I believed in everything, ever so much longer than my peers. I believed in Santa Claus. I believed in unicorns, and dragons. I believed in Never Land. I believed in fairies. I believed in wishing on stars, in throwing pennies in fountains, in four leaf clovers. I believed in magic in every form.
In my adolescence, I believed in things like psychic powers and phenomena, in ghosts and afterlives. I read about indigo children and astrology and burned candles, imagining I could control the flames. I believed in all sorts of new age hippie crystal crap. My father even humored me once on a family vacation and took me on a tour of the vortexes in Sedona. I sat in them trying to feel the energy, scratching my name into the stone and leaving piles of pebbles in what I thought were meaningful arrangements. To his credit, he never made fun of me once (at least not to my face.)
When I started college, I believed I was a good student and that someday, I was going to be the best in the world at SOMETHING. I didn't know what yet, but I was going to get a Ph.D. and everyone was going to know my name. It took exactly one semester for me to realize, perhaps for the first time in my life, that it wasn't going to happen. I was not a notable student. My mediocre work ethic that had gotten me decent grades in high school earned me nothing but mediocre grades in college. Worse, when I realized that I needed to work harder - and did, harder than I ever had before - my results were still mediocre. I was never going to do well in college level math, and therefore I was never going to do well in college level science. When I turned my attention to literature, I discovered that literary theory made me want to throw myself off the campus bell tower. I settled for anthropology, which made me feel like I could do science but didn't actually require me to know any "hard" science like chemistry or physics. I thought I could make something of myself in animal behavior research, but my luck ran out when my primatology professor went on sabbatical during my junior and senior years, and I failed to impress the other animal behavior prof on campus (and honestly, his work with ground squirrels failed to impress me, too.)
There was a moment shortly before I finished my bachelor's degree when I was walking down North University Avenue in late fall, headed towards the museum. I don't know what it was about that day, or that moment, but as I passed the League and the Dental School and saw the museum building in front of me, imposing and impressive, it dawned on me. I was not going to get a Ph.D. I was not going to be the best at anything, in any field. The most I could hope for was being the best at my new job that they'd ever seen... and honestly, the woman in the position before me had set the bar pretty damn low.
For awhile, I had some delusions that I could be a major player in informal education. Then I attended some conferences, met a lot of people, and realized that there are two kinds of museum educators - the people in charge, and the people who actually do the work. My career is an excellent illustration of this. I could never get past being one of the people who actually does the work, and I wasn't even sure I wanted to - even if it gets other people fancy titles and fatter paychecks and gets me... here.
The older I get, the more I realize that there is pretty much nothing about me that's special or unique. I am never going to be notable for pretty much anything. And for a kid who wanted desperately to believe in something, ANYTHING, that would set her apart from the rest of the mundane... that's a pretty hard pill to swallow.
I thought being a parent would give me a chance to believe in something bigger than me again. And in a lot of ways, it has. But in so many others, it has brought every single one of my failures into sharp relief and provided endless reminders that I am not only nothing but average - sometimes I am barely adequate. Monetarily, I can barely provide my kids with a fraction of what I had in childhood. I realize this is situational and that a lot of my generation is stuck in the same boat because of what the world is like right now, but knowing that doesn't ease my anguish over it.
And to add insult to injury - on top of ALL THIS - I appear to be raising a skeptic. "But is it REAL???" is one of the most common questions Elizabeth asks. At five, I don't think I EVER would have questioned the reality of something I wanted to believe in - I just believed. She wants answers, and she wants them in detail. For the first time in perhaps my entire life, I am dreading Christmas. I am so afraid she is going to ask how Santa will get into our house when we don't have a chimney or a fireplace. On the one hand, there are plenty of acceptable explanations for this that won't necessarily hamper her ability to believe. But on the other... I'm 32 years old and my babies don't have a fireplace. Will my seemingly unrelated mundane failures somehow cost her the magic of belief? I don't know.
I still want to believe. It's just so much harder and more heartbreaking than it used to be.
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