I Fucked Up

When I was 8, I wanted to be a stuntman. The fact that I was a girl did not deter me from my desire to be a stunt-man, I was determined that that was my destiny (spurred on by my obsession with "The Fall Guy").

As I got older, I wanted to be a jourmalist.  I started a degree, and was utterly appalling at turning up.  Whilst there, my Nan got sick, it turned out that the course didn't have a proper accreditation, and I left fairly quickly after starting.

I wouldn't have been a good journalist; I don't have a nose for a story, I don't write very well as it is, and I doubt that that would have changed had I been writing about things I didn't care for.

Years passed, and the dream shifted from writing to practicing law.  I did my degree, had a traineeship lined up for after my LPC, then found myself pregnant and single.  That dream was put on hold.  Instead, I continued my studies, became a parent, and continued along.

There are many things that I have wanted to do; many careers I have thought about training to do, but to be honest, I've fucked up every single one of them, happily and deliberately.  I have complete faith in myself that I wil continue to fuck up with glorious ineptitude throughout my life.  Dreams will be thought of.  I will not attain them.  They will shift, they will alter, and I will bitch that I could have been a contender when of course I couldn't. I never could have been.

We, as a race of beings, fuck up continuosly and will continue to do so ad infinitum until we no longer exist.  I will blaze the trail, be the marker leader, stand as a shining example of  fucked-up-ness to you all.  Shrines will be planned to my ineptitude, but these will drop through as something else is thought of instead, and as a nation we sigh and think "procrastination - maybe later."

In the meantime, let us remember that my fuck ups aren't yours.  Your fuck ups don't belong to your children.  Just because you had a dream, and it didn't suceed, it doesn't mean that there isn't another dream that can succeed.

Often, the dreams that you thought you had will subtly shift and change, until they bear no resemblance to the original.  The dream of being a journalist falls because you just aren't talented enough and you know it, the opportunities for that "proper" career doesn't happen not because you couldn't do it but rather because you won't do it or commit to it.

It isn't that you stop chasing the dream, merely that the dream shifts.  Writing pales into comparison to hanging out with a relative you love.  No career could ever be as important as being a Mummy, not to me.

I suppose that this is really a post about love. 

In moments of deep depression, I like to think that I fucked up my dreams, that I fucked up my life, and that I'm fucking up my children's life too.

I know, when I am honest and feeling sane, that all that happened is that my dreams shifted and changed.  They stopped being puerile, they stopped being about posturing, and they started to be about something tangible, real and attainable.

My dreams will stay.  They will change and they will alter.  And yet the only one that has remained true for the past 6 years is that I do not fuck up the dreams of my babies.  I am confident of little in life, but I know that I can make this one dream happen.