Jennifer Carroll is a 21 year old actor and writer. She first began writing for the Uxbridge Cosmos in 2007 when she had the opportunity to share her experiences as a Canadian ambassador for an international conference for women in Dubai. At the beginning of 2008, she moved to Ireland to pursue a career in theatre and film. Far From Home is her monthly account on living and working in Dublin.
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A quarter of a century
It came. It went. I survived.
The big 2-5. The quarter century. The hallowed, terrifying landmark that turns you into a real-life adult.
I have never minded getting older. The aging process, and the dread and fear it instills in my peers, never bothered me. The inevitability of the passing of time never struck me as a reason for upset. In fact, I often tell people how much I look forward to my thirties (when I am sure I'll have my life all perfectly in order and possess so much wisdom and self awareness that on the last eve of my twenties, I shall behold some striking, elusive wisdom as I welcome in my thirtieth year, transforming me into the picture of serenity… right?).
However, as I saw my 25th looming on the horizon, I was suddenly struck with it: I was turning 25. Twenty. Five. I've been out of college for half a decade, and lived and travelled across an ocean. But what have I done? What have I accomplished? They are hard questions that sit atop a slippery slope, and thinking too hard on them can trip you up at the crest of that slope. With every martini I made all month, for every plate I cleared and every service charge I added to every table, the questions burned white hot in my mind. They followed me through split shifts and last calls, through double sittings and over bookings. They began to haunt me, lacing the edges of my pay cheques and the borders on my weekly schedules.
But then I come home. Body tired, patience tried, I spread out a script on my kitchen table. Below my window, the nightclub rages loudly, but I sit in some odd calm, and begin to dissect the inner workings of a mysterious and compelling woman. I press her words into my mind, and my unraveling edges begin to smooth. I delve into the complicated facets of her life, and I smile with the challenge before me, and the pleasure that hard work brings for something you love. My emptied soul begins to fill. Her ornate prose delights my mouth as I speak the words and the quietness in the space between lines gives me steely pride.
Lucy Maud Montgomery is a spectacularly complicated and compelling woman, and I have again been given the opportunity to bellow life into her words on stage this summer. She was a woman who held onto hulking ambition with desperate and determined fingers. Her 'Alpine Path' was steep and the terrain dangerous, and yet she climbed to her peak, unwilling to forfeit her right at the top no matter how many blunders she made along the way.
So I sit at my little table in my little flat in the wee hours of the morning, and I think to myself: I'm turning 25. I have seen more failure than success, more anonymity than recognition, more doubt than surety, but I'm nearly 25. And at the end of each agonizing day, I get to sit and engulf myself in the things I love.
So my birthday came and went. I was flooded with well wishes and love and gifts and thoughtfulness. But on the day, I was an island, stranded and untouchable. For I was contemplating how lucky I am to do what I do, in any capacity. I would walk for hours through sheets of drenching rain and piercing wind for one moment in the warm, enveloping sun. You cannot know what you have until you live without it. And as midnight slipped by and my 25th birthday passed out of my present and into the retreating distance, I look forward to the horizon again, this time with eager eyes. I cannot wait until I'm 30.
