Crossroads

At the risk of sounding like Britney Spears back when she was in her faux virgin period, I’m in a quandary. Much of this pertains to a time when I was on the cusp of womanhood myself. Had my father not thrown me out when I was fifteen to live with a semi-abusive stepfather for the crime of having a boyfriend, I probably never would have had to become a stripper to fund my way through university, thus enabling me, with my ill-gotten gains to purchase my first property in London, meet my husband (in a stripclub, natch), have a baby aged 25 and put my foot in any hopes of a normal career. Looking back on the trajectory, it all seems so predictable, but then I don’t believe in free will either, so I can’t blame anyone, especially not myself.

I find myself two decades on, going back, in some ways, to square one. It’s only now, now the kids are a bit older and a lot less of a pain in the neck, that I find myself accessing the opportunities I probably should have taken as a recent graduate, but which, at the time, I was too shit scared to look into because looking beyond the next week, let alone deep into the future, was beyond me with a hangover and a mortgage to keep up with.

The fact is, a graduate’s trajectory is, to a large degree, determined, these days, by how much a parent is prepared to bankroll their child’s early career. And I’d all been abandoned by one parent who was in the process of leaving my step-mum for a new family in Korea, and the other, who was in the midst of divorcing my step-dad, who’d had a nine out of ten stroke, and was escaping years of personal misery by buggering off with her new partner to the States.

So, accordingly, I danced my way through some unpaid internships, married the first man who offered, and won a scholarship to do a journalism course. So far, so good, but then I got pregnant, and it’s hardly surprising my career’s been a bit messy ever since.

It’s annoying, because I am actually rather capable when everything else is equal. But starting over aged 35 feels like an almighty mountain to climb. Especially when pitched against shiny happy graduates who are still living on the bank of mum & dad, and are not steeped in a mire of a decade’s cynicism and bruised from a bit of a rough ride.

Is it even a good idea changing careers at my age? Will I be disappointed for the rest of my life if I don’t? Or should I take the job that pays alright but feels like a life sentence? Is it my last chance to crack out a book before I’m too ancient to be taken seriously as a new novelist, even if I have to pay for the privilege of editorial direction?

All these offers I have on the table right now, and I don’t know which way to turn. Take a marketing job again, and I might end up precisely in this situation again in a year’s time,  a year older. Take up my MA in creative writing and yes, I might get my books finished, but I might also become unemployable in the process. Start a PGCE and kiss goodbye to anonymity – and foreign holidays on that starting salary – but at least I get time off with the kids when’s school’s out- and community, if not professional respect for what I do. Each has its draws and its drawbacks.

Either way, I’ve got a lot out of the last decade, even if it’s not always been that much fun. But, funnily enough, I’ve got more out of the last year, having far fewer responsibilities other than getting my head straight and picking the kids up from school; no longer having to panic about money, my identity, my family absconding or any of that shit. It’s taken all the pressures coming off  to finally been able to get it together enough to try and ascertain what I want to do with the rest of my life. But the decisions I take now will colour it for a long while to come. Just as well I don’t believe in free will, because it means that whatever I choose, it was meant to be.