Distinctly Average
The cover note of my school report from the headmaster once
read “In order for Francesca to fulfil her true potential, she must realise it
and work harder to achieve it,”
I always found it a back handed compliment.
My parents saw it as the forewarning of a tirade of
criticism from my teachers to come – it was a mixed bag that year; praise from
some, disdain from others, I seem to bring that out in people. I always have.
I’ve held that comment in my mind all these years, back
then, what was my true potential? Better GCSE grades? Because lord knows, I
could have and should have done better, but I was an arrogant little shite who
thought I knew better – again, I trait I have carried with me throughout my
life – I always know better….. Alas, with distinctly average GCSE’s from a girl
who had a dam good education, it’s no wonder my grades were met with a sigh.
Good enough to get me into the ponsey girls grammar school,
my parents wouldn’t let me apply or go to college, they thought the lack lustre
approach to studying would tie in all too well to my lack lustre attitude to…
studying!
Still, hilarious irony of sending the daughter they hoped
was “going through a phase” to an all-girls grammar school – thanks guys!
I’ve always been a bit of an anarchist, in that, so much was
expected of me; that I just didn’t want to deliver. I didn’t want to live up
to great expectations and be the bright one; I just wanted to cruise along and
make my own choices and figure it out like everyone else.
I always felt like I had to prove my worth, even back then,
I had to show the glimmer, the glamour, the brains, the beauty (!!!)
Alas, here I am typing at the lovely age of 30 and I’m
irritated. Plagued with “What ifs”
Maybe if I hadn’t been such an ignorant, stubborn little
girl, who grew into an even more resentful, pissed off teenager, and duly into
a completely deluded and lost woman, well, maybe, life would be different.
This blog is about trying to understand something I still
can’t grasp.
What am I supposed to be? Are we supposed to be anything?
What is this predestined bullshit we grow up with? This expectation and
pressure to drive towards something?
Growing up, I imagined at the age of 30, I would be married –
to a man, because I would have knocked this gay thing on the head and kept my
family happy, I’d have a child or thinking about another in the near future, and
I would be just like my mum, working my tits off in a high powered job, paying
the mortgage and planning the next holiday abroad, whilst popping into the
supermarket on the way home.
No. Instead, I am a 30 year old gay woman, living in a
rented house in a place I didn’t even know before we moved here, with the love
of my life, and it’s not the life I thought I’d have.
ITS BETTER.
So much for expectation and destiny.
I admit, I’m disappointed – in myself, in my life choices,
in the paths I took that diverted me away from where I wanted to be. Stupid
choices, colossal mistakes, and dangerous.
But I’m here. I am loved. I am capable.
The business sucked the soul out of me. I don’t think that’s
news to anyone. I had such a grand ambitions and such heart, I believed it
would be the biggest thing for me and for those it touched. It was. For a short
time.
For a short time I was exactly the person I wanted to be.
Hard working, honest, kind, giving, inspirational. I won awards from people I
never dreamt would even know my name. And then I lost myself. In a land of
delusion and fear, that I had to do bigger and better things, with this warped
sense of expectation that I HAD TO BE SOMEBODY.
I didn’t have to be anybody, I was fine just being Fran, I
didn’t have to be the superstar barker baker life changer extrodinarre with
every endeavour I touch turn to gold. I set myself up for this epic failure
long before other people joined me on the ride.
For-fil my true potential? I did. And then I overshot it.
There’s no doubt, in a normal sense of self, with a brain that doesn’t operate
based on medication and a lot of hard work to keep it on the straight and narrow
– maybe then, I could have achieved all I hoped for, but the fact is, I’m just
not that person. I crippled myself, through perceiving this immense pressure,
from the outside world. I hurt myself, through building a house on sand. Hoping
with hard work it would be enough. All the hard work in the world won’t save a
sinking ship when you are the captain.
Seriously? Who puts a loony bin at the helm?
I am so head strong, I can tackle the greatest of things and
find the solutions to problems that people can’t see. The solution to my
problem was me.
Too much too soon.
Too big too fast.
And not enough sense of self to know the difference.
When I was at 6th form college, I got the highest
score ever known at that school for my politics AS level, my teacher was
amazing, I was passionate about the subject and I really wanted to be a
politician. Then talks of attempting to shoe me into Oxbridge for applications,
my parents got excited, the teacher got excited – I didn’t. I was never ever
going to work hard enough for that – because I didn’t want to. Can you imagine
the pressure? I chose Universities I wanted to go to because I knew they would
be good for me. Not good for them.
Ironic.
So I blackballed them all. Fucked them off as quick as I
could and did well enough to go where I wanted, I didn’t want all their jazzy
options, I didn’t want to be my mother. I wanted a great grade in politics and
I wanted to go and get my degree, do well enough to get a masters, and then I
wanted to become a lecturer and get into politics.
Of course I didn’t. Fate set me on a different path and
hijacked my course of action in year 2 at University, we all know how that
story ends.
So is ever too late to be the person you want to be?
Sarah sent me a “TED Talk” last week while she was at work;
and it is truly excellent (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MBaFL7sCb8)
As it turns out; no. It’s never too late to be the person
you want to be.
I am the girl who walked out of a court room with a head
full of chaos and a lifetimes worth of habits to change, there and then.
I am the girl who conquered addiction. I am the girl who
started a business on a shoe string. I made a living of hope out of bread –
BREAD! Frigging chocolate orange bloody soda bread!
I won awards. I was in magazines. I was on the TV. SO WHAT?!
All of that fluff and all of that excitement shows me ONE
thing.
Right work ethic, wrong direction.
I want to get back the person I was, the kind, honest, hard
working one. Well then here I am. Bring it on.
I want to study more, learn new things, use my intelligence
and find my passion for politics, so I am. Online courses, here I go.
I want a career that makes me happy, that makes me work
hard, that gives me purpose – I got myself a job doing just that.
We are not predestined. We are not bound by expectation.
Passion. Pressure.
You can spend your whole life waiting for it to happen, or
YOU can make it happen.
