Not into you by Charlotte Byrd

Author:Charlotte Byrd [Byrd, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Byrd Books
Published: 2020-06-08T18:30:00+00:00

24

Over coffee, I find out that Simon’s from the UK. I detected a slight accent, but apparently he grew up in New York and Dubai, where his dad headed some petrol engineering division. His family now lives in London. Simon’s a junior and he’s studying design. He likes to sketch and draw outside because “that’s where life is,” he says.

Simon’s so open about his art, about his purpose in life, that I suddenly feel like I’m in the closet. Like I’m not being honest about who I am. Like I’m living a lie. Perhaps I am. So, I decide to change that.

“So, what about you? What do you do?” he asks. I’m struck by his choice of words. He doesn’t ask what I’m trying to do, what I’m planning on doing when I grow up, what I’m majoring in. Instead, he asks what I do. As if I’m not in some transitional phase of my life. As if I’m actually embodying my true self right now.

“I’m a writer,” I say. It’s the first time I’ve ever said those words out loud. I didn’t say “I’m an aspiring writer” or “I’m planning on becoming a writer.” I feel liberated. I’m out. I’m not hiding who I am. The sentence is so simple and elegant and it has taken me eighteen years to formulate it and embody it. To admit to the world, and to myself, that that’s who I am.

I look at Simon. He shrugs. Accepts it. Like it’s no big deal.

“That’s cool,” he says.

Yes, it is.

Over coffee, Simon and I find out that we have a lot in common. It’s weird that we do since we’ve had such different upbringings. I guess parents can be very similar no matter the culture or where they reside in the world. Simon’s close to his parents; they talk every other day, but they are not happy about his choice of career.

“Growing up, my father always told me that he wanted me to do whatever would make me happy. Except that, to him, that meant that I should pursue engineering. Like him.”

I know exactly what he’s talking about.

“He was genuinely distressed when I started painting in high school. He thinks museums are some place you go on vacation just to say you did, but for no other reason. But for me, I felt this euphoria that first time I saw the Dying Gaul in Rome. It was the most beautiful thing I’d seen up to that point and it just touched me on this instinctual level. I was fourteen and I knew that no matter what I did, I wanted to do something that would make other people feel like I did when I saw that sculpture.”

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