It was with a rather unencumbered mind and spirit that I rejoined the field two weeks after being severed from the R. Allen Stanford newspaper company.  I was now this glorious thing called a freelancer. Within two short weeks, my time at the Stanford newspaper and my newfound unemployment felt like ages ago.  By the end of August 2009, I was closing my eyes and spreading my arms wide with alarming frequency.

I felt “dirty”- in a good way…like some child who’d snuck off to play in a mud puddle, much to the consternation of frowning adults.  I felt like some renegade who was fighting the law, going against the natural order of things… and looking quite fit to win.  Everyday, without fail, I woke up as buoyant as balloons-filled with hope the likes of which I’d forgotten myself capable of consistently feeling…or of hoping to consistently feel. And it was while I was feeling dirty and hopeful that the stench attempted to creep up on me….The stench was strong in the way that those men’s colognes are- with that sweet lure on the surface. But, I knew that beneath the surface lay suffocating capabilities.

My renewed hope had not blinded me to a little fact I’d come to accept.  I knew that complications always exist- in worlds free and not so free.  In that first month, as unencumbered as I felt, I never deceived myself into thinking that I’d fully escaped my previous world. I knew I was being watched.  I knew I couldn’t create a world and people just leave me be, especially when the world I’d created or migrated to wasn’t faring too badly. I knew I wasn’t being paranoid or thinking too highly of myself.

I could try, as much as I wanted, to convince myself that I would be left alone because I really was no threat to anyone. I could tell myself that there was really nothing anyone could do or wanted to do despite how much they watched and waited. I could be self-depreciating; convince myself that I was unimportant in the grand scheme of things. But that would just be wishful thinking.

If I’d learnt but one thing, it was that just being alive qualified you as an important person to be checked up on and harassed.  

And so it began. Like I knew it would.  The comments on my productivity. One curious onlooker desired to know how I was managing to do “so much”. It was a huge effort not to respond “merely by being alive”.  The comments on my productivity were followed by caring queries.  One wanted to know if I liked what I was now doing. I figured they couldn’t see the Cheshire Cat’s grin on my face.

Another, in a very roundabout fashion, attempted to know my new income by asking if I was making enough to survive. I resisted the urge to make that person stay awake at nights wondering at his/her own fortunes. Yet another wanted to know if I’d heard about the latest happenings at my former workplace. I wondered silently if I- a happy working girl- ever indicated that I was and would ever be the least bit curious.

As the mostly insincere queries after my well-being increased, so did the stench grow.  I received one rather bizarre call from one of the male employees at one particular new job of mine. It turned out to be a call as ludicrous as the many ludicrous things a working girl has to put up with in this field....

Coming Next Tuesday: Evidence of Cologne.