At Home in the Pause

 

‘So what do you want to do with your life?’

 

She looked at me, Mrs Bridges, with a look which was both stern and sympathetic. Stern because she wanted an answer, she wanted me to take her question seriously and if i didn’t then she would see it as some failure on her part. Sympathetic perhaps because she knew the question came with pressure and she knew that I wasn’t particularly good under pressure. 

 

It wasn’t so much that I cracked, it was more that I searched diligently for the crack in the situation which was causing the pressure and sought a way to escape, slipping through the crack, usually into the world of my own imagination. 

 

It seemed to me that if you didn’t know what you wanted to do then that raised the possibility that you might somehow waste your life, whatever that means. The only worthwhile pursuits being ones that are what people refer to as tangible; undertakings which could be documented, recorded somewhere, measured in ‘real terms’ and celebrated. 

 

The thoughts in your head don’t count, however fantastical they are. This is because they are private, even if you share your thoughts, they have to go through the filter which translates them into the limiting world of vocabulary. They’re exclusive to you and therefore worthless within the concept of the value of your life, as judged by outsiders, especially people like Mrs Bridges.

 

She didn’t like pauses. They made her uncomfortable, impatient, irritable because she valued her time more highly than whoever it was she was speaking to. I held the pause, owning it, knowing it was torture to her.

 

I climbed inside the pause before arranging my reply and rather like Mr Benn, I indulged my imagination in a medley of fast moving scenarios involving myself in a revolving door of disparate but successful careers; nurse, artist, police officer, teacher, lawyer, actor, chef, vet, shop owner, architect, forester, the list went on. I imagined myself in relevant but stylish clothing, succeeding in each role effortlessly, ‘professional speak’ tailored to each role, glitchlessly flowing from my lips.

 

The truth was, I didn’t want the pause to end. I was too comfortable in the pause, I’d pulled up a beanbag and I was thoroughly enjoying the freedom of not committing to any career choice, even verbally. I knew that if I mentioned a particular direction of career that Mrs Bridges would have an opinion, one way or another and her opinion might influence me and my life was none of her business.

 

Mrs Bridges was a teacher, she could teach but she had no magic, no banter, no chat, only base wisdom to impart and a heap of judgement, revealed in the tone of her voice and her facial expressions. She was in no way an expert on careers, the very idea of it was absurd. She’d only ever been a teacher so what on earth did she know about careers, and in her late fifties so surely completely out of touch with current data on the job market.

 

‘Well, you must have some idea?’ Her eyes drilled searchingly into mine but she looked slightly worried now. Worried for me perhaps, my aimlessness might translate into a life of crime and destitution or, much better, crime with vulgar amounts of material proceeds.

 

I was still enjoying the pause. I felt so at home. The scenery lingered briefly on destitution before morphing into firefighters floating on clouds, the vistas of my imagination having them firing their hoses like rain storms down onto earth, accountants rolled around in numerical confetti, clutching their Parker pens. 

 

For a split second, I was the prime minister addressing my country from outside number ten, reassuring them that, ‘This storm will pass and we will pull together and prosper in a way that this country has never seen, poverty will become a distant memory, disease and suffering simply a grim spectre endured by our ancestors,’ while dressed in patent loafers and a shocking pink trouser suit from Reiss.

 

Why couldn’t I just be normal and answer the question? I shrugged and squirmed, my cheeks reddened. I was ashamed of the truth. ‘I’d quite like to be a writer,’ I said, feeling that I should have included an apology somewhere in the sentence.

 

Mrs Bridges' facial expression changed from expectant to mocking. She threw back her head and cackled. ‘And what do you plan to write about?’

 

‘I don’t know, just normal life I suppose..’

 

She tutted. ‘It sounds like you haven’t really made your mind up about a proper career path. You already spend a good deal of your time daydreaming, Catherine and you need to formulate a serious plan if you want to succeed in the real world. College or A levels, then university perhaps.’

 

Eurgh, awful woman, I thought. I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to succeed in the real world, that was the thing. I was so successful in the pause that I just knew that the success in the real world wouldn’t be anywhere as good as it felt in the pause. How could it?

 

After my useless ‘careers one on one’ (I knew it would be), my mother had promised to take me out to lunch to celebrate my surprisingly good GCSE results and discuss what I gained from said careers talk with Mrs Bridges.

 

I made a beeline for the table next to the large window which looked out onto the busy street, knowing that lunch with mother would be made infinitely more tolerable if I could carry out a covert spying operation on passers by, daydreaming in great detail about their lives.

 

‘So,’ said my mother as she held the corner of the menu in her hands which were nothing like my hands.

 

She had dressed up for the occasion in pearl earrings, heels and dark pink lipstick which was starting to bleed into the lines around her upper lip. There was an air of expectancy about her, just like Mrs Bridges. These ladies had great expectations for the next generation of young women. ‘Have you made any decisions based on Mrs Bridges’ career advice?’

 

I took a deep breath, my attention was absorbed by a couple walking past, holding hands. They were dowdy looking, clutching each other's hands while carrying shopping bags, dog treats poking out of the top. I could tell that they ate a lot of meat and their house smelled of offal, perhaps the smell had transferred onto the hoods of their dull anoraks.

 

‘Catherine?’

 

‘Not really,’ I shook my head and took a sip of Appletise which was far too fizzy to gulp. ‘I’m reluctant to jump into anything I might not enjoy. I quite like having some space in my head so I don’t want to do anything too, I don’t know, involved.’

 

‘What? Of course you’ll want something fully absorbing. You’ll want to do something which engages your mind, you need to use your brain! Otherwise you’ll be bored won’t you…you don’t want to be stuck in some boring job.’

 

I’ll never be bored though, I thought as my eyes followed a refuse collector sauntering along the road in high viz clothing, heavy shoes, steel toecaps, carrying a litter picker in one hand and pulling a small wheelie bin with the other. 

 

‘Imagine doing that all day in all weathers!’ My mother cocked her head towards the refuse collector and looked at me, waiting for me to agree with her assumption that this job and this man’s life must be simply terrible. ‘You’d be bored out of your mind.’

 

‘We don’t know what’s going on inside his head,’ I said.

 

Mother laughed, ‘What, quantum physics and precalculus is going on inside his head? Do you really think so?’

 

I began to feel annoyed now. ‘I have no way of knowing,’ I said. 

 

She stared at me. ‘Well think on, life passes you by and if you don’t have a plan then you can end up wasting the most valuable years just coasting along in dead end jobs.’

 

What does she know, she’s only ever had one job. Think on, indeed. I will think on, and on and on and on, well into the pause and even beyond the pause. Maybe I’ll get a job with a pause and my mind fills the pause with a constantly changing fantasy world which far outweighs the banality of the real world.