To Do List (gretson)

Let's f*cking go

...

Carson Shaw. Born in 1995, in Lake Valley, Idaho. Her name and birthplace suggest she comes from a farm, but she didn't. She never milked a cow or grew anything except for a tiny sapling of basil in a small pot on her south window. She was just a small-town girl (living in a lonely world, they'd say). She had done small-town girl things so far. She graduated high school; went to community college; started working as a librarian in the only public library there was in town, a very small one might I add; she married her high school sweetheart and best friend, Charlie Shaw, who was now an accountant, or something of that (boring) sort; she visited her father on the weekends, and her sister, Maggie, was always there too, accompanied by her perfect husband and her perfect three-year-old twin boys.

Carson's life seemed pretty much set. With Charlie, she had a nice house with a yard, and a family car, although they had no babies so far, not even after several years of being married (yes, she got married when she was 20, and yes, it was 2015, apparently some people still married at 20 in 2015).

But then the pandemic hit. First, they thought a two-week lockdown would do the trick. Then it became two months. Then three, then four months. Then things started to reopen, but most of the workers who could stay at home started getting used to working from home and that happened to Charlie. And with the library opening just part-time that meant that Carson had to spend most of the hours of her day at home with Charlie, and his stupid jokes, and his feet on top of the coffee table, and his wet towel twisted on their bedroom floor, and his socks tossed over his shoes in the middle of the living room. 

Then she got tired.

It was a warm Tuesday afternoon in October 2022 when Carson decided she was tired of all of that.

She was alone at home. Charlie was out of town visiting a client. But that whole thing wasn't actually about Charlie, that was just the tip of the iceberg, the little sharpy thing that poke her awake.

It was about herself.

Carson was tired of all her small-town girl things: the decisions she'd made, the habits she'd take as her own, even when she knew she wasn't like that. All the things she'd done so far made her feel like she was living somebody else's life. Like she didn't belong in her own body.

She got sick of not living her life for herself, of only living it for other people, to be there for the people she cared about. She got sick of taking care of her husband, and her father, and her sister's boys, but never taking care of herself and her needs, and her goals, and her dreams.

She understood her mother now. The woman she had blamed for so many years for leaving her when she was only ten years old. She could see her mother facing the same struggles she was facing now, she could feel the blood boiling in her veins, the lightspeed beat of her heart, the urge to leave and never look back, and go after a new life, a life she could call her own. She could see that so clearly now. It had only taken her seventeen years to understand why her mother had left.

Carson searched her closet for her high school stuff box and found her old journal. Inside it, there was that old picture she felt guilty about loving so much. She leaned in against the closet door to brace herself for whatever that picture would make her feel at that moment, good or bad.

She was five back then, smiling happily, her mother was behind her, steadying her bike so she wouldn't fall. The picture didn't move, of course, this is not Harry Potter. But Carson could remember the scene clearly as if it had just happened. She could hear the sound of the breeze, her mother's soothing voice saying "you're doing so great, baby", her own laugh excited about being able to ride a bike. Excited by the freedom.