My heart is heavy. How often do you hear a person say those
words, these days? I have a fondness for antiquated phrases, including “tickled,”
which is used to express delight, glee, and other giddy feelings that frankly
make you feel like something is actually tickling your insides. Euphemisms don’t
just come out of nowhere, you know. Ah, but I digress. My heart is heavy.
The
weight is displaced and redistributed with the weight of my cat in my lap or my
baby in my arms. Still, though, there rests an anvil atop my heart, its weight
pressing down but not quite crushing the organ that so diligently pumps blood
throughout my body, supplying blood to every last piece of me from my lungs, so
close to the heart itself, to the tips of my temperature-temperamental toes. An
anvil made not of any kind of metal, but rather formed by the truth of reality
and adulthood seems to weigh more than any Acme product and I find myself
wondering if I’m truly being honest with myself. Do I feel this weight in my
heart because I am realizing now that reality is nothing like what I had hoped
I could make of it, or does this weight rest so persistently within my chest
because I suffer from depression and I haven’t taken my anti-depressant
medication in days, if not a week?
Why can’t
I have it all? Why is it that there is only a finite amount of time in a day, a
week, and I am terribly bad at managing it efficiently? This probably sounds
very much like I’m complaining, like I’m sitting here whining “Oh, woe is me,” “Poor
me,” “Why me?” But the truth is, I wanted to have it all. I wanted to make my
life something amazing, something epic, and I wanted to manage things in a way
that kept me busy and happy and also making money while I took care of my
family. I wanted to have my cake, eat it, and show off to the world how amazing
it was. Then, I was slapped with a realization that was just as cold, wet,
clammy, and generally unpleasant as a recently-dead fish smacking you across
the face when your brother decides it’s a good idea to start a fish fight in
the little sailboat your dad took the two of you out in to do some fishing to
try bonding as a family.
It was
all an illusion. The idea that I could juggle three full-time jobs and maintain
happiness and sanity as well as order and whatever else you can think of was as
illusionary as seeing an oasis in the middle of the desert when you’re dying of
thirst and haven’t had water any time in recent memory. Only, for me, that
mirage was shattered suddenly by the appearance of a small, yellow envelope
from the Olympia Municipal Court, fining me for parking too long in a roadside
parking space whose meter would only allot me two hours at a time. According to
the slip of paper inside this crucial yellow envelope, it was not only the
meter, but the space itself, which held a two-hour limit, and I had surpassed
that time. It wasn’t the first time, either. In my mind’s eye, this yellow
envelope fell upon a pile of yellow envelopes, collected over the course of
perhaps two months, at most, and used as an effigy of sorrow and misery at the
fact that I could not catch a break with parking in the city!
I was accepted
into a 90-day trial period as a tattoo intern. I was going to learn all there
is to know about tattooing, the industry, the art styles, famous artists who
have paved the way and pivoted change in the history of tattooing. Then, during
my internship, I was going to start college and go to school for a fine arts’
degree. During these two endeavors, I also planned to be able to take care of
my growing baby often enough that my husband could get his homework done for
his own college classes. With the appearance of this final parking ticket was
sparked a discussion with my husband about how many parking tickets I’ve
accrued and, ultimately, how I’m going to be able to juggle my time between an
internship, being a full-time student, and still managing to be a wife and
mother at home. I can’t do it. I won’t be able to do it.
When
this realization hit me, as a train without brakes might hit anything in its
path should it suddenly be derailed, I knew that I had to give up on something
and there was only one thing that sucked money out and gave nothing monetary in
return. That was my internship.
I was
scheduled through the weekend and had all intentions of completing that time—before
I ended up sick with chest and sinus congestion and felt too much like death to
go in for my last two days. Being an intern to become a tattoo artist required
me to drive 35 minutes nearly every day, pay for parking in a city that
increasingly seemed to have it out for me, and help take care of a tattoo shop
wherein I was not allowed to touch actual tattooing equipment (yet) and most of
the time, it was dead, so I sat around doing my drawing assignments and
wondering how the hell I was going to come up with another 2,500 words to add
to my essay about Old School style tattooing. Yes, it was stressful, but there
was more to it.
The
requirements were strict and sometimes seemed overwhelming, but I spent my days
doing the one thing I have always, always
loved to do: Drawing. I was allowed to go half an hour away from home to spend
time in a friendly shop where the artists only do custom work, the walls are
decorated with paintings for sale by local artists, the Internet connection was
pretty reliable, and there wasn’t a whole lot I had to do aside from drawing
and writing. It was perfect for me. I loved it.
Almost
immediately after giving up the apprenticeship (internship—fucking state pedantics), I felt a kind of relief. It
was as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Suddenly, I had all the
time in the world between now and when I start college and I could use it to
get the house cleaned up the way I want (since I clearly couldn’t rely on my
husband to do any of it right), take care of my baby and let Randy get his
schoolwork done, get laundry done, and cook every so often. I didn’t have to
worry about the gas I was using during my 35-minutes-each-way commute. I didn’t
have to worry about whether or not the parking meter would expire or if I was
parked too long in a space, anymore. I no longer needed to keep a shop clean in
which I contributed almost nothing to the mess—even though cleaning the shop
was never, not even once, a weighted
point in the consideration of whether or not I could keep up the internship.
People
say that sacrifices have to be made in life. Have I made a sacrifice? Have I sacrificed my internship in order to
give the other things in my life more meaning? Have I sacrificed the internship in order to be a better wife and mother
and, soon, student? Or, have I quit
on something that made me happy? Have I quit
on something that would have made me a living no matter where I was?
My
heart is heavy. I miss the routine. I miss getting up for the day and choosing
something nice and classy to wear to “work”. I miss being in the tattoo
shop/art gallery. I miss having drawing assignments, because the gods know that
unless someone gives me an idea these days, I can’t draw for shit.
Indeed,
my heart is heavy. But I think that most of the weight making up the anvil
resting within my chest actually comes from the idea that the instant I said I
couldn’t do it, I was replaced. I thought that my time in the shop mattered. I
thought I was making meaningful relationships and I felt as though I mattered,
at least a little bit. Then, while I was emailing the owner, she asked me to
effectively show the ropes to the new
intern. So, am I caught up over the semantics of whether I’ve quit or made
a sacrifice, or does the weight in my heart come from a feeling of betrayal?
