Deeply unhappy at home but no idea how to express that I was feeling that way. It seemed impossible after all, how could I be unhappy? I'd just gone back to work, had started getting my body back, had a cute house, great friends, I wasn't single and I thought I was in love.
That sounds shitty when I say it that way. I was in love with him. That's true.
When I wasn't working, I didn't long for much but work. That year "off" was really hard on me both emotionally and physically. I guess I just stopped wanting anything but to go back to work and every failed job interview or resume I sent out without getting an answer was devastating. I was pretty sure I was never going to work again actually. I'd just about given up. The week I went in to interview to work at Wild, I had also applied at Starbucks, a jewelry store, a personal assistant, a receptionist... I'd even taken a job I thought was going to be rad at a "publicists" agency, which turned out to be nothing more than a bunch of spoiled rich kids playing "office." (Yeah I said it, wanna fight?) I left after two days.
Under all of this stress, this depression, this rudderlessness, I didn't notice that back at the ranch things were going sour in my love life. Because I didn't have the energy to worry. It was there. He hadn't left in the middle of the night and taken the cat. I was so focused on getting a job again and getting "me" back, that it was almost all I had energy for. Beyond the crying jags and the three or four trips I took to do things I never had time for while working just to do SOMETHING.
So I got the job at Wild. And the fog lifted and I started... I don't know mingling with my kind again. I didn't know how STARVED I was to talk about radio, to talk about music, to just talk about bitchy office bull-ish until there was one day I was at work and I made my boss laugh or something. We had started telling radio stories. In a weird way me and the boys in the back became the Three Amigos or something, because there we were in our little pirate ship doing what we love at any means neccesary. I don't know who did what first but by the time I went home for Thanksgiving, I knew I had a solid foundation back home. Friends. Brothers. People that opened my eyes to two things: I am not that bad and I am alive.
By Christmas, I knew... things weren't ever going to be the way they were again at home, no matter how hard I tried. Because I was someone else again. I was me, and not this defeated little thing. I'll tell you right now I walked into my last job not knowing shit. I knew how to talk on the radio and how to boss my boss around (ha ha, kinda) but not really how to do my actual job. I learned on the fly, on fire, with a team of cheerleaders and from one of the coolest mofo's I've ever known. It was very SoCal touchy feely but they let me in, they held me up and taught me everything they knew. Changed my life really. By Christmas I knew that my heart had changed it's mind and I had to do something with myself.
I didn't know last Thanksgiving, that a year later I'd be here, in Chico, hundreds of miles from everyone who made this possible, doing something I had always said I could do (and did do for awhile) and doing it better than a lot of people will ever let on. I have the professional gig I always wanted more or less. I made friends with lightening fast speed, I am seriously shocked myself, I'm a goober, I don't even want to hang out with me. I tried so many new things and met so many great people and formed my own little radio family up here as well.
And then there's the happiest accident of all, Ben. Last year I wouldn't see myself here, getting ready to go out to tacos with my boyfriend on a random Thursday night because we've been so good living off of boxed meals and staying home (or homes I guess, we don't live together) for over a week! There's a lot to be said for this boy, but the most important part of it is, he sees me for exactly who I am. He knows when I'm broke or simply too overwhelmed to function and he just fixes it. Brings me groceries because he knows I'll just not eat before trying to figure out how to go to the grocery store on 10 bucks, helps me with the dishes, brought me a vaccuum cleaner when I couldn't get mine back from the coast... I don't ask, he just does. I never thought of myself as the girlfriend of a grad student, a teacher, a hydrologist, a scientist, a beer snob who loves to eat Ethnic meals, a lover of music and movies who gives the best hugs in Chico? Forget it, I never would've imagined it.
Doesn't mean it's not awesome. Doesn't mean I'm not happy.
A year ago I was lost and a group of people took me in and gave me the tools to find my own way home. I may still be traveling, in fact I know I am, but I'm closer than I was before.
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