Never Walked In High Heels

As a performer I often have to force myself to watch things that are immensely popular despite the fact that I hate them. I am at home today watching the entire first season of Glee; and truth be told, I can’t stand it. To me all I can see is a bunch of teenagers encouraging America to continue with bad theatre and poor acting habits. So many amateur thespians in America think that the apex of acting comes when you can smile big and sing loudly on cue, which only perpetuates those poor habits and generally bad theatre.

As I am watching, one of the teachers said to the students “Adults have to make difficult choices.” The tone in which he says it is pejorative at best. Adults have to make difficult choices? What about high schoolers? Don’t they have difficult decisions. When I was in high school, I was never able to have the world revolve around who I was interested in dating or what the cheerleaders were doing that Saturday night. A typical day in high school consisted of me putting on a three-piece suit and carrying a suitcase; worrying about making grades that were high enough that I wouldn’t be sent back into special education classes due to an over-controlling teacher who insisted that all students with disabilities be taught solely by her. Every “B” I received on an exam was a sign for red alert; and often I chose between sleep I needed to make it to the next day and putting in that extra four hours on an English paper when I was only able to type at an alarmingly slow rate. Teachers supported me, and often ran interference between myself and my school administration. Sometimes even putting themselves at risk. These are the things I remember from my high school experience.

I listen to older American women who often say of their years before college “Those were the happiest years of my life.” Really? At seventeen? All their dreams came true when they were the lead in the high school musical and they dated the captain of the football team? Looking at my yearbooks this weekend, I noticed that someone wrote “Don’t worry, it has to get better than this.” Surely that friend of mine had more wisdom than the ones who said the period between the years of fourteen and eighteen are the most precious. What about the birth of your first child or your wedding day? The time when you realized that your family is remarkable; or having your own kids graduate from high school after years of struggling with dyslexia? That outshines being fifteen, having acne, and wondering if anybody will ask you to the prom.

Due to modern technology, I am able to keep up from a controlled distance with several “friends” from high school. I wouldn’t consider them friends that I have a relationship with now, but the magic of the internet means that I can look at what their careers are, pictures of their first baby, and engagements. Overall I’m glad that my dreams didn’t come true in high school. Now these friends of mine are working for insurance companies and shuffling off to law school when at seventeen, all they wanted to be was actors and make the world a better place. I’m sure in their own way they have come to the conclusion that they are doing just that. But for someone who did have a great deal of trouble in high school, I must say difficult years early on make one much more confident and excited about the dreams that are to come.

For some time now, my friends have been begging me to join one of those internet dating sites. “You are a busy woman, you can’t waste time going to bars and looking for the ideal match.” “Things aren’t like how they used to be, everybody is super busy and that’s OK. We need more direction in looking for romance. It’s completely normal to have a profile on one of those sites.” It seemed for a while that no matter where I was there was a Match.com advertisement promising a match in six months or my money back. This of course, I thought, meant that my money would at some point have to end up in their bank account rather than stay in my own. How wrong I was.

So finally, on a cold evening when I wasn’t feeling in the best moods about myself, I decided to give the advice of my friends a go and signed up for a service which will as always when I have to use proper nouns, remain nameless. I signed up, filled in my birthday, my gender, my age, my email address and hit “OK”. Only to be faced with a form of over two hundred absurd questions. What did I think about Smoking (Strong dislike, moderate dislike, dislike, like, moderate like, strong like, no preference)? Religion (Strong dislike, moderate dislike, dislike, like, moderate like, strong like, no preference)? Performing arts? Financial planning? Dogs? Cats? Small rodents?

And to be honest, some of these questions I had no idea how to answer. After all, how can any woman in my position ever tell if her dislike of, lets say, naked sacrifices of chickens is something I am “moderately” opposed to or “strongly” opposed to? What constitutes a moderate support as opposed to simple support? I was about to give up when I finally reached the holy grail of dating sites, that is, the end screen. I waited for the little rainbow pinwheel to stop spinning on my computer in eager expectation as they calculated my matches and results. My credit card was ready for the six month money-back guarantee. I had it all planned out, I would go into a coffee shop to meet with the guy and my girlfriend would be in disguise at the next table. That way, if he wound up trying to kidnap me she could take action in her little five foot two inch, 110-pound sort of way.

“We’re sorry, we feel that it would be inappropriate to use our services given that your results fall outside of the standard deviation of a majority of men who register with us. Thank you for trying our dating site.”

So, apparently there are standard deviations in online dating. I immediately went back to my junior year stats class where we talked about standard deviations and Z factors for a review of what this could possibly mean. Take your typical Bell curve: Ninety-nine point nine percent of the individuals must fit within the bell. The other point one percent are just out of luck when it comes to looking to romance it turns out. I, with my answers of strong likes and moderate dislikes, am a member of that point one percent where it is apparently so statistically impossible to find me a match that they won’t even bother to take my credit card number.

Beyond the entire absurdity of the whole situation (I am apparently unmatchable) begs the question, can human emotions ever be broken down into standard deviations and mathematical equations? At the risk of sounding too much like an excerpt from Carrie Bradshaw’s “Sex and the City”, I don’t think there is a standard deviation when it comes to romance.

I have had friends who are absolutely driven to pure militancy when it comes to finding a boyfriend. Why? There is one individual I met who told me that she was determined through one of these online dating sites to be married within the year. Her strategy was simple, she would go out and meet a guy at Starbucks, and if in ten minutes they didn’t click she would immediately say “I don’t think this is working out”, offer to pay for his coffee and then leave. Within nine months she was engaged, and I guess her clear-cut organization and decisiveness coupled with on the spot thinking worked to her advantage.

But it always seemed to me that half the fun of dating is not knowing what will happen next, like any adventure in life. If a guy walked into where I was sitting with a big neon sign above his head that said “I am the one”, then I might be giddy for a moment but then that excitement would completely disappear and I suspect I would feel completely shackled.

Scientists have struggled and eventually discovered a massive amount of hormones and chemical reactions that go into establishing a good relationship, but there are some aspects of human interaction that science is anywhere near explaining such as true self-sacrificial love. Where is the evolutionary self-preservation in that? If there is any, I’m not sure I would want to find it. There are some wonderful things out there that have been going on for centuries which scientists can’t even begin to explain. These are omens, interactions, and emotions that should be celebrated because they all help create the adventure inherent in the unexpected. After all, as Dr. House indeed said “If the wonder disappears when the answer is gone, there is never any wonder to begin with.”

The summer marks my forth year in London. I realized the other day that I have now spent longer being graduated from school than I have spent in my undergraduate education. And although I’m not exactly where I want to be, I like where I am.

The problem is the shift between living three years somewhere and four years is drastically different physiologically speaking. It’s like for the first few years out of college one is allowed to make whatever mistakes you can or be wherever in the world you want to be. And then the timer goes off with a ding and we are all supposed to come home and settle down, leaving our stories of adventure to tell the next generation. But as I get closer to the forth year milestone to pressure to come back to “the real world” increases. Adults who taught me growing up now call me to ask when I’m planning on coming home. And then they get upset when I tell the truth. That I don’t need to go home. For right now, I am home.

In the US, college is four years long for most people. After that, most people move to a drastically different life before coming into where we are going to actually be growing old and having a family. Its like that fourth mile marker signifies it’s too far away to turn around and come back home. And as I approach that point the questions become much more persistent… Athena, when are you coming home?

It’s taken me until now to actually realize this question does signify a certain rationality which everyone who is annoying me by asking this question is, ultimately aware of. It takes three years (as in full years) to settle into a place and make it yours. In the past year, I’ve notice a shift in my own life, my friends call me up to see how an audition went, or arrange for informal picnics where we used to have stilted and even semi-rehearsed coffee dates. We don’t notice who brought the last tickets or cup of tea. My friends here know that I am not going anywhere for a while (barring a fabulous opportunity… everyone knows I’m not settled down that much). The friend who lives in the red Dutch barge in the opposite quay and I are already making plans for our Christmas Cakes.

This is where my life is right now. It consists of understanding art and acting as well as boats and tides. It means waiting all week in patient expectation to bake with the women who live in the quays and learn how to weigh flour on an eighty year old scale given to her by her grandmother, while my American measuring cup sit uselessly in my kitchen. I get to listen to actors debate about Mamet and offer my opinion over Turkish coffee in our local pub run buy the old man from Ephesus who swears he’s in love with me. And no, while I was getting my degree and sitting with my hand raised and my ankles crossed, this was never where I envisioned my life being.

But now I’m here, I see no reason to go back.

When I decided to trek through the mud in order to throw my acorn branch into the fire, I was also agreeing to make both my wheelchair and my ankle length coat saturated with grey mud. So through the three inch deep muck I went, all in the name of increasing my cultural awareness. The tradition goes that if you throw the branch of an oak tree into a bonfire on Twelfth Night, you will be blessed all year. It was more than superstition. The elders would approach the flames tenuously, trying to keep their footing, throw their branches in and cross themselves while muttering a prayer.

This is when I have to admit that I wasn’t going through this just for my own cultural edification. It’s a good cover, but deep down there was a part of me that was hoping that good luck would come as a result.

What is it in us that still believes that if we do X, avoid Y, and call upon Z good things will be bestowed upon us? Are we waiting for someone else to make our life brighter by not acknowledging that we ourselves only have the power to propel us towards our dreams? Or perhaps we know that some things are out of our control and these are the attempts to nudge things in the directions we think they ought to go. And although most of us know deep down that these attempts are feeble, we do them anyway… even in the rain and mud.

I forget its source, but somewhere I heard that psychics get asked questions which mainly fall into three categories: love, money, and health. When I was younger I somehow thought that these concerns were silly. I don’t know why I couldn’t wrap my head around the notion that everyone would be concerned about these three issues, but now that I’m older I can see them popping into my worries. And after a few frustrating but predicted years, I found myself taking somewhat extreme measures to ensure that this year would go, if anything, more smoothly.

Deep down, I think we are all willing to take extreme measures to ensure things go our way. Some of the most horrific events in history can be attributed to this. If luck and blessings won’t serve us, then we will do it ourselves and all of a sudden a muddy coat looks like child’s play in front of what we are willing to destroy or deny so we can have what we want.

Its been just over a month since Twelfth Night, and I’m just flaking the last bit of mud off my coat. I remember throwing my branch in and being almost surprised at what I found myself wishing for and the long lasting dreams I suddenly forgot. Perhaps I am fooled as to what the desires of my heart actually are.

Several people have enquired about my mud caked coat over the past month. They all get excited when I tell them about a bonfire next to a mystical church that’s in the middle of nowhere. The mud and rain adds to the story’s appeal. And I realize that after barely a month, it’s already been a great year.

When I told my mom that I would never go back to the UK, she immediately said I would. As I’m on a boat going home, curving around the Thames, those five years seemed to have never happened. A lifetime has passed and I am doing exactly what I swore I wouldn’t do.

The first time I was in London, I constantly felt as though I was drowning. Going deeper and deeper it was clear that I was not in charge. My assistants were, and I would never be able to take the reigns away from them. From before we even left home in Chicago, the tensions were clear, and as we crossed passport control, I kept saying to myself over and over, “tomorrow I’ll wake up and everything will be better. Everything will be as it should be.” That summer we would spend three months based in England but also going to various places in Europe as I was completing my research for a thesis. My memories of those that time can be best summed up in two words: fear and hunger. Outside of that I don’t remember going to the Eifel Tower, or the first time I saw Big Ben. I don’t particularly remember the Swiss Alps or being in a bathhouse in Budapest. Fear because one of the assistants was constantly threatening that my chair would go into the river if things didn’t go his way. And since every major European city has a river, it was a constant danger. And hunger, because the assistants saw the fact that I needed help getting food as a way to maintain a level of control. Sometimes it wasn’t ok to eat anything. When they felt like it, it was, but the food was minimal.

How I ever got a combination between these two assistants, I don’t know, but after I had returned from my journey, several people commented that they knew these individuals better than I did and they immediately thought of it as a bad idea. Why didn’t they say anything before? I will never know. But before I left people encouraged me that these two would be good at keeping a schedule and help me with research. We did indeed keep our complex schedule keeping interviews and seeing resources at an alarming rate. By the end of the summer we had been in no less than 12 countries, and it had all gone exactly as I planned back at the university when I was setting up logistics. It was just that none of it felt the way I had planned it to feel. Several times my assistants told me that I should never leave the United States again because it was so difficult for me to travel and they had to do so much of the work. Six months later I finally had a doctor tell me that what I was facing during that summer was abuse.

When the psychiatrist gave me a diagnosis, I immediately asked if he was sure. “I thought that’s what they gave war veterans after being in horrific situations. I’ve been in nothing of the kind. Just a trip to Europe that didn’t go the way I thought it ought to.” He said to me, “But you were in a horrific situation.” It would take me several years to realize that he was right, that my once insulated world was shattered. It was almost as if I had a demarcation between childhood and adult life. And sometimes, despite the amount of grace for forgiveness I have sought, and successfully obtained, I still wish I could go back to before that world was shattered.

So, at home, I swore to my family I would never return to the UK. Without thinking, my mother made her response.

The promises we make ourselves when we are in pain are some of the most dangerous oaths we can ever commit to. These promises inevitably shut down our world and shrink life. On one level it makes sense. We are hurting. And who does not cower in the closet when they know there is a monster outside that is two big for them? Mom knew that my oath was quite literally taking the world and shrinking it down to places I would go and places I would not go. When I called her up exactly nine months later telling her that I had gotten an internship that I could not pass up, and I was excited to be moving back to the UK, she wasn’t surprised in the least. Sooner or later she always knew that I would find the strength somehow to re-open what I had locked away and refused to explore.

The boat culls around Canary Wharf and is headed towards home. The geometric skyline looks completely mythical and fierce in its proportions compared to the rest of London. I am lucky that, despite my diagnosis, I don’t get many flashbacks, and when I do, I can usually control them. I am headed home and I can see my dock from Canary Wharf as the boat approaches. It’s a Tuesday night which means there is Quiz Night at the pub with people I know and trust. Tomorrow I have and audition followed by a concert with a friend at Saint Martins. It seems impossible that a city in which I felt so much terror could grow within three years to be my home and is now a place for joy.

And I shudder to think what would happen if I kept the promises I made to myself while I was in pain.

“Is it easier if you are disabled from the beginning?” she asks me on the phone. My friend has been sick for months and she recently had to break down to get a handicapped parking badge. Not the red ones which are temporary, but a blue one. This unknown medical condition is going to be hers for quite some time. Maybe even forever.

“No, it isn’t.” At first I can’t explain why having a disability from the day you are born isn’t any easier. It’s a question that a lot of therapists have asked me. Kind of like, do you think it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? Do you think it’s better to have walked and then lost the ability rather than to never have the ability in the first place? And yes, I do, actually. Being a child with a physical disability is one of the worst things you can imagine. You don’t play on playgrounds or get to bake cookies like everyone else. You sit and watch and are more or less at the mercy of people deciding to be your friend rather than making your own.

When we are kids, regardless of abilities or not, the fact is, we have no idea what we’re signing up for in life. Even in high school we think, go to college, get married, get a job, everything will run smoothly. What we don’t realize is that human bodies fail. All of them. Fail us, and what we want them to do, eventually. My mother used to say the minute we are born we begin to die (she’s normally a very cheerful woman) and while mentally you realize that’s true, you don’t feel the impact of it until you are much older and your body does begin to break down and fail.

My sophomore year at university, all of us saw my friend’s body simply revolt against her. For days she couldn’t get out of bed and see past three feet in front of her face. She would recover, and then relapse, and then recover and then relapse, each recovery time being shorter and the relapse time being longer. Now she is married and is trying to figure out life as a legally named disabled person.

In the past few years watching her, I have begun to see my other friends, who are as young as I am, have their bodies revolt and receive permanent conditions that they never dreamed of getting at this age. It’s forced me to wonder what will happen twenty-five years down the line when I really watch them age, watch them not be able to climb a set of stairs as quickly as they used to, or even after an accident that leaves them paralyzed. What to tell them when they ask me if it’s easier to be disabled from the beginning? What to say when they need advice and they want to be told that they will be able to rehabilitate themselves and life will be as easy as it once was. For that matter, why do I think I’m wiser and above further ailment simply because I’m disabled to begin with? My condition, if you don’t take care of yourself, means that you will age faster. Arthritis has a higher risk of setting in at a very young age, and there’s little to stop the aging process even if you’re disabled to begin with. Your body will break down even more.

We are at a friend’s wedding, and a week after getting her handicapped placard, my old university friend is feeling well enough to join us for the bridal shower and help us get ready in the bride’s chamber. The day is full of joy and life, everything that a wedding ought to be. She follows me around, helping me open doors when I can’t manage them and the flowers, making sure my dress is on straight, walking with me to the bathroom and constantly holding my hand. She will not let me go. In the bathroom stall I am unable to lock the door and she offers to hold it closed. She is bending down and a thought suddenly occurs to me, “Don’t make yourself pass out with your head below your knees.” She immediately sits on the floor, realizing that this is a distinct possibility for her.

“I guess I wouldn’t be very helpful to you in England anymore.” I hear the small voice on the other side of the bathroom stall and it breaks my heart realizing how much has changed and how much her world has been limited recently. The thing is, I wouldn’t say that she would not be of help to me. Friends, regardless of their physical ability, true friends, are always helpful along the way, in ways that are unique to them and the temporal bodies they occupy.

Two days later I had managed to scrape myself off the bathroom floor and get some work done, but as soon as my roommate left I collasped into a mess. Finally I took the dress out of my closet and shoved it fiercely into the plastic bag it came in.

I began to think I was completely out of line for asking my friend to dress in formal wear. My judgment waved between being furious and opening the phone to call him back.

“I think I may have my first broken heart,” I told a friend while explaining the situation. She wanted to know who the seventh rejection came from and I told her.

“Well, of course he refused to wear a tuxedo, he’s proper British isn’t he? Look, it’s got nothing to do with you, that’s the first thing you need to get through your head. I promise, it isn’t because you’re disabled or any stupid reason. Well, if you ask me it is a stupid reason but that’s just because he’s English.” My friend who was, of course half French, did her best to make a madwoman see reason. For some of our friends, wearing a tuxedo can be a declaration of class rather than the starting point for an evening out.

In England, the fairy tales require more magic. For many, putting on a tux is an action for men of the upper classes, never something for an average Joe to put on. And to do so, for some, is to be seen as not only attempting to rise above your station, but also commit treason towards the class you came from. I never imagined it was a bold statement for certain friends to even consider going to a black tie affair let alone dress for it. So many farm girls all across America went to prom, even if it meant buying a dress at a Goodwill store. And they were still puffy and pink, the stuff it took to become a princess for one night. Immediately I wondered if little girls played dress up there. Did they get to have tea parties with other princesses, or were the only items in their play boxes indicative of  more practical lifetime occupations?

That night I called my friend Ché. His parents named him after Ché Guevera and his politics became even more proletariat from there. If anyone hated the bourgeoisie uniform of the tuxedo it would be him. I hoped he could make me more sympathetic towards the toiling masses.

“If someone asked you to a black tie event, would you be willing to wear a tux?”

“They’re a little itchy, but sure, of course I would.” This was not the answer I was expecting from a man named Ché.

“You would?”

“It’d be rude not to meet the dress code. Why? Where are we going that we need to get so dressed up for?”

“Would you go with me to-“

“Absolutely,” he said before I could finish the question.

It took a man who loathed the class system and economic inequality to remain unrestricted by it. Seven days later he was waiting for me as I got off the train in the red evening gown, his dark hair pulled back into a ponytail and his tux suiting him perfectly. Putting aside his politics to help me for an evening made him more of a gentleman than I ever dreamed of having. On our way inside I could not help but smile. Sometimes, if you put a black tie on a red commie he can behave with more class than any blue blood.

The preceding is an essay from Athena’s new book The Perfect Sole due out this winter.

Meanwhile my escort options were quickly waning.

With ten days to go I was calling every male between the ages of eighteen and forty five that I knew in between kicking myself for ever getting my hopes up about a date. I don’t know why, but the promises a young woman makes to herself are often the most deadening and unhealthy resolutions ever created. And in those moments of asking every conceivable man I knew out on a date, I promised myself that I would never again be taken in such foolishly romantic ideas of silk gowns and wonderful evenings again. It was obviously not where I belonged.

The problem was not actually me, or so I found. I would call up a friend and explain the situation and he would be eager to go. Then I would mention the dress code and everything would begin to fall apart.

“But don’t worry, the company is so eager for me to go escorted that they are willing to pay for a tuxedo rental.”

“A tux?”

“Yeah, so you get a first class dinner and you won’t have to pay a thing.”

“But I have to wear a tux?”

And thus the conversation turned into him having to check his calendar or him suddenly remembering an appointment. The seventh guy finally was openly resentful about it.

“I’ll go, but I’m wearing a suit. Don’t expect me to show up in a tux.”

“I’m going to be in an evening gown, so you’ll look absurd in a suit.”

“Doesn’t matter, I’m not wearing one of those.”

A few hours after the conversation I called him back up, leaving a firm but nerve wracking voicemail.

“Hi, its me. I’ve been thinking about it and, well, if you don’t want to wear a tux… I think I’d rather go with someone who respects me enough to wear one when it says ‘black tie only.’ I really don’t want to bring the only guy not up to dress code. So I don’t know who I’ll go with but… yeah, thanks for the offer.”

And then went in to my  tiled bathroom and collapsed, heaving until I could no longer recognize the sounds of my own cries.

I couldn’t believe it. Was I so ineligible for an evening out that I couldn’t find a single one of my male friends to eat a dinner with me which was priced above their last paycheck? Was there some sort of price to pay for spending a seemingly free evening with me? Was I just not in anyone’s league? Insecurities about me, my romantic history, and future prospects kept me nailed to the bathroom floor. Worst of all, I had just turned down the only guy willing to go out with me.

The dress hung limply in my closet like a flower bud which had never bloomed. I had chosen something which was a deep red and not at all like the pink frosting I had always found myself envisioning. This I had found in a corset shop in Spitalfields Market. When I stepped out of the dressing room a man who was there with his wife, who said “I don’t know what you are looking for, but that dress is the one.” It was a deep red.

Two days later I had managed to scrape myself off the bathroom floor and get some work done, but as soon as my roommate left I collasped into a mess. Finally I took the dress out of my closet and shoved it fiercely into the plastic bag it came in.

When it comes to attending your first black tie dinner, class warfare shouldn’t be an issue.

Perhaps I should back up… a lot.

In high school I went solo to one dance, and swore I would never do that again. An upper middle class suburban high school had somewhat different ideas of what constituted a formal dance than the typical television portrayal, and inclusiveness was not a favorable trait. And I wasn’t your high school boyfriend type. I didn’t have pompoms or glitter eye shadow. I had on a three piece suit, a leather briefcase, and by junior year I had read cover to cover The Norton Anthology of Literature—both the American and British volumes.

So, needless to say, I was never asked out to any of the school dances. And I was fine with this. Or so I thought. By the end of college, after trading in the lawyer for a teacher and then the teacher for a thespian, I still had not found any time to attend a formal, as they always seemed to fall on the final week of rehearsals before a production. And once again I was satisfied with my time management skills.

The problem is with being a woman in a wheelchair, is that sooner or later those quiet Friday nights begin to add up. And you begin to wonder if the reason why boys don’t come knocking is because there is something, quite literally wrong with you. But, doing my best not to dwell on anything, my life went on, taking me to London.

Within a year working as an independent access consultant in London a client asked me to sit at their table at an awards banquet. The event was to be black tie only. Almost instantly all guards against fairytale nights and big poofy skirts were demolished. Before I could even get the words out to accept the invitation I had visions bathed in pink, satin, lace, and tulle capable of nauseating every sugarplum fairy in existence.

When I noticed the invitation said “plus one,” I searched the little black book for possible candidates. Whoever he was (because I was bringing a date and therefore he had to be male), had to be a good feeder. I didn’t want to worry about anything being spilled on my dress. And so, I found my perfect match, called him up, asked him out, he accepted. Done. Now I could move onto the really important bits, like picking out a dress.

Two weeks before the dinner my date discovers some unexpected good news which causes him to have to cancel.

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” I told him half jokingly. “I’m friends with loads of starving artists. Surely I can find someone who wants a free steak and lobster dinner.” I returned to my black book, left a few messages, and went back to looking for a pair of shoes to fit the ordeal. Given that I never actually had to walk the entire night, my footwear options were limitless.

By the time I had opened my fourth wedding invitation in one week, I was convinced my life was over. I was going to die single, alone, with flowered wallpaper in my flat. I would be at some point in my mid sixties and having a successful career as an actuary. Because I was an actuary, I would be able to calculate the chances of  dying on that particular day and, realizing that  my odds were increased, I would have laid myself out in the wedding dress I bought at 30 and waited for Death. Of course, what I would’ve forgotten to consider would be my nine cats. Who, after going three days without food, would begin to eat my face. 

Why is it we are told to always plan ahead? In our freshman year of high school we were told to start thinking about colleges. At college we were told to on the first day to consider our options for graduate schools. And for my masters, I have to come up with a five year plan for my career, which to me sounds vaguely like Stalinist Russia. And I know whatever I say, be it I want to be married by 35 or I plan to be complete my masters within the standard two years, God will just laugh.

The irony of planning ahead is, of course, when things don’t go according to plan we feel like failures. It’s like the more we know about the path we feel that we have to take, the less confident we are in the direction we are going when we get blown off course. As a disabled person I can’t live alone, but I have no idea who I’m living with after May.

“This is why you need a manslave,” my friend begins. She’s been engaged for just under a year and I’m planning her wedding. I feel like she has her next five years planned out, but then again, she’s calling from Russia.  

“I’ve got my own company. That’s kinda like having a husband and a baby all rolled into one.  I just worry if this deal doesn’t go through and the company folds, I’m going to have to live in a nursing home and play card games all day. Maybe I’d be better off doing that though.”

“You wouldn’t. You can’t even hold the cards.”

Days like this, I’m in freak-out mode at full force. Life seems too long, an endless series of events and unforeseen occurrences that I can’t begin to plan for. Who will be cooking my dinner a year from now? What if I never find an agent? What will I do when my wheelchair dies now that the company has quit making the kind I need? What if I think I find someone, and he leaves me one night with no help? 

I can’t see past the next hour at this point. And I am well on the road to driving myself to the funny farm. So I do the one thing I know how to do. I go to the pub. 

Another friend is there and he asks me how I am. I’m fine, just like everyone else these days. 

“That good huh? Spill it.” He’s known me for over five years, and is therefore one of my oldest friends in the city. Which means he’s earned the right to hear.  Everything.  Even the bit about the cats eating my face.

“…And then I think about I have nothing to worry about so I shouldn’t feel bad. So of course then I feel worse and worry even more that I’m going crazy.”  By the time I’m done my friend has every right to bolt. 

“Well, that’s certainly logical,” he states, looking at me.

“How?” I can’t help but challenge him on this one. 

“Because no one can see that far ahead in any sort of detail. Really Athena, looking ahead further than next month is always overwhelming to those of us who are among the living. It’s just like acting. We stay in the moment because it’s all any of us can do.  It’s got nothing to do with your disability. We can’t hardly take in the now fully. There’s too many variables to try and figure out five years from now.”

Oh. 

On my way back home I make my way down to the docks to wait for the next ferry. It’s cold and I have no idea when the next boat’s coming. Maybe I missed the last one. My mind reels off again. I think about everything I want to do this year. How I want to direct Macbeth and Our Town back to back. The two together would provide an interesting death and rebirth of innocence. After that, I want to call in a new movement teacher for a workshop and perhaps start a new study on neurology and Alexander Technique…

The boat is just visible on the eastern edge of the Thames. Its bow light echoing on the surface of the water, grows stronger with  each passing minute, oblivious to the blackness that it pushes through. It’s beautiful in a way I’ve never noticed before. And I think of what the Stage Manager says of Emily at the end of Our Town when the young woman asks if anyone every really sees the beauty of the world while still alive. And the Stage Manager says “No. The saints and poets, maybe they do some.”

And then I smile at how we’re all are straining away do live life, that we forget that life is never well planned. And it was never meant to be.