When I was in grade six, my teacher assigned my class a short, keep-us-quiet kind of project in which we were supposed to draw how we envisioned ourselves in the future. We were to include depictions of our hobbies, family and social lives, careers, and anything else we could think of. I suppose she assigned us this because after a semester of involved, complicated art projects she needed a breather of sorts, but my 11-year-old self jumped into the task with an enthusiasm I hadn't quite been able to muster while dying Ukrainian Easter eggs or making paper mache globes. I feverishly began to draw with my unskilled hands scenes of myself graduating high school and university, getting married, playing the piano, reading with my cat, and standing with my nameless groom in front of a small, neat house. When I turned it in proudly, my teacher looked at it and said "Caitlin, you forgot about your career," and handed it back to me. Surprised at myself for forgetting such an important part of my project, I returned to my seat to complete it.
As I sat with my neatly organized coloured pencils, a terrifying thought dawned on me: I didn't know what I wanted to be. I drew a complete blank. Panicked, I glanced at my neighbour's papers: veterinarians, hockey players, firemen, doctors, and even astronauts and dancers confidently graced the pages of my classmates' pages and dominated the landscapes of their future dreams. The prominent depiction on my page was that of my wedding to a man I couldn't name. What seemed to come easy to my peers was completely baffling me, and in that moment I was more stressed out than I ever remember feeling previously. Embarrassed and ashamed I quickly and sloppily squeezed in a picture of me being a teacher, because that's what my mother does, and handed it in.
This was the first time I had felt the pressure, anxiety, and inadequacy that this question of what to do with my life brings on. The two central depictions in that childhood drawing were of myself being a wife and mother, which apparently I thought was good enough at the time, but society has corrected me and proven me wrong. It was then that I started to feel the need to be the proverbial "superwoman" who "has it all" like my mother and my Aunts had become: having important, fulfilling careers while still being able to have organized home lives and strong marriages. This was the world I grew up in and these were my role models, so why had I never considered myself capable of being one of them? Why is it that to this day, I still do not consider myself worthy or able to fill their shoes as a career woman with family on the side? Why does everyone think less of me because of it?
Right now, I am at a crucial turning point in my life, I can feel it. I am 23 and trying to finish a University degree part-time while working at a hardware store, I am in constant conflict with myself and my family over my future and career 'options', and I am very soon to be engaged to my Air Force Officer boyfriend, Steve. I am writing this now because I realize that my life is at a crossroad and that I will soon have to make a lot of important decisions about my future. So this is my new drawing, which I am creating slowly and carefully over time and which is always being added to, so that I can reflect on my choices and hopefully receive feedback. Mostly I am writing this though so that through it I might find comfort and expression, and that anyone who may be in a similar situation may read it and find comfort in it as well.
