The Stationary Bike of Life

The Stationary Bike of Life

The rejection letters pile up faster than roaches multiply. They sit there without any explanations, false best wishes and hastily checked boxes on vague form letters.

Perhaps this would all be easier to handle if this was the first attempt to succeed. If this was the first time I ever set out and tried to be a bit more than a minimum wage slave. But it isn’t, it is the second, third, hell even fourth time and once in awhile I gotta wonder, “When is the world gonna give me a break?”

I’m not a starving writer. I am married to man who, after he graduated, sent out one CV and never looked back. Thus we, as in the couple ‘we’, are doing brilliantly. But never did I imagine that only one of us would be on the road to success. And even in my most depressing dreams did I ever think I would end up depending on a man to make rent.

I graduated too and moved from the USA to the UK knowing nobody with only two suitcases to my name. Two weeks later I had a fantastic job that allowed me to out earn my husband for three straight months.

Then the dot.com bubble burst, and so did my first and last decent job. Then I began to temp, and go to interviews, and temp, and go to more interviews and the rejection letters began to pile up. I walked a mile in the pouring rain after a two and half hour bus ride while being stalked by a forty-year old alcoholic lesbian who still lived with her mother. When I arrived after this ordeal I was informed I was over qualified. And that was just one day of the many on the endless job hunt.

Eventually I found a secretarial position that immediately began to blossom into something more. Well, until they too ran into financial trouble.

So I attacked the world again determined to win. I signed up for a course to gain further qualifications, all the while temping, performing freelance work, taking on work experience while always walking down the road of the endless job hunt.

I never turned a corner – two years later I was still working flat out with no secure permanent position and the rejection letters came in regular succession. The sugar sweet two-faced smiles became wearing and somewhere a parrot chirped, “Over 300 people applied for the position, you should be pleased you came in the top three.”

My solution was to try even harder. The theory had worked when I was in university. If I struggled, I worked harder and my goals became a reality. To succeed in life I simply needed to always raise the bar. As my yoga instructor chants, “A little higher, and a little higher, and a little HIGHER.”

Then came the day when God whispered, “Ask and you will receive”. Yet the joke was still on me. Prayers are often answered in the most backward of ways. I had been living for the job ads, every Monday and Saturday, for two years and somebody up and offered my already happily employed husband a job that he never heard of or asked about. The news came the day my grandmother passed away.

There are days where I struggle not to be jealous of his continuous success, even when it benefits me. His new job brought change and a chance to live back in The States for a year. I had never been to Chicago, but the thought of green salsa and people that spoke like me sounded like heaven. But even so, it grates that it took my South African husband to get back to The States.

In many ways Chicago has been the best thing to happen to me in a long time, because for once it was actually better, tax wise, if I didn’t work. Thus I had a year to write a book before I would have to return to the world of temping, endless photocopying, and thankless job-hunting in jolly old England.

Time line made, research done, I came to Chicago determined this was one opportunity I was going to grasp hold of and shine. This was my time, my moment and I was going to write a book. I would rewrite, revise, reread until it was perfect, until I would succeed; because this time everything was going to work out right.

I was in Chicago less than a month when my Aunt decided to end her life. She was my godmother, my mentor, my friend and my confidant. My heart was shattered. A grief unlike any other loss I had ever known and if I had been employed, I would have been fired.

I wrote a 40,000-word story that is some of the worst writing I have ever read – and it all came out of me. Meanwhile I constantly locked my keys inside my flat. I accidentally threw away my social security card. I misplaced numerous objects. I left the stove on, water running, clothes would sit in the washer for days before I remembered to transfer them into the dyer.

But I was still going to write this book. So in my foggy haze of depression I sat back down with my 40,000-word mess and began to rewrite the entire story again, and again and again.

Yet as I struggled to rise out of my hazy state the punches kept coming: relatives and friends ended up in the hospital, another person I loved dearly attempted to end his life, my brother’s car was totaled by a drunk driver, a friend had to take an HIV test, and on and on it went to the point where I became only to happy to say good-bye to 2003.

And I kept writing. Just push yourself harder a little… “higher, and a little higher…and a little HIGHER.”

The stumbling blocks have not stopped. Favors are forgotten, promises not seen through and I have learned that people never take your hopes and dreams seriously. Sometimes I wonder if keeping a person down is their way of elevating their own failures. False bits of praise drip acidly off tongues, “Well, that’s a nice little story you wrote,” … “How nice that your husband works every day while you tend to your hobby.” I just want to scream till my voice soars over the John Hancock building.

Meanwhile the agents send back my SASE with “no” boxes checked, and those are the ones courteous enough to reply. Their faceless letters sit organized in a file that grows fatter by the day.

So I raise the bar again. Rereading, rewriting and pulling advice, suggestions and constructive criticism from every corner I can manage to reach.

But some days it feels like I have joined the race of life mistakenly on a stationary bike. Everybody knows it but me. When things get tough I pedal faster and harder hoping to reach my goal. Little rays of hope beckon: bits of praise, extra gift points and a letter slightly fatter than the rest. So I pedal faster, not realizing the bike has not moved and will not budge until I figure out how to get off, pick it up and run.

“A little higher, a little higher, just a little HIGHER.”

When does life stop being a test? When does it all end and you earn the right to simply do what you have talent to be? Even people that reach their dreams appear to have to prove over and over again that they can still shine.

I don’t need the bar set for me. I set it higher than most ever dream-to-dream. The extra challenges are unnecessary obstacles, for I already am trying to leap over my own. Just wait, someday I am going to figure out how to unbolt this bike from the floor. I simply need to find where somebody hid the wrench.