Today is my last day at my first full time job in eleven years.
I have been there for a month.
Thirty four days, give or take, depending on how we are counting, and by the end of today, it will be over.
I had good reason to leave. I know I did.
Still.
There is something deeply humbling about quitting the first full time job you’ve had in eleven years after only a month. Even when you know it is the right thing to do. Even when you can explain it. Even when you can defend it.
It still leaves you standing there thinking:
What the hell am I doing?
Because I have no idea.
My kids are doing the thing kids do, which is age, apparently, with wild abandon and absolutely no regard for the fact that I am still not fully recovered from the preschool era.
Preschool was where I found some of my very closest friends. Women I cannot believe I didn’t know before motherhood. And I mean that with the purest possible intention. I can honestly say it feels like I’ve known them all my life.
But alas, they’ve only known me as a mama.
And my husband, my dear, loving, endlessly patient husband, is about to suffer his own particular fate at the end of September, because all my favorite fictional characters are coming back into my world.
He is, of course, wonderful.
He is kind. He is funny. He is supportive. He is an excellent father. He has loved me through approximately 22 years of my nonsense and has somehow continued to show up for more.
But.
He is not Xaden.
And unfortunately for him, Xaden is fictional, impossibly brooding, devastatingly attractive, magically powerful, and has absolutely no responsibilities involving loading the dishwasher.
So the competition is not exactly fair.
If you don’t get that reference, I suppose we can still be friends.
But consider this your warning.
And because I know my mother is reading this, that is all I am going to say about that.
So here I am.
On my last day.
Eleven years after I stepped away from full time work, and one month after stepping back into it, I am somehow stepping right back out again.
I don’t really know where to begin anymore.
And, thankfully, I don’t know where I’ll end either.
I think I’ve decided I’ve had a midlife crisis every year since turning forty. For those keeping track, I will be forty five this upcoming January.
Forty five.
And I feel no more in the know, settled, or certain of anything than I did five years ago.
Maybe less.
Rather, I’m sitting here with this fortified little blog, and it feels like the blog is the cabinet, but there are no files.
The drawers are empty.
I haven’t filled up a thing.
And I don’t know why.
That might be the part that scares me most.
Because I have always had something to say.
Some story to tell.
Some observation to make.
Some ridiculous little corner of motherhood or marriage or womanhood to examine until I have turned it over so many times that I can see all the sides.
I’ve always been able to find the thread.
I’ve always been able to pull on it.
I’ve always been able to turn the thing that was bothering me, amusing me, breaking my heart, or making me laugh into something I could put into words.
And lately?
Nothing.
Or maybe not nothing.
Maybe too much.
Maybe there are so many things happening at once that I don’t know which one deserves a file.
The job.
The leaving.
The kids getting older.
The strange grief of realizing that the version of motherhood I spent eleven years inhabiting is changing whether I am ready or not.
The friendships I found because I became a mother.
The parts of myself I found somewhere along the way.
The parts I may have misplaced.
The parts I am still looking for.
And then there is this strange, increasingly loud question:
What now?
I have no idea.
I have literally run out of ideas.
Literal desperation has arrived at my doorstep.
And yet, in the middle of all of this completely unhinged uncertainty, there is one thing I keep coming back to.
I am vulnerable.
I share.
Sometimes to a fault.
Although I’m not entirely sure it is a fault.
I share the insecurity.
The dilemma.
The question.
The thing I am embarrassed to admit I’m thinking about.
The thing I haven’t figured out yet.
The obstacle before I know how I’m going to get around it.
I have always believed there is something valuable in saying:
Here. This is where I am.
Not because I have figured it out.
Because I haven’t.
Maybe that’s what this blog was always supposed to be.
Not a cabinet filled with perfectly organized files.
Maybe it is the place where I make the files.
One at a time.
A file about quitting a job after a month.
A file about turning forty five and realizing there is no magical age at which you suddenly understand your life.
A file about watching your children grow while simultaneously wanting to freeze time and scream, PLEASE SLOW DOWN.
A file about the women who became my people because we were all just trying to survive preschool pickup.
A file about marriage and books and fictional men who have somehow created entirely unreasonable expectations for real ones.
A file about starting over.
A file about not knowing.
A file about being wildly, spectacularly, inconveniently human.
Maybe I don’t need to know what comes next.
Maybe I just need to start writing down what is happening now.
And right now, what is happening is this:
I’m walking out the door.
I’m leaving a job.
I’m closing a chapter I thought was going to be something else.
And I am standing here, once again, with absolutely no idea what comes next.
Which is terrifying.
And maybe, just maybe, a little bit exciting.
Because if there is one thing I have learned in the last eleven years, it is that the best parts of my life have rarely arrived because I had everything figured out.
Motherhood didn’t.
Friendship didn’t.
Marriage certainly didn’t.
Writing didn’t.
And neither did I.
I just kept going.
I kept showing up.
I kept loving people.
I kept asking questions.
I kept trying again.
I kept writing.
Even when I didn’t know what I was writing toward.
So maybe this isn’t the end of something.
Maybe it is simply the next empty page.
And maybe empty pages aren’t evidence that we have nothing left to say.
Maybe they are an invitation.
So.
What now?
I guess this.
One file.
Then another.
And another.
And we’ll see what happens.
Because apparently, after forty five years of life, eleven years of motherhood, one month of employment, approximately 47 emotional crises, an unreasonable attachment to fictional men, and an entire cabinet full of empty drawers…
I still have some things to figure out.
Thank God.
Otherwise, what would I write about?
Leave a comment