Who I'm Not

Who am I? This much you know by now: I am Ava and I am in my late twenties. I am twenty-seven, to be precise, an age in which we are meant to know where we are going in life. Our teens are the hormone-induced chaos of separating our beings from those of our parents. Our early twenties are a sort of draft of what is to come, when we are still allowed to make a few mistakes and even change our paths entirely. Our late twenties, however, are an age in which we are meant to have a few things figured out. But really, no one's really got it figured out just yet. Even as I try to decipher who I am, I find myself going more through a process of weeding out who I'm not.

I am not a "lawyer", although technically I am, meaning that I wake up sometimes in the middle of the night, covered in cold sweat and shivering, after dreaming of being back at work at a conventional law firm. I dream that it is my first day back at the glass offices of Monster Law Firm and I am at a meeting with Supreme Bitch #1, listening to her as she icily gives me the plethora of rules about what to wear, write, talk about, etc. I'm taking notes in a delightful new notepad I got at MoMa with an Edward Hopper reproduction, when suddenly SB#1 takes notice and starts lecturing me on how I must use a plain white or yellow notepad because anything else would be extravagant. I suddenly feel the unbearable weight of my ill-advised decision to return to this rigid, fascist world, and I stand up, curtly apologize to SB#1 for taking up her precious time, and run out... as fast as I can. As I walk into the bright sunlight, I open my arms as if to hug the gleaming waves that surround me, and I experience the purest sense of joy and relief. And I wake up.

Being in my late twenties has come to mean that I'm also no longer a tortured soul. Yes, my name is Ava and I was a tortured soul through most of my teens and late twenties. As other tortured souls may acknowledge, those of our kind tend to be text-book overreactors who are so starved for meaning that they will agonize and linger and create drama over many a simple situation. This means that I dated the wrong guy, and then the wronger guy, and then the wrongest guy... and then stayed with him for a five-year tug-of-war. Oh, and then I started all over again with another wrong guy. This means that I literally bored my dad to sleep during a conversation about what I should be doing with my life... at fifteen. This means that I travelled the world, took on lovers, slept with strangers, chased after boys who didn't care about me, identified with star-crossed literary heroines... you name it. I loved bold gestures, surprise endings, torrid romances. Lately, however, I've been feeling quite calm and content. It's a nice change.

I was born in a city of earthquakes and fear somewhere in Latin America. When I think about my city and my adult life there, all I get are blurry speedy visions of traffic, noise, and smog. Sometimes I can go further back in time and remember the sunny afternoons of eating lime sorbets and playing with my sister as a child, or going to the zoo where the crowded (and almost inhumane) spaces where the animals were kept in made it much easier to look at them up close. I remember the jacaranda trees in my grandmother's back yard and how much I loved sleeping over at her house on Fridays so my parents could have "date night". I also joyfully remember playing hooky in high school to take the subway downtown, check out the museums, and eat fried food from street carts. When I was a tortured soul, I rejected my relatively privileged upbringing and went to the massive free concerts at the center square, to shout and laugh and drink, and feel young and rebellious and alive. I almost begin to feel nostalgic, but then I get real. I remember poverty, inequality, crime rates, pollution, corruption. My city is like a dear old lover who broke my heart.

I am also not scared anymore. I spent most of my life, as any bonafide tortured soul, being scared of not being successful, or accepted, or happy, or extraordinary. The fear of being ordinary may have been the worst. Even when things are good, a true tortured soul is always waiting for the other shoe to drop. The contentment I lately experience has turned me into a believer, an optimist, a shiny-happy person, if you will. I know there might be hardship or heartbreak in my future, but for now I trust that things will be more or less okay. I know this is a strange time to be saying so, being that the world is facing the worst economic tsunami in history, war, famine, etc., but I finally feel like things are going to turn out fine.

My husband A plays a role in that, I must say. It's a tired cliche but I always meant to achieve this contentment on my own, you know? As a hard-core feminist, I never bought into the whole Jerry McGuire "you complete me" bull, where another person is supposed to sweep in and finally make us happy. I know we are supposed to make ourselves happy and whole. I think I was in the process of getting there when I started dating A. Things were easy, breezy, straightforward and healthy from the beginning, which was definitely new for me and my old tortured soul. A's goofy, smart, tender ways warmed my heart from the very start. I admit that feeling so deeply loved has contributed to my more tranquil and balanced stance on life.

I look out the window and see the late-afternoon sun embracing the new leaves on the trees. It's mid-April in England and for the first time, I genuinely love my life. I'm no gloater and I shall spare no details on the disasters of my past, present, and future, but now I will take in this lustrous hour and enjoy the moment, for once.