Ever since I first moved to my house, I have been receiving mail for a girl named “Michelle Corley”.
Michelle got invited to trunk showings, try-outs, and Girl Scouts. A few years later, colleges started recruiting her. After a suitable time, credit card companies welcomed her to the world of adulthood, attained by graduation. Job recruiters solicited her resume.
While my own life wildly careened through trials and tribulations, Michelle became a young woman, a successful academic, and then a professional.
Today, Michelle Corley attained another pinnacle, a milestone in her path to living legacy status.
She received her first mailing from an Estate Planner. Oh, Michelle! You’ve done so well, they want to write your will and put your money into a trust!
I’ve come to think of Michelle as having attained everything that I aspired to accomplish. I’ve fantasized about her credit rating, the type of car she drives, and whether she wears those three-inch girl shoes that I’ve yearned to cram on my arthritic toes. Does she get manicures? Dine on the Plaza? To what club has she chosen to belong? What did she wear to her high school reunion? Were the other women jealous of her spouse? Her accomplished children?
I carried today’s letter around the house before setting it on the table by the front door. I used to put her mail out to be returned to the senders. The letter carrier would take it away, but it would always come back. It’s addressed to this house, after all. For a while, I threw it away unopened; then I tried opening it and reading about the events to which Michelle got invited. She never gets any personal mail; it’s just businesses, or schools, or financial institutions. But she never gets bad news. She’s never gotten a summons, or a ticket, or a thick packet of admonishments from the Internal Revenue Service.
I want her life. She’s the girl I always wanted to be. Only success; only good news; only people clamoring for her attention, her patronage, her presence. This elusive girl, this Michelle: I don’t know where or who she is, or even if she exists. But I am more than a little jealous of her.
It’s the second day of the twenty-ninth month of My Year Without Complaining. I’m still me. That’s okay; though some days, I’d like to be someone else. In the meantime, life continues.
