asunder
Monday night, 15th May. Z and I attended the graduate fashion show at LASALLE — both of us trying to play it cool even though we were underprepared. On the way there, I texted her, “FORGOT MY GLASSES. I will be blind tonight” to which she replied, “OMG SAMEEE!!!” And I laughed out loud at the crosswalk, thinking, will we ever be too old to be this vain? (Never, I hope.)
Pre-show, she joked about how we would probably only be able to make out silhouettes. When the show finally did start, I realised there was truth in that after all — everything was madcap in a fashion-ey way and therefore fairly easy to see. I liked the closing collection best because it reminded me of the word “cloister”, but then I spent too long wondering if “cloistered” was a verb that could also be used as an adjective, and how that might be used in a sentence, and how lovely a word “cloister” is, how you’re forced to say it slowly, and why was “cloister” making me thinking of “sisterhood”, how uncanny, or was it just this collection, and wait, hadn’t we already seen this design? In a rush, the show was over, and then came the delicate task of avoiding eye contact with many familiar faces, because work would have to wait! We were two girls determined to be nameless in a crowd.
The sweetest moment of the show: when I saw an excited mom, half-standing out of her seat, turn on the flash on her phone to record her daughter’s designs coming down the runway. She had on an electric blue sari and beamed throughout.
*
My mind keeps returning to a conversation I had last week. I had asked M, “ At what point will this become too much?” in reference to running a business, to keeping things together for the team you’ve committed to even though your insides are steadily falling apart.
I remember working through this in therapy. What would it mean to close the business? How would it feel like? Why those feelings, and what comes after, and what does that mean, and how do I feel about that? I remember saying, but not believing, that I am more than what I do at work.
A few weeks later, I decided the only way I could keep going was to believe it.
*
I’ve been thinking about ambition. Days of grit, glory, drive. I’ve been thinking about this because someone told me I lacked ambition half my life ago, and perhaps… now too? The moment she said that, all hell broke loose inside my head.
A good friend offered counsel. “You had so much ambition,” she said, “you just struggled to articulate what you’re looking for in this world.” Which begs the question: can ambition and knowing what you want truly be divorced from one another? This year, I decided I want to run my business on my own terms, even if it makes no sense in this world. Even if it means one day, maybe, we will have to close. I want to remain small forever. I wonder if running a business this way makes me unambitious.
Now, 36 hours on, things are clearer. I want time to think. To write. To do work I’m proud of, even if it makes me neither rich nor famous. I want my girls to be happy with what we’ve built. I want anyone who’s running a business to know good lord, this shit is hard and we are all doing the best we can, just making things up along the way half the time. I want to be a better human being. I want to continue having unbilled, 5-hour meetings with clients because I genuinely like knowing who they are beyond the work we do together. And after last night, I want to learn how to be that mom on the sidelines too.
Proud of everything, all the moments, for everyone I love. Beaming always.
