I found my favourite lecturer on FB after years of wondering if he was still alive. He was the person who motivated me to specialise in marketing. With his help, we'd concocted many out-of-this-world-creative-and-outrageous marketing plans. With his help, I'd had the passion and drive to graduate within the top ten percent of the class.
He told me I must check my FB more often (amongst many other things that he was right about). He also told me that he couldn't believe that I was a full-time homemaker. He'd pictured me as a successful career woman who'd be at the top of my game. Then he reminded me of all the talents that I have and how I shouldn't waste it all.
It's always like a sharp stab in the stomach (to put it mildly) everytime someone reminds me of things like that.
So much had happened since those undergrad years. I'd had two life-changing spinal surgeries. One of my oldest friends had passed on shockingly in a car accident. I'd gotten married and had a kid. Life's mortality had come brushingly close many, many times.
So sadly I am no longer the person he once knew.
I met Meen (a classmate of mine during undergrad) a few weeks ago at Kiara Park with her hub and two kids. We competed neck-to-neck for good grades. We were so much the same. Driven, motivated, focused. She'd graduated top ten percent of the class too. And she's also a full-time homemaker now.
I remember the expression on her face when I'd asked her where she was working. It's the expression that comes to my face everytime I am asked the same question. Guilt. Confusion. Defensiveness. Frustration... and Disappointment.
She'd said.. "Ah... hmm.. I'm not working anymore. Ermm, at the moment, that is."
Her husband (who was also a classmate of ours, but not so crazily competitive as we were) had firmly stepped in and stated; "She works. She works 24/7. She works at home."
Once in a while when the last dish of the day was done and the sink's been scrubbed .. and the ironing's stacked up, ready to be brought upstairs.. and the floor's been swept and mopped clean.. and I'm sitting there in the kitchen while the rest of the world is sleeping, while having a drink of water before going up to bed.. I stare out at the empty streets and yearn for mornings filled with coffee, endless emails in my inbox, meetings lined up for the day and deadlines to meet everyday on end.
Even despite all the self-pep talks I give myself everyday, I still yearn for it. What hold it has on me, I don't know. Ambition is a funny thing. It drives you, frustrates you. It can even tear you apart inside.
But when I crawl into bed with aching muscles and I smell those curls on that curly-top boy right next to me, and then I realised that if I didn't do this.. who'd take care of him...? And a different kind of shame and guilt would come to me.
Meen and I would do ourselves good if we could find a way to put those ambitions on hold for now. May this choice be the right choice. InsyaAllah.
Happy Eid Al Adha
15 years ago
2 comments:
i totally understand this post for I have been there. i worked for good ten years and suddenly found myself quitting work half heartedly. Felt depressed for more than a year and insya Allah have found hat the only way not to lament id to enjoy what I have. Do things that some people can only dream of doing. Make up projects for yourself. Give yourself datelines or deadlines. Have deliverables. Do planning strategise and implement. It can be anything. Its up to you to empower yourself.
I am proud to say I am not working now. Because I know I am doing something.
I feel you, dear! I would never imagine myself being a homemaker now after all the hardship in getting an engineering degree and forgoing all the ambition - career wise, biz wise, personal achievements that I used to have in my mind all these years..
but I believe that we sacrifice for the greater things in life, look at it as delayed gratification, by putting on hold of our dreams, we help the most important people in our life achieve theirs..
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