On Starting Over

It's been four years--FOUR YEARS--since I've written seriously, and almost exactly that since I posted anything at all here. So much has changed: two kids, a new state, two new jobs, several new hobbies. Let's start with a constant: running.

I started running about the time of my last post. The previous February, I was promoted. It was my first post-college full-time job, and I hated it. The complete truth is that I loved what I did, but I really disliked who I did it with. My bosses had made it quite clear that I wasn't their first choice, and each time they came in, they spent a couple of hours telling me and my coworker of the week (it was the worst revolving door position I've ever seen) what a terrible job we were doing of running the place. And I, I who had never cared all that much for anyone else's opinion of me, had started believing the story of my own worthlessness. I didn't have friends near to buoy me up because I worked long hours, so I mostly spent my time away from work sitting on the couch eating ice cream and escaping into fiction. Soon I gained twenty new friends on my hips. And each pound made me believe what I was being told just a little bit more.

I remember one night I was lying in bed crying and thinking, "Why am I so sad? I've never felt so sad in my life." Jason didn't know what to do, and I can only imagine how helpless he felt with a wife who was paralyzed by her own sadness. I couldn't tell him how to help me because I didn't know what was wrong. But that night, I realized that the problem went beyond my unhappiness at work: it wasn't that I hated my job, but that I'd started hating myself. I'd bought into the rhetoric I was hearing at work that I was boring, stupid, and completely unproductive. And I wasn't doing anything to get a second opinion: I was completely neglecting not only my relationships with people who loved me, but also my relationship with God. And that was the killer. As long as I'd been secure in His love, it didn't matter what other opinions were expressed.

So the next morning, I ran a quarter mile and began to love myself again. It started as a way to lose those 20 pounds (and let's be honest, get hopped up on endorphins) but I found that what I really needed was the sense of accomplishment I felt when I ran. Endurance is something humans are built for (have you read Born to Run? You really, really should) but that doesn't make running easy, especially when your adult life has been primarily composed of sitting and reading. So every run was an accomplishment for me, and it still is. Running helped me climb out of the hole I'd willingly climbed into when I started believing what other people thought of me. I've only stopped running for pregnancy and injury.

That first quarter-mile run was one of the best decisions I've made as an adult. The verdict is out on other decisions I've made (letting the two year old play in a bucket of flour, for instance), but I'm hoping a return to writing will be one of the better ones.

Raining and Pouring

Jason got a job this week, after being unemployed for six months. Unless you've spent six months wondering how you were going to pay rent, insurance, tuition, and still eat, it would be hard to understand how I feel right now.

He texted me with the news on Monday, just before my eleven am class. I heard the little tinkle of notification and thought, "I'd better turn that off before my next class." And then I read the message: "I got a job." The brevity, I admit, annoyed me. This is the kind of news you want to shout about, but also be as specific about as possible. So I called him, which, if you know me well, you know is a big thing. I avoid talking on the phone at all costs.

"A real job?" I asked. He'd been working temp work off and on, whenever there was something for him to do at a construction site, which is how we had managed to scrape by for the past half year.

"Yep."

"Like, a real job? A permanent job?"

"Yep."

And that's when I let myself feel the relief and the joy. The worry had been getting worse and worse the last few weeks. When Jason first lost his job, I was confident that everything would work out, that he would find another job, that we would be able to pay our bills and save money to move back home in April. But the months passed, and we were saved by miracles every month at rent time. To be honest, I'd held on to my confidence until the past two weeks. I just kept hearing about how bad the economy was, and watching businesses and banks collapse, and I started thinking that if Jason couldn't find a job when the economy wasn't as bad, how was he supposed to find one now, when companies like Circuit City are going out of business?

The reversal of roles was sort of comical to me. When we were eating dinner on Saturday, I'd started to melt down. I like to think that I have a pretty high stress tolerance. I usually work best under pressure, and I'd held it together for almost six months. But suddenly, I couldn't take it. I was worried about how we were going to pay rent in two weeks, how we were going to pay back the short-term loan for my tuition this semester (which is currently the reason my parents don't know I have a blog. After all, there are some things you shouldn't tell my dad until after it's all over), how things were going to work out with the speeding ticket I got last year (long story), and how I was going to handle 5 English/editing classes in this, my last semester of college. Oh yeah. And I'm supposed to be looking for potential employers back in Washington for when I graduate in April. Right.

Suddenly, Jason was the one with all the reassuring confidences. And I suddenly realized how he had been feeling all those times when he would slip into a melencholy mood that I couldn't pull him out of. Even if you know in your head that yes, everything will be okay--after all, we're two intelligent people who can find our way out of a mess--it's a lot harder to believe it in that emotional part of me I call my heart.

So when Jason finally explained the details, and I finally believed that it was real, I realized that I had never really felt relief and gratitude before. Corny, but true.

Oh, and the speeding ticket thing turned out okay, too. According to my driving record, that was merely a bad dream. So it's been a week of good news and sighs of relief. Hurrah!