Dignity
Disclaimer: I do not own characters or settings from Degrassi. Just the stuff between the proper nouns.
Dignity
Chapter 1: No One
I was pacing.
"I can't believe I wasted a whole year on this guy!"
"El, I thought you were okay with this," Marco sighed and half-closed the lid to his laptop, obviously concerned, but irritated at the same time. "You seemed so cool and collected about ending it with him."
"Yeah, I know, Marco. But I go to The Core every day and he comes waltzing in as if nothing ever happened. How does he have the gall to –"
"Look, El, I know it's cold, but maybe you need to start pretending nothing happened either. He's not trying to be a bastard…it's called dignity. And you should try it sometime."
"Ha! Dignity…that's something Mr. Cradle-Robber one semester and I-prefer-older-women the next semester took from me long ago. It's not like he cheated on me just once, Marco. He cheated on me twice. And somehow – somehow he tricked me into forgiving him for it. That in itself is humiliating! How could I have gone back to him?"
"Tell me about it," Marco replied in a dry yet miserable tone, referring to his turbulent past with Dylan.
"And the worst thing is, Marco, I've slaved at The Core all freaking year long. And so much of what I was slaving for was attention from Jessie. And maybe a little of that 'dignity' you were referring to. But nooo, to him I was just 'Frosh.' 'Frosh,' 'Frosh,' 'Frosh.' Do we even call it that in Canada?"
"Frosh week?" He shivered. "Uh, yeah, I think that's a reality everywhere." Marco sat back in his chair and sipped at his tea.
"Well…whatev. I just wish that my personal and professional lives weren't so intimately bound up with one another. It makes life really difficult."
"Well then, Eleanor," Marco said with a flourish, setting down his mug and standing up as he took both my hands in his, "I'd say that you…are on the right track. With Jessie out of the picture your professional life is all yours and no one else's. And your personal life…well that's for you to know and me to find out, hm?"
I smirked a little at this humorous interjection. "Thanks, Marco. Now you get back to your…whatever you're doing, and I'll go…practice my Pulitzer Prize acceptance speech in front of the mirror."
Marco flopped back in his chair and reached for his laptop. "You go, girl."
Upstairs, the mirror was waiting, but I had no desire to look at myself at the moment. My laptop was waiting, with a half-hearted, half-written story about the students' union elections. My textbooks were also waiting, untouched since mid-February and taunting me with their secret: exams were starting in about a week. "Oh no," I groaned. "Not you, again. Stop looking at me with those puppy-dog eyes!" Honestly, between The Core and Jessie I hadn't exactly been keeping my grades up this year, minus in my Journalism class, for which most of my Core stories could double as assignments. The reality was, university was hard, and I hadn't yet gotten the hang of it, let alone the hang of the whole "adult relationship" thing. Marco was right, my professional life was all mine, but it was the only thing that was all mine, and as far as my ego was concerned, I'd pretty much flushed it down the toilet the day I "interviewed" Caitlin in front of 400 people – including Jessie, fellow journalism classmates, freaking university administrators, and who knows how many future professors were in that crowd. "Urgh…stupid, stupid, stupid," I chastised myself, hitting my forehead with my palm.
I realized then that I was indeed peering into the mirror at myself. This was clearly a girl that did not know what she was doing. Journalism was no longer just a hobby for me, it had become a role, a performance. The cutesy, Caitlin-esque haircut, the Starbucks lattes, the long, stylish black trench coat. I certainly wasn't your freaky high school goth girl anymore, not with these slightly yuppified clothes and the sell-out-to-the-first-guy-you-see attitude that had sunk me from Day One on campus. I was Ellie Nash, first-year journalism student. With that title came a certain amount of prestige, a certain set of expectations, a certain dignity, if you will, that had sucked me into a dark well of certainty whose rock bottom only signalled bare uncertainty. In high school I knew who I was. By carving out a certain niche at The Core and in Jessie's life I thought I could easily define who I was – that being a young, sophisticated professional – at university as well. But this girl in the mirror – I didn't know her. I had been trying all year to pretend that I knew what I was doing – and doing such a great job of it that I had even fooled myself.
"I can't wait for the year to be over," I muttered, ignoring my textbooks and moving for my laptop.
I plopped down on my bed and stretched my fingers, calling to mind the details and anecdotes I had researched over the past few days about the trials and tribulations of SU election time. I was focusing on the marketing strategies of various SU exec candidates, and was struck by how silly some of them were: some of my favourite posters read, "I won't make you wear pants!" and "This man knows how to use a keyboard." Not everyone was born to be a leader, I guess. And maybe not everyone was born to be a sophisticated professional either. But at university, if you weren't one of those, you were nothing. You were no one.
"I can't wait for the year to be over," I repeated, and began typing.