I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

by Milarca C. Kruse

The Universe sometimes plays cruel jokes on its dwellers. You want what you cannot get. You want to become what you cannot be. You love what you cannot do.

You go full circle and when you get to your destination, you realize you are worst off then when you started your journey.

I was an ugly, kinky curled, chubby, scary-smart, middle class child from Mexico City.

I was teased so relentlessly for my looks and my brains and my desire to please that I used to spend most of my recesses hiding on the roof of the school.

I rebuilt myself through anger. I became a rebel. Rage propelled me and made me make a billion mistakes and poor decisions throughout my life. I have been a ballerina, actress, choreographer, director, teacher, journalist, chef, exotic dancer, scientist, medical writer, and marketing professional.

And rarely if ever have I been happy.

I know how many degrees of unsaturation there are in benzene. I know how new functional groups add to aromatic compounds. I can tell what bacteria is the cause of someone's sore throat just from smelling their breath.

I started to study science because of the misguided belief that I could become a physician. I wanted to help the people who needed it the most. I thought being smart and passionate would be the necessary pre-requisites. I was so naïve. Physicians are not allowed into the medical profession because of how smart they are. They are selected because of how malleable and obedient they are.

Obedience and conformity are not my forte. Needless to say, I did not get into med school.

So I made something out of the leftovers. I became a medical writer in the pharmaceutical industry.

The pharmaceutical industry and science as a field are run by the girls that I was in that beginning. Homely, smart and scared. They retained all the insecurities they had in the playground and the building block of their egos is the belief that they are smarter than their better looking, less obedient counterparts.

I changed. God, in His infinite love of irony, decided to grant me in middle-age what I could not get when I needed it. I am finally beautiful, stylish, secure and glamorous. And He forgot to take away my brain.

I am now the target of rumors, injustice and cruelty from the same people I used to be.

I am that pretty cheerleader who went to prom with the most popular boy. And I am not stupid or quiet. And they strive to make me miserable. My credibility as a professional is incompatible with my ability to remain human and utterly challenged by the bounce in my step.

They punish me for my face and my hair and my breasts. They hate that I do not look like my clothes came out of the sales racks at Sears in Peoria circa 1984.

And I ask myself, what does make me happy?

Finding a Chanel bracelet for 59.99 at Off-5th makes me happy. Reproducing an outfit from Vogue with clothes from Target and thrift stores brings me joy.

Living among people who are not afraid to curse or hug or cry or love when they feel like it because it might be perceived as inappropriate makes me happy. Dealing with humans that utter expressions like "interface with internal clients", "verbal written communications" or "office culture" makes me want to metamorphose in front of their eyes into Sid Vicious or Snoop Dog or the lead singer from Twisted Sister to knock them back into reality and slap them into embracing the humanity they left behind in elementary school before they sold their soul to corporate America.

I watch people like Jay and Austin Scarlett in "Project Runway", Karl Lagerfeld with his fans, Jean Paul Gaultier in his sailor outfits, Betsy Johnson in her tutus and the guys from Heatherette with their unabashed adoration of Hello Kitty and neon colors. All of them in their shameless, glorious, eccentric splendor and I weep with frustration and sorrow and wish for their luck. I want to make art out of heaps of chiffon and miles of tulle and mines of rhinestones. And be loved for who I am.

But I owe thousands of dollars in student loans. And I do not know how to sew, or drape or draft.

And the only answer that I can come up with is a Gerald Manley Hopkins poem that I had to read for my "A" levels:

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced - fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him

... At least someone understood, even if it was a priest almost a hundred years ago.

Copyright © Milarca C. Kruse 2005