Intimidating? Likely intimidated.

CONTINUED:

INT. MEETING ROOM – DAY 

WOMAN enters.

She scans and smiles.

She finds the edge of the room and folds herself into it. 

Everyone else relaxes.

CUT TO:

~~

“You’re just a troublemaker.”

The brief didn’t require any more creative sorcery than the artists performed every day. It was stupid, not impossible. Carrying my ever-present assumption that mediocrity is visible to everyone, I walked that brief back to the Chief Sub, took one look over his shoulder and offered him a solution. Suffice to say my initiative was heard as insolence and I was sent back to my desk with a 20-minute deadline.

Somewhere between brief and sign-off, a perforated border found its way around the edge so my tiny graphic looked exactly like what it was: a postage stamp. His ego proved remarkably resistant to the irony and “troublemaker” rang out across the newsroom with the subtlety of a fire alarm. Of course, only one of us was invited to explain our attitude to the Editor.

~~

“Enthusiasm is not enough, Natalie.”

Delivered with the kind of sneer used for self-preservation by a woman further along in years and further up the corporate food chain than me. Over the top of her glasses, using my full name, she dropped the unmistakably familiar reminder that I should get back in my box.

I had overstepped and I lacked the required skills. Wanting was pointless when all I had to back myself was resourcefulness, proactivity and boundless energy. There was no room for discussion, her verdict came with no clarification. It did, however, come with a side of “Who do you think you are?” and a meeting with my boss. 

~~

“You’re an upstart little shit!”

I swallowed my laugh out of reflex, not respect. The “shhh” in shit was hissed, maniacally, through clenched teeth by my then mother-in-law. Fortunately it was during a phone call and she couldn't see the corners of my mouth curling into a smirk.

I can't remember the argument anymore; time's taken the details. But I absolutely remember the label. Upstart. Partly because it was intended as an insult. Partly because she spectacularly misjudged what would offend me. Mostly because she named something I knew I wasn’t supposed to be proud of.

~~

By that point in my life, the script had begun rubbing me up the wrong way. If I had a penis, such qualities would’ve meant accolades. Ambitious. Renegade. Visionary. Same disruption, different verdict. He’s rewarded where she’s shamed and sent to the Principal, so often by other women who’d learned the script and continued to mistake it for wisdom.

Interestingly, my decades-long default has been romanticising myself as chronically misunderstood. It was a far more flattering story. One that preserved my goodness, protected my innocence and let me stay pleasantly aghast at other people’s conclusions. But beneath the faux woundedness simmered an inconvenient truth. 

I refuse to settle for mediocrity. I ask why more times than is practical, it’s rare I don’t have something to add, and I’m a complete pain in the arse to anybody who values the status quo. Enthusiasm, tenacity and wonder are hard-wired. That trio is the Magic Pudding I’ve been serving for years. It’s fed every good thing I’ve ever built, including me, and there’s no sign of it ever running out.

Fuck yes, I’m an upstart.
I am difficult, bossy, cocky, and I am a troublemaker.
I knew it then. I accept it now.

This mid-life reckoning has gone well beyond an ignorable chafe. Now, it’s exhausted clenched fists with white knuckles and bleeding palms, and the humbling realisation I’ve been the one holding both ends of the rope. 

The problem has always been the script, the irony is how well I performed my damned lines. Ambitious, but not threatening. Confident, but endlessly reassuring. Sharp, never cutting. Every instinct dutifully curated until the niceness was flawless. My smirk, it seems, had impeccable judgement.

The problem was never being too much. Only pretending not to be.