The morning after I gave notice, I woke up to find an old friend lurking around my duplex.
While brushing my teeth, I glanced up at my bathroom mirror. Instead of my reflection, was a girl with incredibly long, dark blonde hair and meticulously plucked eyebrows. She was wearing my worn, oversized Pat Burrell Phillies t-shirt.
It was Philadelphia Melissa.
“Why are we still in North Carolina?” she barked at me as I spit out my toothpaste. “Go get another job so we can stop this foolishness and go home.”
I walked back into my bedroom, and was greeted by a few more past and imagined mes.
Iceland Melissa was on my bed, buried in my now lost blue child’s size sleeping bag. She poked her head out, wearing the blue knit beanie she bought in a gift shop in Mývatn.
“You got a dog?!” she exclaimed, watching Morrie roll around on the hardwoods. “How the hell are we supposed to go to Taiwan?”
“Let’s just move to California,” muses a never pursued hippie-dippie Melissa, lounging in my armchair, dirty bare feet propped up. She takes a drag of something I can only assume the identity of by the lingering scent.
I grab it from her, and put it out in a cup of stale red wine on my nightstand.
“Don’t smoke that in here,” I say, disgusted.
“We’re going back to Wilmington,” calls Hipster Melissa from the kitchen, as if it were completely obvious. She tightens her bootlaces, brushing the bangs out of her eyes dramatically.
“We’re buying that apartment over Port City Java.”
“Let’s just stay here,” Raleigh Melissa says quietly from the living room. She ties her hair back into a loose ponytail.
All of the other Melissas stare at her coldly, except for hippie-dippie Melissa, who’s making a crown for Morrie out of daises. Philly Melissa walks up to the couch, and blows – as if she was blowing on a dandelion.
Raleigh Melissa explodes into a cloud of confetti.
It’s as if every part of me, realizing my new found freedom, were speaking up and making their desires known.
“We could pursue fashion,” says a 2005 bleach blonde, pink clad Melissa, climbing out of my green trunk.
Hipster Melissa gasps, and crams her back in.
“Let’s go to France,” says a psuedo Parisian Melissa with an incredible French accent, taking a drag out of whatever hippie- dippie Melissa was smoking.
“Let’s hike the Pacific Crest trail!” exclaims Tomboy Melissa, bursting through my back door, leaving a trail of muddy boot prints.
Hipster Melissa nods in agreement, furiously scribbling down notes in her Moleskin journal. 2005 Melissa is aghast, re-emerging from her hiding place. Agency Melissa pulls out her laptop and starts building timelines in Wrike.
They all chatter, fictitiously arguing with each other and simultaneously agreeing with each other. Morrie whines. Raleigh Melissa has reappeared, and she’s crying as Philadelphia Melissa criticizes her idea of working at the farmer’s market.
The funny thing about making space is that once you start to do it, every part of who you are, or who you’ve been, shows up and demands attention.
I haven’t been in this position for a long time – unhindered, without any real obligation to anyone or anything (besides Morrie). I still don’t own a home, I’m still single – I could literally do anything I want.
In lies the problem – anything.
It reminds me of one of my favorite pieces by Sylvia Plath – the one about the figs, of course. The idea that we have so many opportunities, but the result of that can be the inability to move… because of our own inability to decide.
Hence a very introspective Aziz Ansari hopping on a plane to Italy at the end of season one of Master of None.
I’ve thought a lot about this.
Pasta making in Italy, not so much – but various different figs, absolutely. Mix that in with a little freedom and pretty soon, you’ve got bold ideas, unconventional experiences, and hungry, ambitious Melissas popping up all over the place.
So instead of making a decision, I let the Melissas chatter for awhile. I tried not to plan or confirm anything, just put feelers out to various jobs and places that interested me. Not too long ago, I came across a great article in Quartz that really expressed what I was going through.
It was about the dismissal of the Met’s (yeah, this Met) three-year Chief Digital Officer Sree Sreenivasan. Sreenivasan talked about feelings of vulnerability and shame for being forced from his position (I’m not being forced from mine, but still, the shame of quitting is kind of there).
His anything, his figs, are so much larger and promising than mine. Yet, he struggled. Finally, he decided to just let go of his own expectations and fear.
“Let me be open and free,” he challenged himself. “See what happens. Let the universe help.”
Somewhere in this man’s realization is my truth: it’s time to dig into my curiosity and pursue anything that makes me feel happy and alive… and leave the rest up to fate.
(Destiny may often play the part of determiner for me, but I must admit, it’s one of my favorite things about myself.)
So the only question left – which lucky version of myself will get what she truly wants? Out from the lens of a significant other or employer, what will happen when I can’t rationalize or hold someone else accountable for the path I decide to follow?
I kind of can’t wait to find out.