ruins

My life in only the past month has changed significantly. It has put me through trials I couldn’t have imagined going through, brought on colossal waves of anxiety, fear, and sadness, but somehow I’ve persisted. Somehow I’ve found myself, still in a pool of uncertainty, but with a newfound thrill for life.

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” A cliche. A phrase that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. A phrase I imagine printed on a poster, hung on the ugliest beige wall, beneath fluorescent lights in some sort of waiting area I’ve tried desperately to avoid. But, perhaps it’s the truth.

Around this time last month I received an enticing offer for a new job— one that was prestigious and high-paying and what most would consider a once in a lifetime opportunity. A day later, before I had officially informed anyone, I received a promotion at my current job, a stepping stone that came with a decent pay raise. But, to strip a very eventful story of much of the drama (primarily because I think it’s safer not to discuss it), my offer got rescinded only hours before my exit interview. In an act I’m fully grateful for, my current job agreed to extend me for two months while I found an alternative.

This, of course, is the primary story line. This shuffle to find a job, which has accumulated in four scheduled interviews in the upcoming week or two, has left me uncertain about my future. Yet, it’s also uncovered new opportunities— positions for which I would have never applied had I not been in a stress-induced scramble— the possibility of new skills, relationships, a change in career fields, and maybe even a physical move. But that’s not the only thing that has been affecting my life lately.

One of my guinea pigs, the pets I’ve had ever since I first graduated college and got my first real job, grew gravely sick this weekend. I couldn’t afford to take her to the vet knowing that there is a possibility that my income could be diminished soon, so I prepared myself to bury her. I cancelled my plans, stayed home crying, praying, and syringe feeding her the last of the medicine her sister had been prescribed only a month earlier. But miraculously, she pulled through.

For a moment, I worried one of my biggest fears would come true: that I’d have to pick up a dying corpse and put it in a box by myself. Why is that one of my biggest fears? Maybe because I’m scared of dead things. Or maybe because when I got her nearly five years ago I imagined that I’d be somewhere different. That I’d have someone to help me pick up the pieces when things got hard. But I don’t.

This leads me to one final issue, and that is the topic of boys. There has been one particular boy in my life since November. I can genuinely say that he is unlike anyone I’ve dated before, and in a good way. Yet, it took me time to get used to him, and I was briefly distracted by the return of an old fling during our tenure. This, as you could probably assume, made me seem a bit distant when he wanted to be close. But by the time I felt ready, which was as recently as my job offer being rescinded, things were coming to a close.

A final closing thought: I’ve been having a lot of them. Though there have been many days in the recent past where tens of hours appeared in a blurry, nightmarish state, there have also been an unprecedented amount of clarity, an unprecedented amount of gratitude, and a returning belief of love. These thoughts, emerging during one of my darkest hours, are what urged me to write this. The thoughts, the memories, and the gratitude that has emerged from the ruins, I think should be detailed. And that is what I plan to do.