What I really wanted to be when I grew up.....

I've been taking some "medication" recently, and it's like a fog has lifted, or I've walked thru some door, or some other metaphor I can't think of at the moment. But I remember when I was about to graduate college, and the career counsellor asked me what my "dream job" would be, and I couldn't give her an answer.

I now remember what I wanted to be when I grew up: a biblical scholar.

Seriously. It's not the average profession, but it was something I wanted to do. I came upon this rather late in life--in my 30's actually. Mostly because, even though I was raised Roman Catholic, we never spent much time in church.

not that spending time in a Catholic Church would have helped me all that much. There isn't much room for women bible scholars in the Catholic Church.

But I knew if I studied at the right school, got my Ph.D. or even M.Div, I could teach at a good university....

Which is why I went to my Alma Mater in the first place, and why I was a Religion and Bib Lit major.....

But some very bad things happened along the way, and my dreams got blown to bits.

And so did my sense of who I was. or am.

I would look in a mirror and see nothing. Or see some freak of nature, whom no one loved and no one wanted.

And then there was the money issue. My original life plan was to have my husband come up here while I was in my last year at college. Then, we could do the grad school thing together.

That kind of fell apart with the marriage ending.

When that fell apart, so did I.

Then there were the student loans. I had to take out student loans so that I could live at college. Administration was pretty unyielding on their single students living off-campus or going part-time. We (and it wasn't only me) were often offered SalleMae loans as the alternative to working or part-time college.

With the promise that, after graduation, we'd be making scads of money and be able to pay off the loans.

This wasn't such a good thing. Really.

When faced with the idea of grad school, on my own, and already with $15,000 plus in student loan debit (and I had scholarships!) I couldn't figure out how I was going to *ever* be able to afford graduate school, let alone the graduate school my professors wanted me to go to.

So, I just fell apart.

No dreams. No more. gone.

Maybe I'm starting to remember who I wanted to be when I grew up because I'm seeing that I'm not anything I thought I'd be...

And I'm actually starting to dream again. Which means memory is coming back. Which means I'm not afraid to face things so that I can move forward....

Because I've been stuck here for way too long.

Not that I'm going to try to be who I always wanted to be, mind you. I'll be nearing 50 in the next couple of years, and it's just too late to try to be a biblical scholar at this date.

I can, though, put that part of me in perspective. I can work that part of me into my life so that I don't trash the whole thing.

I guess that's why I joined a church. Churches are communities. There's bible study there, too. It's not grad school, and I won't be the scholar, but I can at least indulge in something I truly enjoy.

I really miss bible study.

I sometimes think that, if I'd been raised differently, I might have gone on to become a nun. Or, if I were protestant, I would have been a minister. Or at least a minister's wife.

I sometimes think, too, had I not had the life's rug pulled out from under me, or if I'd been a bit more resilient rather than so fragile, I might have gone to grad school....

Can't worry too much about that now, though.

Some days I feel like I'm closing in on the end of my life.

And some days I don't.

Could be a lot of reasons for that. Depression being one of them.

So, I see how, even when we are adults, and even when we ourselves seem motivated and have the best intentions, things can happen in our lives that can knock us so "for loop" (so to say) that we forget the purpose, the "why," of why we're going to college, and end up turned right around and find ourselves being someone we never meant to be.

It's different than being a young person and discovering who you really are. That's what happens to most people when they go to college via the traditional route.

So, now what do I do?