Timeline.

What comes to mind when you hear the word “timeline”? Is it Instagram? No shame if it is, because up until a few days ago, that’s what I thought of, too. However, being back home has got me all kinds of wondering about a different timeline: the timeline of life. Sounds deep, huh? But I just left therapy, so I’m feeling sentimental.

Let’s dive right in, shall we?

In case I’ve never mentioned it before, I’m from Saskatchewan. If you’ve never heard of it, that’s because there’s nothing to hear about. I often equate my home province to, like, the Nebraska of Canada – lots of fields and farms but not much to do. (Do NOT call it the Texas of Canada, though, that’s Alberta). Life is pretty simple here – at least in comparison to the recklessness of Toronto, where I live now. I grew up thinking that Life was graduating high school, going straight to college, getting married, having kids, and retiring. I call it the “Triple C” lifestyle: convocate, conjoin, copulate. Also, because I’m a woman, it was always indirectly implied that my place in life was to be a wife and a mother. If I had a career, it would be “on the side” of my familial responsibilities. I know it’s 2019, so that’s ridiculous, but everyone knows Christians are very particular about gender roles.

Let me explain my upbringing a bit more. I want to make it clear that never once was I told outright that the path I should follow was an undergraduate degree, a 9 to 5, young marriage, and a big family. In fact, my parents always told me I could do whatever I wanted in life, and that they would support me no matter what. I feel really lucky about that; I know it’s a privilege a lot of people don’t have. HOWEVER. The environment I grew up in gave my subconscious the impression that there’s a very particular way to live life.

For one, I went to Catholic school. Cue the horror movie music. Just kidding, it’s not as bad as you’d think. But the education was very limited. Thankfully, I was taught about evolution, which is something a lot of former Catholic school attendees can’t say, but there were a lot of other lessons that were either misinformed or completely glossed over. Namely, I was taught from kindergarten that “family” meant a mommy and a daddy and their children. As I got older, the lessons became more elaborate, and I learned about how postsecondary education was mandatory for a “good” job, and how God’s plan for all women was marriage. I distinctly remember telling one of my teachers during my senior year that I planned to become an artist, and in response she raised her brows and said, “What a waste. You’re so smart.” Essentially, anything that diverged from “God’s plan” didn’t make the curriculum I was taught. And so, as a result, I was conditioned to believe I couldn’t live any other way.

Secondly, all the adults that influenced me throughout my childhood lived virtually the same life story. And, if they didn’t, any events that differed from the “right” way to do things were shrouded in secrecy. That goes for things like career changes, divorce, health issues, or anything else that might provoke gossip at church reception. (Saskatchewan people are very gossipy. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that there’s not much else to do around here.) Don’t get me wrong, people are absolutely entitled to their privacy, and I don’t expect to be in the know about everyone’s every move (although my Gemini moon believes otherwise). But, the example that was shown to Child Gabby instilled in her that anything that veered off of the Triple C path was shameful. My childhood eyes saw one life story unfolding a thousand different times, saw adults keep “disgraceful” things behind closed doors, and was explicitly taught in school that there was one way, and only one way, to live.

Cut to me, age 20, not only dropping out of school, but dropping out of art school. In retrospect, it’s no wonder I felt like such a failure when my plan for this year fell through! I had already chosen to go against the grain by taking a year off after high school. I chose resistance again when the school I chose to attend was for artists. And then, when I left, it was like, “three strikes, and you’re out”. I felt reckless, and messy, and idiotic, for ever having thought I could “prove Saskatchewan wrong” by following my own path. And I think, now, that that failure was my biggest fear all along. Giving up performing was hard, but not as hard as coming face to face with the fact that maybe my dreams of autonomy were, indeed, just too far-fetched. I never wanted to be just another high school graduate who got married and had kids before she was twenty-five. I felt like I had so much more potential than that. And after the events of this year, it was like I made a fool of myself by trying something different. I was so ashamed.

(Wait, wait, wait. Quick little sidebar here: I realize it totally sounds like I’m shitting on those who do live a Triple C lifestyle. And that’s totally not my intention! I only want people to do what makes them happy, and if that life is what appeals to someone, I am all for them pursuing it. It’s just not what I want for myself, so that’s why I talk about it with a little bit of disgust.)

Now, back to the subject. Something I’ve come to realize recently is that a lot of the shame I was experiencing surrounding my decision to leave school was because I was still measuring my success in comparison to the Saskatchewan timeline. For example, I was embarrassed about taking a year off after high school (even though I knew it’s what was best for me), but I found solace in the fact that since my performance program was only two years long, I would still graduate at twenty-one, just as I would have if I’d gone directly from high school into a BA at my local university. I was really concerned about finding a romantic relationship while I was away at art school, so I could still fulfill the destiny of getting married around the same time as all my cousins and high school classmates. As much as I wanted to forge my own path, the idea that I needed to live life according to a particular agenda was so deeply engrained in my subconscious that I was willing to bend over backwards to fulfill every arbitrary marker of success.

But I want to try something different. I want to try abandoning timelines altogether. I want to try making the best decisions I can, in pursuit of my own happiness, in my given circumstances with the resources I have, without attempting to follow a 2-year, or 5-year, or 10-year plan. It’s a BIG task, because it essentially entails re-educating myself on the fundamentals of purpose. It means re-wiring how I look at life and success. It also means that in all my life decisions, I’ll be flying completely blind: I can’t use my parents, classmates, or older cousins as life’s cheat-sheet, because our milestones won’t necessarily line up. That’s not to say I’ll never get married, or have children, or buy a house, or any of the other things that my peers are doing. Maybe I’ll do all those things! But, if I do, it’ll be when the universe decides it’s time. Not when I decide, or my parents decide, or the example set by other millennial Saskatoonites decides. It will happen in its own time. God, that’s fucking terrifying, huh? Can I get a “hell yeah” from all my anxiety sufferers in the audience tonight? It’s a bolder and braver choice to forge my own path in life, but it means I have to face the very things I’m afraid of: uncertainty. Vulnerability. Shame. Instability. I know that, by making this choice, I’ll never be sure of where I’m going to be five years from now. I hate that. But I’m looking at it this way: either I forfeit my autonomy now and follow the same path as everyone else, committing myself to a life of stability, but unhappiness, or I keep pushing to curate a life of my own. The risk could pay off, I could become happy and fulfilled and full of love and light, or I could end up completely destroyed and more miserable than ever before. At least with option B, the chance at happiness is there. And, my therapist would have me say that the chance of me following my dreams and ending up worse off is basically zero.

I don’t know if I believe her yet.

But there’s only one way to find out.