams for her only daughter, her favorite child personified. Alive and breathing across from her at the dining room table. 

How can I look these women in the eye, the ones who have always tried to give me everything that I needed to have a better future. How can I look them in the eye and say,

“I just can’t do it, dreaming isn’t for me anymore.”

Because it’s not, really. Dreaming is an old friend that I’ve lost touch with. When I look at photographs of a younger me, it’s always there, right next to me in the frame. Then when I hit middle school and gained insecurity, when schoolwork became hard, when I became old enough to learn the word alcoholism, when I became conscious of the world and my unstable place within it. When I look back on pictures from those years, I can see it. I can see my will to dream a better life for myself into existence fading gradually from each progressive photo until it is gone entirely. How can I possibly stand to look them in the eye when I know that I let that happen?

Self-loathing aside, I would make the same choice if the scenario happened today. Well, maybe not the exact same. I think this time I’d go for Laborer instead of Fish Hatchery Worker - too many guts involved with the second one for me. But you get the point.