Today I bumped into a former love rival and ended up sharing a latte moment with her. One, because I didn’t say no quick enough when she suggested it. And two, because, we used to work together and just seeing the obvious physical change in her; I was kind of curious about what she’d be up to, since the last time our paths crossed.
My how things have changed! When we first met, I was on the way up, or so I thought I was. She was a painfully shy, recently graduated wallflower, with a dodgy haircut, the major hots for my ‘soon to be boyfriend’ (it’s amazing where a mistletoe moment at the Christmas party will lead a girl to!) and a propensity to drink way too much at work do’s and end up going home with very unsuitable types, who treated her like crap.
While I have remained or retained my working girl ladder status as PA/struggling freelance journalist, taking a pitstop to pick up my degree; while still waiting for that all too elusive big break, she is a now Head of Marketing, super succesful, groomed to within a inch her life and with shoes to die for !
She is a confident leader and all round superwoman. So why did I have to meet up with her again with my hair resembling a haystack, dressed down in my jeans, farmer’s checked shirt and trainers!
As she reeled off her list of achievements in the last three years, which includes giving up drink for more dubious pleasures of wheatgrass shots (I thought only Sam drank that in Sex and the City, and only to win the affections of Smith!) it left me feeling a little...inadequate and disappointed in myself.
While she has climbed the corporate ladder, I have remained stagnant, regressing in fact to student status to pick up a qualification I was not ready to commit to when everyone else was, or at least had a rough idea of the value of having one.
“You know I used to be as jealous as hell of you” she said reflectively.
"Why?" I said genuinely surprised.Momentarily transformed from possessing the resigned slumped posture of a long-term underachiever to the upright stance of a beauty queen during her Ms Personality interview.
"Why? You were just so bloody happy all the time. Nothing touched you and even when you were hacked off, you were over it in like five minutes!” “Oh” I said quietly smiling.
It’s funny how we spend so much time comparing ourselves with others isn’t it? At the beginning of our latte moment I was almost ashamed of my ‘underachiever’ status.
By the time she’d finished telling me about the killer hours she works, the boyfriend she never sees, the baby she wants but it scared to take time off work to have and just generally hating where she's at in her life, well I felt like I wasn’t doing too badly really.
Onwards and upwards !
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