The House

I take a very long time to decide something. A very long time. Entirely too long. I weigh something from all angles. I see it from all the perspectives. I try out the taste of it on my tongue as I talk and titillate at the idea of the thing. I try ideas on like a an outfit, see how I look in it; if it suits me. If I’m flippant with an opinion, go out wearing the wrong habit, donning an ill-suited ideation - that’s a thought I can never stand.

So I couldn’t let it go when I didn’t have a job anymore. I couldn’t let it go when the phone didn’t ring and my email filled with all the wrong messages. I kept looking for another angle, the viewpoint I hadn’t seen, a way to keep running right off the cliff… and onto another one?

I’m a worker, schooled through theatre on long nights and big smiles while there’s a spotlight in your eyes and you’re dead on your feet. And I’m ambitious. I want to express and to be heard. I’m a leader. So I worked up. For 12 years I worked, and I worked, and I cried, and I worked, and I accomplished, and I worked, and I went to hospital, and I worked and I travelled and I worked and I worked and I got almost everything I’d ever wanted; I enjoyed an only ever-so-slightly-empty success. And then it was done.

A single postscript.

So I did not let go gracefully - let’s get that out of the way now. I didn’t make a bold choice, or look ahead bravely. I didn’t make the responsible choice, didn’t make the smart financial choice, didn’t make any choice at all. I froze. And cried a little more, whimpering into the gathering dark.

There isn’t a scandal, that I know of. I didn’t commit any of the female sins of employment - didn’t get married, have a baby, become ill. I just stepped out onto the porch for some fresh air and the door locked behind me. I’m knocking and knocking but no one can hear me; the music’s too loud. I thought someone else would come out by now, open the door, wonder where I’d gone, start a search party. “Where’s Domini?”, one would ask. “We must FIND her!” another would yell. But alas. “Where’s Domini?” someone may ask. “In the bathroom?” someone else may say. The conversation moves on. The party grows louder. And I’m still locked outside the house. It’s getting cold. The windows are closed, the curtains drawn, the partygoers inside casting deep shadows, distorted, growing grotesque as I knock and knock and bang and slam and yell and scratch and claw and scream and cry and breathe and pound and breathe and breathe and breathe and breathe and choke and sob and pound my fists as I slide down the facade, collapsing with my palms on the jamb and my forehead resting gently against the door as I pray in a desperate whisper.

I didn’t work for 2 years. And then not for another 6 months. And still I sat at the house.

It was grief, that kept me sitting. My inability to let go. Didn’t they know? Didn’t they know that my soul was in pieces behind this smile? That this work I had was mine, I had crafted it, perfected it, made it shiny and whole. It was something I could point to, be proud of. I’d worked for every inch of road, away from where and who I’d been. And it still wasn’t enough. The shards poked through. My paper mache house blew away.