Haunting of the Self

I’ve been here before… a long time ago, I think to myself as I descend into the staircase decorated with brightly-colored Mexican murals. Granted, I’ve eaten at this restaurant probably two dozen times the last year alone; it is a Capitol Hill staple after all. But I’ve not been down here, in this private room, since the very first time. I had been no more than nineteen years old at the time, confident in my snappy black dress with white trim, spirits high the knowledge that I was sitting out of this debate tournament so my partner and I would be qualified to still compete in the novice division for the national tournament. We were the favorites to win (or so we thought), so I remember not being too jealous of our friends who were then celebrating their victories over Mexican buffet. I exchanged a few knowing glances with my debate partner, knowing we’d have our turn in a few weeks. That day I had been content to wander the halls of Congress – or at least the House office buildings – as we hosted our tournament, not having a clue where I was going and completely oblivious to the fact those same halls would someday become as familiar to me as my small college campus.

Now I wrap my fingers more tightly around the worn folio in my hands and shoot the coworker at my side a somewhat uncomfortable glance. I’ve been getting this feeling lately he wants me to get out of the office so I can meet more people from the healthcare community, but the more I do so, the less I want to. My letters are safe and I know what they expect of me; the prospect of other human beings is far less certain. The response to my voiceless plea isn’t too different from one my college debate partner would have given in this circumstance: a classic alpha-male “fear not, I know what I’m doing,” toned down slightly with an almost gentle “and so do you, so stop stressing.”

I am soon enveloped by a crowd of people, introducing themselves and welcoming me, as I smile and attempt to make eye contact with each one. They are nice enough people, truly very kind, and I immediately feel bad knowing I will never remember all their names. Within a half-minute, one of them asks me where I am from, and my cover is promptly blown before an entire sector of the states’ dentists. Only my wit, my charm, my coworker, or the start of lunch can save me now. Thank goodness the lattermost comes through.

As we sit down, I can almost see for a moment everyone on the team as we’d been there years before; Tee with her newly shortened haircut, before she and her now-husband were even together. My debate partner and almost little brother Brian, with his suave and surety, before he’d even met the woman who will soon become his wife. Heather with her tough-love coaching style and incurable laughter, back when she still scared me. How times have changed.

I suddenly feel as if I’m sitting at the foot of my own shadow. Things were certainly not perfect then, but in my memory, there was a surety and a bond that seemed to make the reality of the experience last forever. In retrospect I know better, of course. And in a myriad of ways, I have even more to be thankful for now. But sitting in a room full of unfamiliar people, and the only familiar face seeming to expect something of me for which I am so far from ready, the college bubble doesn’t seem so bad.

At least in this moment.

~~~~

As we saunter down the sidewalk on this pleasant evening, tulips and daffodils playing in the wind, I have to do a double-take when I catch a glimpse of myself in a window. Every time I see this color combination on myself, the black suit with a maroon shirt, I am immediately propelled into an insecure memory of long ago. I’d not been at college more than four weeks when I donned an outfit not unlike this one. Of course, the old skirt and jacket had been made from different material, and that shirt had always been too big on me. But for some reason, it was my dress of choice when called upon to speak on behalf of a proposed constitution for the student government.

My roommate, lo those millions of years ago, had called it my power suit. I suppose it still is today, but now the blacks match, the shirt is fitted, I’m wearing black stilettos, and my fingernails are nice and long enough now to be painted a maroon hue to match the shirt. Small differences they may seem, but to me, they paint a completely different picture of myself from the girl who downed sixteen ounces of straight coffee to wake herself up before giving the first speech of her college career.

I remember being so nervous as I sat there in the auditorium, awaiting my turn to speak. My head turned from side to side, staring into still-stranger’s faces, and realizing this was the moment I had to make my mark on my own. For the first time, I was thousands of miles away from anyone who knew me at all; no one knew my previous record or even had any expectations of me. A simultaneous blessing and curse, true, but for someone who’d spent so much time trying to define the title of overachiever, it was a harrowing experience to start at square one. I had by this point realized I had little in common with the vast majority of the people at my college (or so I thought at the time), and I knew if my fledgling collegiate experience was to be salvaged, it could very well hang on that very moment.

I marvel at how silly those terms sound now, as I brush a lock of hair from my face and step into the building in which my boss’ fundraiser is to be held. I thought it the end of the world when it was simply another rung on the latter, a rung that led me here – to campaigns and balls and policy analysis and now celebrating my one year anniversary of working on Capitol Hill.

My coworkers are talking as we get in the elevator, but my mind is elsewhere. After yesterday’s experience at lunch, I am desperately attempting to get “in the zone.” I want to practice working the room on my own, not depending on one of the LAs to discuss policy or strike up conversations. I am going to be friendly and engaging on my own. Right, I laugh sarcastically at myself, to people you don’t even know.

Then I remind myself I used to be afraid of talking on the phone.

Once we get into the room, I am immediately struck by the fact that I recognize far more of these faces than I feel like I should. A few seem to recognize me as well, which is even more disconcerting. I guess this is what happens when you start getting entrenched. As the night progresses, I receive an assist or two from the guys. I have to smile at one point as I’m telling some lobbyist that the scheduler and I are the only women in the office. She observed something along the lines of “perhaps they are the brothers you never had,” which one of the guys overheard and chimed in “and never wanted!”

Not true, of course. I couldn’t have been blessed with a better office. They can get on my nerves, but they have treated me like gold and I wouldn’t trade any of them for the world. A far cry from the cold faces and eyes I felt on me as I took the podium back in college and the nervousness that still seems to rattle my frame at times. This feels like where I’m supposed to be. It feels like home, not in the sense of where I grew up or where my heart is… perhaps more like a homestead, where adventure and exploration intersect with the desire for stability and future hopes.

A power suit, a too-confident college debater, an unsure staffer trying to force herself out of her comfort zone. I don't play frisbee much anymore, so my hands are far more ladylike; I have been much more in the "real world" so I have a better idea of what my career chances are. Yes, all of the above, to various degrees for better or worse. In turn, the pride and humility of the past court my current disposition, and, almost apart from my own will, fight out to find that oft-spoke of happy medium. Past and present become iron-sharpening-iron. I have to catch myself when I realize how much older I seem to look in certain pictures or find myself laughing a little too loudly; it feels like a sort of haunting, not in the sense that one could fear a specter, but the always present fact that this life and all its processes are exactly that. It is an awareness that the past is still shaping the present, and the present is worth shaping well for the future. Perhaps this haunting of the self is part of what pushes us onward and upward.