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T H E W E N D Y P E R R I A M I N T E R V I E W |
| 07 | However rewarding the idea of striding out towards one’s own goals must be, surely that first step demands an incredible leap of faith? | "Oh yes. It took me years to achieve the life I
wanted, in the sense of being a writer. I wasted a lot of time, not just in advertising
but being a professional depressive! I was devastated by my loss of the Catholic faith and
I became addicted to tranquillisers and sleeping-pills. It’s all too easy to end up
as a ‘case’, and I think I only escaped by the skin of my teeth. So I know from
personal experience how many obstacles there are to being one’s true self. "When I was writing Second Skin, I talked to a wide range of people about their lives, and was surprised to find how many harboured secret ambitions or hankered after a completely different lifestyle. Yet all felt constrained by their families or circumstances. Our local solicitor, for example, always wanted to be an actor, but his parents were horrified at the idea and more or less dragooned him into law school. 30 years later, he’s a successful lawyer, but still a frustrated thespian. My chiropodist longs to be a writer, and has unpublished manuscripts in his drawer beneath his supplies of foam padding and corn plasters. But he daren’t quit the safety of his job. And a cab-driver confided to me that he’d love to throw everything up and go back-packing round the world, but how could he, with 3 children and a mortgage? "Sometimes, that ‘leap of faith’, as you put it, is simply not possible or practicable. But circumstances do change and we can keep watching for an opportunity to spring up and shout, ‘Yes, now!’" |
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