Two weeks ago I lost my job. This is a chronical of the events proceeding.
But even while employed, my life was anything but pulled together. Sure, I had a steady, dependable, 9am-5pm turned 8am-10pm turned Wait, People LEAVE Their Jobs? job. But I also had a pile of laundry that slowly had become one giant patchwork area rug, a stack of ConEd bills so high it's amazing I had running water, and the tendency to break out in hives at the thought of finding time to buy toilet paper en masse. A break from the rat race gave me a sense of calm and an opportunity to "figure it out" - a phrase that has since become some sort of sick mantra. I've mumbled it to myself while scouring new locations to live and new employment opportunities - like I'm Madonna reinventing myself for the next album. I've screamed it at my mother on the phone during her daily cross examination of my "plan" - meant to be helpful, while really just stress-eating inducing. I've confidently declared it to friends at dinner over pitying looks after which they offer to foot the bill. I've said it so many times that it's taken on a life of it's own. It's become it's own entity. Figuring It Out. It's a mythological creature I've invented. It's a weird theatrical play that I'm starring in with no memory of my lines. Figuring it out has translated to mean to me anything but what I imagine it's intended to mean. Figuring it out is what has happened below:
My first reaction upon losing my job was to turn to Google. I Googled variations on: "WWJD...if he were a 25 year old unemployed Brooklynite with a dog and an addiction to eating to support?" and "If I run away to South Carolina, will Ryan Gosling build me a house and grow an obnoxiously long hipster beard and take me on canoe rides?" and "No but seriously, Google. I need answers." After wiping my search history I threw myself into performing rigorous maintenance and upkeep of my apartment to take my mind off it all. Since I'm anything but a homemaker and would store my sweaters in the oven if my roommates didn't have a weird habit of baking, most specifically "maintenance" and "upkeep" consisted of Swiffering some surfaces chosen at random while wearing a sweatshirt as a dress with a glass of wine in hand at 3pm on a Tuesday. The worst part of the outside world is the necessity for pants. And being consistently sober. So I capitalized on the fact that neither of these applied during my first day of unemployment. Catching myself in the reflection of my wine bottle, I wondered if this officially made me an alcoholic - only to realize if it DID make me an alcoholic, that would at least be a full time position in life; something I currently lacked.
After surviving my first day with no purpose, I decided to take a look at the state of my finances. The harsh metaphor of my bank account as a rapidly depleting well with no source of replenishment and no rain clouds in sight sparked in me the inverse of a normal, responsible person's reaction. I went on a spending spree, buying items so unrelated and out of character that I can only blame the 5 stages of grief: Denial, Desperation, Boredom, Day-Drinking, Soul Cycle. I bought a giant soy candle that makes my Brooklyn apartment smell like an expensive lumberjack in a Ralph Lauren commercial. I paid $45 to go into a dark room and mount a stationary bike in the middle of the freakin day just to pedal to Taylor Swift songs on beat alongside women with rocks on their fingers the size of my eyeball. I ate $12 granola outside at a cafe while I paged through my new coffee table book about panthers. Did I mention I don't own a coffee table? Or a couch? And lastly, I started to fall in love.
They say love arrives at your doorstep when you least expect it. I say love arrives at your doorstep in complicated packaging after a strange man in an ugly brown uniform knocks on your door scaring the shit out of your SWF self in the middle of the day. You break a nail trying to open the damn thing only to find out it was supposed to go to your neighbors' house.
But it was dropped to me nonetheless, and it was the happiest thing to happen to me in a very long time. Here was this beautiful man who served as a beautiful distraction from all the confusion I was weeding through. He gave me confidence and unbiased clarity. He believed in me when I was inwardly weary. I was so accustomed to knowing it all - to putting trust into my career and myself, and here I was without a career and slowly investing trust into someone else. And it scared me. They'll tell you that love will come when you're not looking for it, but they won't tell you what to do with it when it's there. They won't tell you the messy, complicated bits when there are more questions than answers and more fantasy than reality. There's noway of knowing if the risk will be worth it. And even though this particular package wasn't mine, and even though maybe it wasn't Love with a capital "L", or really love at all, I'm so lucky it was mine for awhile.
So I'm still figuring it out - in my own way. So far I HAVE figured out that you're going to get derailed sometimes and it's okay to have no idea what's next - it's actually damn liberating. And if you're lucky enough, you'll meet someone at the right time who believes it when you don't.
I've also figured out that if you keep registering for Netflix under different email addresses, you can get quite a few months of free trials, peanut butter and jelly is a perfectly acceptable meal, and everything is going to be just fine.
