I lied to my psychiatrist.
Two appointments in and I’m already lying to old shrinky. What does that say about me? Besides that I’m obviously uber-commited to this “getting healthy” kick.
He’s kept coming back to the same questions, what I excelled at – in school, at work, in every day life – and I kept having the same answers – whatever I actually focused on. He’d ask what I loved, what I wanted to be when I grew up and the answer was the same – everything and nothing; it kept changing; I’d get bored and 180, whatever I was good at.
But that’s not entirely factual, because while I may have painted myself as, or appear to others to be, a dilettante,
dilettante [(dil-uh-tahnt, dil-uh-tahnt)]
Someone who is interested in the fine arts as a spectator, not as a serious practitioner. Dilettante is most often used to mean a dabbler, someone with a broad but shallow attachment to any field.
I have had a few passions.
When I was seven, I liked Barbies. Not because I was girly and liked role-playing (that wouldn’t come about until I was nearly an adult and had a long-term boyfriend. ahem), but because I would take a needle, some thread, old tights, socks and cloths, and I would craft outfits for my plastic twinkies.
The years went by and I filled paper after paper and notebooks of the current season’s designs. I flip-flopped between bridal and pret-a-porte, never much one for the fancy, conceptualized stuff, until my father opened his eyes and really started to notice my habit. He criticized my scale.
He sat me down and drew the perfect female form and told me to practice it, because he said I wouldn’t get anywhere drawing as badly as I was. I stopped showing him my collections, after that.
By 14, I was a novice knitter and crocheter, never finishing a project, but always with plans. The same year, I aced home ec and went on to become the highest-grade earner for home ec leadership – which is basically some kid, a year or two older than the other students, who made sure that everyone had eggs and thread and that the paper patterns were filed according to project type and size. But I got over 100% that semester, in that one class.
Who knew you could even do that?
During high school, I took sewing 11 and 12, then textile design and was part of (what was as close to what my school had of) a career prep program for fashion design. Textile design pretty much killed me because the fucking perfectionist in my brain couldn’t handle that my collar wasn’t so well rolled and the lack of symmetry in my hand-sewn v-shaped stitches.
By the time that I finished the semester’s project – a tailored jacket – the stitches on the lapel’s undersides weren’t remniscent of the houndstooth effect they should have been, so much as work done on your hedges by a mentally-deficient gardener, because I’d remove almost as many stitches as I’d replace and it left the fabric kind of beat up looking.
I got accepted to four schools for fashion design, two of which also accepted me concurrently for their merchandising programs. I could have been at F.I.T. during 9/11.
But I got bored and saw a future of lots of frustrating work followed by a degree and a job managing the Gap, so I didn’t go.
But I haven’t stopped combining ensembles in my head, noting a tiny, barely-eye-catching piece of love waiting on a shelf and imagining its possibilities and pairings. I still want to get married for the opportunity to design another wedding dress and the bridesmaid dresses and the hand-painted ties and Converse All-Stars.
But, I will never go to school for fashion and I will never be a true connoisseur – I will just love it from afar, occasionally gush and gasp and then go on about, in my jeans and t-shirt way.
The past few months especially, but even beforehand, I’ve been enraptured, yet again.I’m filling my bookshelves with picturesque tomes without many words (so I guess tomes is the wrong word, isn’t it?) and they’re related to something so closely related to my past fashion passion.
Interior design.
It started because I was getting into decluttering. Helping some friends clear spaces, find peace within their own abodes, you get the drift. It peaked one afternoon in the living room of a best friend’s (with cable), where the Home and Garden channel was on TV and I was more veggified than a one year old watching In the Night Garden.
PS. That show’s kind of creepy. And I think it’s brainwashing my friend’s baby.
If there was a way, I’d go, even knowing the over-saturation of the market – to school for interior design. I’d soak up all of the information they’d give me on symmetry, scale, architecture, colour, history, incorporation and I’d breath design for all of the two years it would take me to get a certificate that would likely get me nothing in the end.
In fact, these past few months, the driving force to be in it is so strong, I’ve have momenary ischemic attacks that have lead to thinking about how I could make it happen; sweat and toil, be a part-time mom, putting herself through school to be something better and happier – I’ve channeled my inner Erin Brochovich, sans cleavage. But only for moments at a time.
But even if I’m not there – not quite ready to throw all of my lack of direction in the shitter – I’m still here, combining rooms and storage solutions in my head, noting a tiny, barely-eye-catching piece of love waiting on a website or page and imagining its possibilities and pairings. Suggesting where built-in bookcases should go and alcoves for football Sundays’ parties.
And that’s a step.
