Seeing this as my last shot for the type of future my teachers told me to want, I desperately decided to give a shit. I handed my assignments in, put my hand up in class, and threw myself into a realm of academia I never thought I’d be a part of. The summer I was 22, I was only one math credit away from the marks needed to get into my program. For the first time, I began thinking of my future life outside of the confines of my own shortcomings, and began dreaming about my adult self as a nurse (or a nurse practitioner or doctor or surgeon or chief of surgery or superhero — whatever). I bid adieu to insecurity, to anxiety, to wasted potential. I finally had a plan.
And it blew up instantly.
~
I have never been able to do math. In ninth grade, my math teacher stopped trying to help me (I was beyond help), and in tenth my mom bought me a CD-ROM math program, hoping I’d finally learn to make sense of numbers (it made me cry). I could do math related to money, but having done so well in school over the last few months, I thought I could will myself into destroying calculus. I was a Real Student now, and regressing wasn’t an option.
I sat in the front row of that summer school math class, putting up my hand to the groans of students who didn’t want to hear me asking the same questions about why x equals y, or where our teacher found the integer, or what the formula meant. I began skipping lunch to stay in and study. I began bringing my math text to work. I’d read and reread my notes before bed. But it wasn’t enough: I didn’t get how the numbers worked. Two weeks into class, I sat at my desk and looked at the thumb that had begun twitching from stress. I got up and asked my teacher if I should bother staying.
He put down his sandwich and scanned his binder for my name.
“Ah!” he said. “Right now you’re sitting at a . . . 35%.” His tone had morphed into that of a doctor telling you not only that you’re going to die, but that you actually died years ago. “I can’t tell you to drop it,” he continued. “But it’s going to get harder.”
We looked at each other. He picked his sandwich back up, and I packed up my bags and left. This failure was new. It existed despite my best effort — despite rallying like a motherfucker to prove how smart and capable I was. This failure was one I should’ve felt proud of since I’d given it my all, but it felt like a failure of self. I felt like a failure. I cried the whole way home.
~
By the end of the summer, I’d begun telling myself that school would never be for me, that I wasn’t good enough or smart enough or driven enough, and that I should keep my dreams to what I knew I was already good at. Even though I had no idea what that was. I’d spent the last few months weeping at the cash register at my new job at American Eagle while fielding questions from my concerned teen coworkers who worried that they were heading down the same path I was. I believed my life would be only as good as it was in that moment.
Despite wanting to do more (maybe write, maybe entertain, maybe a combination of both, who knows), I accepted that it would never come to pass, so I quit my retail job and got a job at a bank. Those were the types of numbers I had always understood. And everybody seemed to take bankers seriously.
Unsurprisingly, I was still miserable. And as self-destruction had become my default mode, I became the worst bank employee in the world, wearing the same Old Navy slacks for days at a time or spending hours in a friend’s office eating candy. I was the only bank teller to have a −30% sales revenue, which meant this New Future was also a dead end.
One night, I applied to a BA program at university because I figured the situation couldn’t get worse. I’d upgraded enough of my high school marks to make the basic requirements, so even if a career in the arts promised no real outcome, those years I’d tried wouldn’t be in vain.
Two months later, I was accepted. I vowed that, despite evidence to the contrary, I was capable of achieving the one thing I’d been told by teachers should be my only real goal. Finally, I was going to do what I should’ve done years ago.
~
At the start of the semester, I started writing for the school paper. And while I spent my first year making the Dean’s List, earning good grades began to pale in comparison to writing about what I loved: movies, TV shows, music, and my opinions about all three. By year’s end, I’d begun to feel restless. The more I found out about the careers of artists and writers and people I admired, the more I realized that many hadn’t earned a degree. A degree wouldn’t guarantee writing jobs or my own TV show after I graduated — which had slowly become my ambition du jour.
My parents didn’t fight me on it: neither had gone to university, so both were just anxious for me to find a career that ensured I’d be able to pay bills. If writing could do that, that was fine. (I decided not to tell them how long that usually takes.)
The next year, I dropped out to freelance full-time. And despite the lack of money, the instability, and the politics I’d yet to really understand, I found myself having fun. Which was surprising since I’d found myself on a path defined by uncertainty: the very thing I’d been trying to outmaneuver by throwing myself into college, banking, and that godforsaken math class. I wasn’t sure where writing would take me, but I was sure that doing it made me feel alive in a way I hadn’t before.
Not that I had the perspective yet to see my past as anything but a dark mark on my abilities. Armed with jokes about my career-path pinballing, I branded myself a failure [pause for polite laughter] before anybody else could. My failures still didn’t feel like they were my choices. And the last thing I wanted was for anybody else to realize that.
A lot of us are raised with a series of checkboxes we treat like stepping stones to a middle-class dream life: you graduate high school, graduate college, land a fulfilling career, find a spouse, buy a house, have 1.7 kids, and retire in time to spend thousands of dollars on a boat. We’re urged to make choices that guarantee our stability or help us save for the future without taking into consideration that stability and a future aren’t guarantees, but privileges. We treat life paths as one-size-fits-all options and forget that histories, socioeconomic realities, and individuality make our slanted idea of conformity impossible. There is no one right way to “adult.” Sometimes it’s earning a degree, sometimes it’s making it all the way to Friday.
But these traditional success stories are still inescapable. And even if you’re happy after choosing something unconventional, convention still looms and fosters doubt. So in winter of 2016, I went back to school. I registered for a part-time class and believed I could earn a degree while writing full time. Despite having “owned my failure,” part of me still wanted to cancel it out. I ignored that I was overworked and stressed, pretending I was Hermione Granger: a type A workaholic with a god complex who couldn’t get enough information or knowledge or grades or approval. (All of which is true.) I ignored the voice telling me that I could read books about what I love learning about, and that I didn’t want to shell out top dollar for textbooks I’d eventually give away. So I completed one class, got an A, and then dropped out immediately afterwards. I felt like a failure all over again.
But failing is universal. It’s a language almost everybody understands. Without slipups and mistakes and doing the wrong things because the right ones still seem so scary, we’d never figure out who we are. Plus, failure’s never permanent. It’s part of the process, not what defines it.
It takes years to unsubscribe to the myth that success looks a certain way and that the road to it is singular. I’m not sure if I’ll ever wear my lack of degree as a badge of honor rather than a chip on my shoulder. But no degree, no job, no person will grant you admission to the rest of your life. There is no one thing that can guarantee success or happiness, and life is so rarely a straight path. Which is a bit terrifying, but also freeing.
So, keep trying until you find something that makes you feel great and capable and happy. You know when you’ve made the wrong choices. But one of the bes
t things about moving forward is that you can keep checking in until you build a life that looks like your own. Not anybody else’s.
Things I Have Not Failed
(But Quit Proudly)
Persistence is a commendable trait. Patience, a virtue. But also? Fuck those things — if I try it and I hate it, I’m not doing it anymore.
I am not a joiner; I am not a teammate. I am bad at collaboration, and I am even worse at sharing the glory. I could pretend that I’m not an adult incarnation of Angelica from Rugrats, or I could operate under the guise of honesty and admit that I write best alone because I want all the praise and attention. I will never answer back to a call and response. I am a mule with the personality of another mule who is extraordinarily self-aware. I love not attending events, and I love quitting shit I hate even more. And I started young.
1991: T-ball
I was the only six-year-old in the world who was bad at T-ball, and I didn’t give a fuck. I sat on the bench with my mushroom cut, eyeing everyone playing this idiot sport while making peace with the fact that I’d rather play real baseball or play nothing. (I played nothing.) I got a participant sticker and cursed my classmates. They didn’t hear me, because they were playing T-ball.
1991: Craft club
Too much wet glue.
1998: Piano lessons
I hated piano lessons. I hated piano lessons so much. I hated piano lessons more than anybody in this world can ever know. There are no words to describe how much I hated piano lessons. But I will use some anyway because that is how books work.
I was very good at piano. I got my grade six, which is a big deal because there are eight grades before you go on to . . . well, what I can only assume is hell. But who cares, because I hated it. I hated my teacher, who raised her voice at me, and I hated her creepy husband, who’d show up to lessons and hit on my mom in his underwear. I hated practicing, I hated playing, I hated theory. I hated that when I bought the Titanic sheet music, it sounded nothing like the soundtrack, and I hated that playing Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” on piano made it seem like a song you’d hear at a funeral for a person you hated.
My mom and I went to war over piano. She would tell me I had talent; I would tell her I didn’t care. She would tell me she wished she could play; I would tell her that I wanted to play outside. Finally, I told her that my piano teacher was bananas, and, after more tears (and a detailed account of the times she’d sworn at me over scales), I was finally free.
1999: My high school’s production of Oz!
A musical based on The Wizard of Oz (and not the HBO series). I tried out for the lead, convinced I’d win over my teachers with a rousing rendition of my favorite Shania Twain song.
“Name and song?” they asked.
“ANNE DONAHUE,” I stated proudly. “‘WHOSE BED [a pause] HAVE YOUR BOOTS BEEN UNDER.’”
I did not get the part. And I quickly learned that if I didn’t get 100% of the attention at all times, I needed to excuse myself from the production as soon as possible.
2000: Track and field
I lasted five practices before my friend Ashley and I faked injuries and abandoned ship.
2000: Cheerleading
Technically, I didn’t quit. Technically, Ashley and I were the only two people cut after the first cycle, and technically, it was because we swore too much when we made mistakes. But whatever, I probably would’ve quit anyway. Who are we kidding?
2003: School council
I don’t remember quitting. In truth, I have absolutely no recollection of doing anything, in any capacity. Ultimately, my exit from the council’s dance committee can be described in the words of John Green: slowly, and then all at once.
2003: Jogging
I got shin splints. Fuck jogging.
2003: Scrapbooking
I’m too finicky to be crafty. IF IT’S NOT PERFECT, IT’S GARBAGE, WHAT DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND? (And other things I’ve screamed at a craft store.)
2004: Debate
Apparently, arguing and debating aren’t the same thing, but I’ll argue otherwise.
2005: Rollerblading
I wanted rollerblading to be cool more than anyone ever has, even in the ’90s. So my friend Jaimie and I would rollerblade in our jeans and tank tops, covered in self-tanning moisturizer, all while convincing ourselves we were in the Cambridge, Ontario, equivalent of Laguna Beach.
But then Jaimie started her full-time summer job, and I wasn’t confident enough to rollerblade alone. Now I harshly judge and mock all rollerbladers, of whom I’m secretly, painfully envious.
2005: Acting
I mean, with my zest (thirst) for recognition (attention), it makes sense. But no. Acting takes patience. You wait for auditions, you wait for roles, you wait around between takes. And, like writing, you have to work your way up. Acting is hard, and I hated it.
I signed with an agency when I was 19, incorrectly assuming that this meant I was the next Rachel McAdams. I took classes, I earned certificates (that absolutely meant nothing), and I got cast as an extra in a documentary series about a bombing. I played a victim, spent the day in wet flame-proof clothing, covered in fake blood and soot. I had zero lines and spent the entirety of the 11-hour shoot on the floor, behind a table. I earned $90, and my acting career ended as soon as I got home. For about four years.
2009: Acting (again)
On a warm day in late April, I answered a Craigslist casting call for extras for a movie called Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. The casting director said I had the look (I had bangs, and it was a call for “hipster types”), I was given a call time for 1 p.m., and upon arriving at the location (a church basement), I learned my day would last for approximately 12 hours and then start again five hours after that. So, like any logical 24-year-old, I began to cry hysterically and was dismissed in disgust. I walked no less than 3,000 miles to my car, chain smoked the whole time, and — as it began to rain — realized that now I would probably never be friends with Michael Cera. (Unless he’s reading this right now. If so, please DM me.)
2009: Being in a band
“We should be in a band!” is a thing I said to my friend Sam. He, being the human equivalent of a golden retriever, invited me to come over and jam one afternoon. I played the keyboard for 20 minutes, told him I was hungry, we went for breakfast, and we never spoke of our band again.
2009: Guitar
If you don’t have the patience to attend an acting audition, you do not have the patience to build up callouses on your fingers. I just wanted to be Jenny Lewis.
2016: Yoga
I couldn’t — and still can’t — touch my toes, and the thought of trying to do that in the same space as a bunch of people breathing loudly was as appealing as, well, trying to touch your toes in the same space as a bunch of people breathing loudly. But, in hopes of combating my anxiety a little better, I bought a yoga mat, subscribed to Yoga with Adriene on YouTube, and told myself that this was it: I, Anne T. Donahue, could fucking do this.
And for a while, I did.
It helped that Adriene was so nice. She congratulated me (and only me — not the other million subscribers she had) for showing up, and she wanted me to practice yoga at my own pace. But my own pace was: do it well, do it often, do it exactly like the instructor whose actual career is doing yoga all day, every day. Be perfect or go to hell.
Which is probably why I started to hate it. I’d either push myself too hard physically or crucify myself for not being relaxed enough.
Then I got the flu, blamed yoga, collapsed on my bed, and stayed there. I rose on the seventh day to look upon my yoga mat as the enemy it was: another symbol of my obsession with being perfect. I stuffed it in the back of my closet until half a year later when, aware that I’d gained weight due to lack of exercise, I figured I’d give it another whirl. I got the flu again days later. Fuck yoga.
But I’ve since realized that I’m fine with
my anxious-ass, can’t-touch-my-toes life. In my soul, I am not chill, and I do not want to be calm, and no part of me aspires to Zen. Sure, through yoga I learned to take time for myself, and I learned how to deep-breathe through pain, but the most valuable thing yoga taught me was that I’m not built to be a yogi — and that’s the only mantra I need.
For anyone who wants to be a yogi but hears the internal cries of “Oh my God, I hate this so much” from start to finish? Fuck it. Oh man, fuck it all the way back to wherever you bought your mat from. There are other outlets for your energy, other ways to carve out some peace. Nobody here needs to force themselves into downward dog when they’d rather be walking super-fast around the mall.
Which, for the record, might be the one thing I know in my heart I will never, ever quit.
“Why Don’t You Drink?”
I woke up on a Thursday morning in May and wasn’t too sure how I’d gotten home. I’d gone out the night before, and I’d come home by myself — that much I knew. I squinted at the sun coming through my blinds and began to piece it together. I remembered the long drive on the highway and the boredom of the last half hour. I remembered looking across the lanes at the restaurants lining the exits and wishing I could stop at one because I was hungry. I remembered that it wasn’t even too late and that I was surprised at how early I’d decided to leave.
Nobody Cares Page 5
