A Disclaimer (#2)

It has recently come to my attention (as it ought to have a while ago) that there are more people reading my blog than I like to pretend that there are. When I write my posts, I usually imagine my readership to be either my closest friends or perfect strangers, and not really anyone in between. But since that is clearly not the case and most of you are in reality casual acquaintances, I'm beginning to feel a tad bashful about the way I have conveyed myself over the past few months.

I went back and re-read several posts this afternoon and found myself wincing over some of the more melodramatic phrases and pessimistic outlooks. Certainly the emotion was genuine in these moments, but the posts don't necessarily convey how I am doing on the whole, on a day-to-day basis. I write to process my thoughts, and invariably the times when I most need to do this are days when I am not feeling incredibly optimistic about life. I don't think I'm as depressed as I make myself sound—at least I hope not.

It's a tricky business, writing a blog, especially when it's a blog basically all about me. If it feels uncensored to you, just imagine all the things I've deleted! Still, I should be more careful about what I'm offering to the scrutiny of the public eye. For those of you who haven't interacted with me in person recently, don't worry yourself over-much. My more hopeful moments just haven't been as interesting to write about thus far.

Welcome Back to Your Over-Active Mind

The house is empty and quiet, nestled under the first heavy snowfall of the season. No one is home but me and the dog, and possibly a hawk which found its way into our garage this morning. Outside in the yard, the snow glows a blueish light. I sit with my feet curled under me at the kitchen table, sipping a mug of tea, and watch as it fades with the sun. My FedEx uniform and Barnes and Noble business-casual clothes lie in layered piles on my bedroom floor, shed like snake skin. For once, I do not need them.

This is the moment I have been yearning for these past two weeks, I realize. This is the first afternoon since the beginning of December which I have had free to sit, think, drink tea. Collect myself.

I have not found it to be as restful as I dreamed.

In the past twelve days, I worked every day except Christmas for a minimum of eight hours, more frequently upwards of twelve or thirteen. I woke up at 5 am, worked at FedEx, changed in my Barnes & Noble clothes in the bathroom when my shift was done, drove straight to the mall, worked at the B&N cash register for 7 or 8 hours, drove home, shoveled some food into my mouth, fell into bed, and woke up shortly thereafter to do it all over again. I didn't have time to think. I didn't have time to clean to my room or run. I didn't talk to or see any friends. I barely had time to shower and eat. The primary reason I looked forward to Christmas this year was so that I could sleep in. Which I did. For a long time.

In some ways, despite the sleep deprivation and physical exhaustion, the crazy work schedule was nice. For a long time this fall, my introverted brain has been working overtime, analyzing every bit of my life, turning it over, worrying about it, giving me no peace. The days crawled along. These past two weeks, on the other hand, flew by. I shut down all my unnecessary mental operations and focused exclusively on the task at hand: counting change, scanning packages, getting from one house to the next. All other thoughts blurred into the background. This was especially convenient given that there are a few things I'm trying hard not to think about right now. Each minute of my day was spoken for, so there was no reason to consider how I should spend it. I had no options.

Though it came with its own stressful situations, this time has been a mini-vacation from other less tangible anxieties. A little escape from the discontented parts of my mind. Which is why this afternoon my precious hours of peace and quiet have not been as soothing as I hoped.

It would appear that the refusing to think about certain things does little more than build up pressure, like water behind a dam. And today, the cracks are showing. The leaking has begun. As work hours slow down, I find myself having to face my life again, and I am reminded that I do not always like what I see.

On these days, I feel like a child playing grown-up, playing at being a truck driver, playing at being a cross country coach, a “positive influence” on high school freshmen. My uniform is a costume, a disguise, meant to trick people into thinking that I'm responsible. Today for an interview I stole make-up from my little sister's room in a (probably hopeless) attempt to look above the age of seventeen. I put on my big-girl dress, the chic, black one. And I felt like a fake. Though I may look the part and even say the right things, I haven't got a clue what I'm doing.

Madeleine L'Engle wrote in her book Walking On Water that no one is ever just one age. Though I am twenty-two, I am also eighteen and eleven and five and every other age I've ever been. I carry a piece of each with me. It is the twenty-two-year-old me that is the newest, the youngest, really. I haven't yet learned how to live into my years. I've had sixteen years of experience being six, but only a few months of being twenty-two. There is a lot of child in me still.

And yet, child though I am, I am responsible for my life. These cracks, these leaking fissures, will break open whether I want them to or not, probably for the better, and I can either deal with it or not.

I think my life as it is has finally come to a point, and my refusal to plot a course is becoming a course in and of itself. I just don't want to admit it because it means facing some major decisions and most likely letting go certain dreams in pursuit of others. Though I want to, I can no longer choose not to choose.

Today I had an interview for a “real job,” a salaried, full-time position at a respected company. And it went well, I thought. I know I should care about that because I know I don't want to stay in my current line of work, but I'm struggling to muster up the proper enthusiasm. At present, this job, as “career advancing” as it may be, feels like nothing more than another rope tying me to Grand Rapids, a place where I feel like I'm drowning in water I can't see, which makes it difficult to find the surface. But I'm not sure what I would prefer instead. I'm not sure how I have managed to make life so complicated for myself. It would be better if I knew what I wanted. All that self-examination this fall and I still haven't figured it out.

I'm thinking about these things as I sit at my kitchen table, and now the sun has set and I can no longer see the snow outside, just my own reflection in the window. And I am thinking about other things besides, and wondering how I got to this place and how I will move on.

Merry Christmas

Yesterday I worked 13 hours. Today I worked 12 hours. Tomorrow I will work at least 8, as I will for every day until Christmas. That's at least 70 hours in 7 days. Welcome to hell week.

I guess that's what happens when both your jobs amp up around the holidays.

NIghtdreams and Daydreams

I haven't slept in three days. Not really slept anyway. I've gone to bed, but despite the fact that I'm exhausted and my entire face hurts from the effort of holding my eyes open, I can't slow my brain down enough to switch it off. This happens to me occasionally, as I'm sure it does to everyone. There are few things more frustrating than being drop-dead tired but unable to put your body to rest.


Yesterday I tried to compensate for my exhaustion with a natural supplement. Namely, caffeine. Before my 10 am work shift at Barnes and Noble (and after my 6:15 am work shift at FedEx), I bought myself a grande iced coffee from the B&N cafe. It was well-intended but may not have been the best choice. I think there comes a point of tiredness---especially for infrequent consumers like myself---where caffeine ceases to increase energy level and serves only to induce a kind of rapid-fire anxiety. My heart rate sky-rocketed; you'd think I were a murderer lying on a polygraph test, not a cashier working in a quiet bookstore, judging by the way my body was reacting. I really thought I might faint or black out. Simple tasks like counting change held all the nervosity of a high-stakes rescue operation. I'm not sure I'll try that one again.

Sleep deprivation and anxiety are never a fun combination, even without the added stimulus of caffeine. They often feed into each other, until it becomes nearly impossible to solve one without first solving the other. I don't sleep well, therefore I am anxious about my lack of sleep. I am anxious, therefore I don't sleep. It's a vicious cycle, and one with which I'm all-too familiar.

Strange thoughts dart in those twilight moments between consciousness and dreaming. Unarticulated fears, scene flashes from my day, fabricated images (such as me eating milkshakes in the mall, something which has not happened ever to my knowledge and yet which I caught myself thinking about the other night). I sat up in a panic several times last night convinced I had overslept my alarm, only to discover that it was only 1 am, 3 am, or 4 am. Time moves at an inconstant rate: though I feel my mind has never stopped whirling, somehow several hours pass in the course of 20 minutes. Restless black waters engulf my head. 

It is at times like these that I think of the lake. It is high in the mountains, in a small green valley dotted with white boulders. The water in the lake is warm, and though swimmers are refreshed by it, they never catch a chill. I am alone in the valley, floating on my back in the lake. The blue sky above me is very still, and there is not a sound besides the slight rippling of the waves. Though I put little effort into my strokes, my body stays buoyant, like how I imagine it would in the Dead Sea, except this water is fresh and clear.

 It is not quite accurate to say I am alone. Though I feel the total comfort one can only feel alone with one's own body, I also sense the presence of others---or another. It is both singular and multiple. I cannot see them, but I feel them hovering over me, filling the whole valley with their presence. I feel at once totally free, spreading my bare arms in the water around me, and totally safe, like a child tucked into a warm bed. I feel peace. 

During the nights when I can't sleep, when I can't shut off my mind, I force myself to think about this scene and only this scene. I put everything else in a mental folder and place it on a shelf, and tell myself I can come back to it later. But not now. 

This doesn't always help me sleep, at least not so far. But it does make me feel a little better and slow my heart rate. When I was having trouble with insomnia last spring, a friend of mine told me to imagine a beautiful place and then explore it. This is my own version of her advice.

(written Wednesday, December 12th)

Defeat

I had many people tell me before I graduated from Wheaton that their first few years after college were some of the most challenging months of their lives. It wasn't exactly an encouraging tidbit of wisdom for someone already freaking out about leaving one beloved Kilby House and all the friends therein. But back in the spring,  to cope, I mostly plugged my ears and made naive vows that this would certainly not be the case for me. I simply would not allow it. I would do everything necessary and in my power to avoid the oh-so-stereotypical and painfully cliche "post-grad depression." I would go out and live, get a job, find a purpose. I'm a self-motivated person, I reasoned. I won't let myself get in a rut. Plus, despite what other people may think about my major, I'm totally employable!

Well, people, I am here to tell you that I did not succeed.

It's a little painful to admit, but also a little liberating. Yes, I have joined the ranks of the moderately depressed and mostly directionless post-graduates. Yes, I am in said rut. It's funny, there are a lot of us, but we seem to have trouble finding one another. At least, that's how I feel. 

This is how my day went today, for example: Wake up at 5:30 am, go to work. Spend half the time I'm delivering packages worrying that my mangers don't think I'm a good worker, as if some part of my identity hangs on how fast I can get from 550 Three Mile to 2727 Walker (I swear I'm getting there as fast as I can!). Come home from work, sleep from 10 am to 12 pm. Have bad dreams about hurting someone I love. Wake up and bemoan the fact that it's only noon and I have the whole day ahead of me. Eat leftovers and ice cream out of the carton. Waste time at home. Waste time at the library. Run. Have an emotional breakdown and text my friend asking if I can come to her house and cry. Do so. Feel slightly better. Come home. Shower. Eat dinner. Wonder if it's too early to go to bed.

The sad thing is, this has become not atypical, although it is perhaps a bit more extreme than my average day. I've settled into it, though, and despite the fact that I don't want my life to be this way, I feel sort of powerless against it. I have to tell myself some days, most days, that things will get better. They won't always stay this way. And most days I believe it.

I suppose a change might require some action on my part, though. That tends to be how life works. Unless a dream job in an awesome city near all my friends just happens to fall into my lap, but somehow, I don't see that happening anytime soon. 

It's ok, though. Things will get better, right? Things will get better. We're all going to be ok.

Mr. Ireland

It's always the older men who will strike up a conversation. The tired grandmothers, the impatient businessmen, the polite but distant college-students—these rarely move past the syncopated how-are-you-fine-how-are-you. Not that I really expect them too. When I'm ringing up their books and magazines and sandalwood-scented candles, I understand that most Barnes and Noble customers simply want to pay their dues and leave. I would.

But sometimes these older men will stop and talk. I don't mind, even if sometimes I feel as though I'm being flirted with by someone 40 years my senior, because it's nice to be acknowledged as something other than a credit card swiper on occasion. The men are typically loud, forward, and old enough not to care what anyone thinks of them anymore. They have an air of mischievousness and often an embarrassed wife at their shoulder. Sometimes she apologizes and leads her husband away by the elbow.

Yesterday one such gray-haired man handed me his purchases and asked me bluntly, “Do you own a house?” Apparently, his wife was a realtor, and he wanted to give me her card. (I don't think I've encountered an occupation more card-pushy than real estate agents, by the way. I received at least two this summer. Considering most people mistaken me for an eighteen-year-old—if not younger—I find this a bit unwarranted.) I explained that I did not, in fact, own a house, and I doubted if I would in the near future. A friendly interrogation ensued in which he asked about my education, my jobs, and what I was doing working at the Barnes and Noble in Grand Rapids. We had plenty of time to chat because he had purchased two pairs of reading glasses and asked me to remove the hard plastic tags with a pair of scissors, and I was failing miserably. (Did I mention this was on Black Friday and we were holding up the line?) I was afraid I was going to break the glasses.

When I told him I had a degree in English Writing, he chuckled and said, “Well, how's that working out for you?”

That irked me. Even though he went on to tell me what a great school my alma mater is (“big girl school”, I think he called it), even though he assured me that success would come eventually, and even though he called his wife over and said, “Give your card to Britta, here; she's going to be a fabulously rich writer someday,” I did not appreciate the sarcastic comment. I'm sure he didn't mean it unkindly, but I guess I'm a little sensitive to criticism in that department these days. As I struggled with the glasses, the plastic tags, and the scissors, he looked up at me and said, “You're really not succeeding, are you?”

I fumbled for an answer. “Well, that depends on what you mean by succeeding,” I said. I thought he was referring to life in general, to the fact that I have a 4-year degree and am stuck working part-time retail. “I mean, I like to think I'm moving forward—”

“I was talking about the glasses, honey.”

I looked down at my hands. “Oh. Right. Yeah, I guess I'm not.” I handed him the scissors. “Do you want to try?”

He took the glasses and the scissors from me and deftly attacked both tags. “I guess I'm just self-conscious about it,” I tried to explain.

He smiled at me. “The best ones always are.”

I'm not sure what he was trying to tell me with that comment, but I suppose it was meant to be encouraging. After he gave me his wife's card and walked away with his tag-free reading glasses, I was left wondering if I should feel complimented or insulted by the conversation. Was he mocking me or genuinely trying to make me feel better?

I guess the bottom line is that he did drawn some sort of truth out of me. I am self-conscious about how theoretically over-qualified I am for both my jobs. I don't consider myself successful, despite the fact that I am employed, well-educated, and have every provision I need for a happy life. It's rather selfish---and a little bit ridiculous---when I step back and look at it. What more do I want? It's only because all my basic needs are met that I have the time and energy to worry about whether or not I'm moving in the "right direction" or how I can discover my "true calling." I think I need to relax a little. 

I'm not the only recent college grad in a situation of over-qualification. So many of my co-workers at B&N are in the same boat. There just isn't a lot of hiring happening right now, especially for degrees in the liberal arts. And that's ok. I'm not going to be in this situation forever. I will move on from here. So right now, I might as well take a deep breathe and soak in the life experience. Because that's what it's all about, right? At least that is what I'm going to keep telling myself.

For example, I've already learned that I shouldn't make a career out of removing tags from reading glasses. 

The Colors of the Morning Are Inside Your Eyes

Sometimes when I am driving my FedEx truck in the morning, if the clouds are right, and if I am awake enough to see it, and if I'm not stressed about late packages, I'm amazed by the sunrise. I ought to be amazed by it everyday. I'll catch a glimpse of pink light in my side mirror, and when I turn the corner the sky just above the tree-line will be lit with these orange and pink clouds and brightening blue sky, and I'll have to ease off the gas pedal for a moment and just soak it in.

I like to complain to people about how early I have to wake up in the morning (5 am!), but I'm beginning to think that I am lucky to have a job that allows me to witness both stars and sunrise, celestial wonders I don't often pause to observe. Yesterday, as I pulled out of Lydia's Uniforms main office (which, by the way, was initially difficult to find because a trailer was parked in front of the address sign—come on, people!), I thought of the words to the song You're Beautiful by Phil Wickham. I even started singing it. That's the other good thing about driving a truck alone: it doesn't matter how poorly you sing, no one can hear you. No one even has to know. Unless you post it on your blog.