Lost a Job, Lost My Money, But at Least I Got Found

So, the reason I've been evading my blog for so long has to do with a series of embarrassing situations which I haven't had the guts to bring to light. But the only way out is through, so here I am writing and admitting my faults and, in the process, forgiving myself for the choices made.

After just 5 weeks at the Montessori school, I made a couple bad judgment calls that got me fired. However, the circumstances involved were tearing me apart. I had been waiting for an extra hour and forty-five minutes for a child's parents to pick them up. I was going through a hypoglycemic break-down after not having eaten for close to 6 hours and I had no idea if the child's parents were alive and well or if my mom was ok. Neither were responding and I had attempted to contact my mom 6 times with 2 texts and 4 calls, two to both her cell and home phone number. Between all of that and knowing that I'd have to wait for an unknown amount of time in the dark and cold for a couple buses to bring me home, I couldn't stand my situation. After they finally arrived at the school, I packed my things, and went out. While waiting to cross the street, the child's parents pulled up beside me and offered me a ride home. I had a brief thought of the rule against this and shrugged it off pretty easily due to all the stressers. The next morning when the administrator asked how I got home, I freaked out; I was scared to admit I knowingly broke a rule and claimed that I went across the street to catch the bus. Of course, they found out the truth fairly quickly and had a meeting to discuss the repercussions.

For weeks after this went down, I've been trapped in despair, berating myself for being stupid and for not having a stronger ethical code. I wanted to tell the truth, but in my own time. Not when being backed into a corner unexpectedly. Since then, I've been looking for ways to earn quick money online and wasted a fair amount of resources in the process. Now, I'm looking into what feels like a black hole and I can't tell if I'm going to come out the other side thriving or sliding further into nothingness. I've become one with my bed most days, watching series of TV shows I've never watched but always wanted to, on my good days, I lay in bed putting out application after application on Sitter City in hopes of a steady weekday nannying job. I've talked to Panera Bread three times about getting a job there but to no avail. Everything is whirling out of control but I still have hope.

While house sitting over the holidays, I got invited to do a podcast and I said, yes. I knew it was something that would be important to do while I'm still searching for my voice. What I mean by this is that, when I was a toddler, I would get angry at my sister and yell at her. When she laughed at my red face and cracking voice, I would lash out and hurt her. Eventually, I felt so overwhelmed by the guilt of having harmed her that I promised myself, I would never be angry again. So for most of my life, I have never been able to stand up for myself. This means that I have been walked on by many without feeling able to advocate for myself. I would just take it and smother the rage I felt. I would mislabel it all the time and just say that I was frustrated. Sometimes when I did find the courage to be my own advocate, I would be shut down so effectively, I didn't dare try again for a long time. This happened in college after a family emergency got me rather sidetracked. In one class, I had asked for a chance to redo an assignment for only half of the points, meaning, if I had redone it perfectly, I would only get half of the missed points back giving me a C instead of an A. She was strict, so I tried this bargain. However, the proposal was shot down by the statement, "Well the syllabus says..." and I stopped trying to get an A in her class and just let myself fail. The reason I had messed up is because I had spent hours trying to find the directions for the assignment online and just couldn't. Eventually, I ran out of time and just had to wing it and hope for the best so I could submit it before the deadline.

Anyway, what I am saying is that this podcast may be my saving grace. It might give me a voice and a voice that I will actually feel is heard. I'll finally feel as though my thoughts, feelings and words matter. Sure, I've wanted to share my story, but it's because I want to reveal to myself and to others how many times grace has entered my life. I want to share it in order to hold up a mirror and help others recognize where grace has come into their life. Go out and reach for your dreams and I will start doing the same. For me, my new dream is to publish an autobiography.

Working with My Passion: First Week

This past week has been amazing! I love my new job! Thanks to my new occupation, a couple other aspects of my life started falling into place. I'm sleeping like a log and now I can feel refreshed after fewer hours than normal and I can eat less often without a whole lot of anxiety building up. Thanks to my new position in the work force, I finally know what it feels like to not only love your job but also to be rewarded for working the job I'm passionate about. I never knew that by fulfilling my passion for working with children that I would also feel more complete with my other needs. Now less food and sleep feels like more. It's an amazing transformation for me.

The other awesome thing I've noticed is that while at work, I am so present that I cannot get stressed out. I have no thoughts running through my head which means I've made room for what should be there: my 100% attention and focus, and the words that need to be said. The only thoughts on my mind when I start talking are the exact words I need to use, that is all there is. It's a great feeling to be able to do this at long last. Every once in a while, I slip up a little, but for most of the day, this is my state of mind and I believe it has a whole lot to do with the job lining up with my passion as well as the help I got from the trail.

These feelings have almost nothing to do with how smoothly things went this week. The day after Halloween, there were at least 5 different bathroom related accidents (numbers one and two) and we had to change their clothes. On another day, there was so much Lysol in the air, I could taste it thanks to a ringworm scare; it turned out that the big red spot on this one kid's forehead was just from repeatedly rubbing it on his cot during nap time. There were a couple instances where I thought I might go deaf thanks to lifting a screaming child and times when they just don't listen. But for the most part, many of them do listen to me and I still look back on this past week with great fondness, contentment and gratification.

New Job Found!

I got a job at a Montessori school in Silver Spring. I was hired yesterday and start on Monday! The days will be long but they start later than I expected. Going to be working with toddlers and will eventually get benefits after a 90 day training period! I'm super excited! Some of this may not sound like much, but I've never had a job with all of these good features. I'm finally going to be able to save up some money again!

Tightening Loose Ends

As I've promised I'm posting to help justify and further prove my initial argument in the previous post.

The reason I believe calling all immigrants terrorists is wrong and unjustifiable is because, by pointing the finger at them we're constantly, and conveniently, ignoring the fact that white Americans prove themselves to be terrorists more often than the people we're blaming. Creating a scapegoat out of other citizens and "solving" the problem by deporting them does not eliminate the violence among Americans. We've had numerous shootings in various schools across the country and even in a theater and we can't blame Muslims or Mexicans for them. Every woman across the nation has experienced some form of misogyny whether verbal or physical and many of us have suffered from all forms. I'm only 24 and I've experienced all forms of abuse, emotional, physical and sexual. And guess what, it was all from white Americans so again, why are we blaming Mexicans?

Concerns

I haven't made a post in numerous days because I didn't have anything useful on my mind; just constant stress. Some of it being that I still have not made a deposit of any amount into the bank. But most of it is about how afraid I'm becoming of the people in this country.

If this turns out the way I dread, I fear there will be an all out war within our nation, caused by our people as well as foreign nations. We could potentially become the targets of bombings ourselves if we direct so much loathing at all the other people in this world. If we show them that hatred, they'll be inclined to defend themselves against us by being the first to strike out. They will prove our fears right if we never give them a chance to prove us wrong. If all we feed them is that they're terrible people who bring drugs, crime and terrorism into this country, they will return the loathsome feelings and lash out; they'll say, "I guess you're right, we're a disaster to America, and we're going to prove it to you". If we don't eradicate the hate talk, we're going to make the nearly unmanageable completely unmanageable. We should remain a beacon of hope to the world, not one of absolute uncontrollable fears. We're a powerful nation right now, but if we make all future decisions based on how much we fear those in our own country, documented or not, we'll lose all of our power. And if we act on those fears that lay outside this country and constantly go on to attack what's out there, literally and/or figuratively, we'll never have enough energy or resources to defend what's here.

The other major fear is that all of the sexual predators out there who currently have a partial conscience right now, if they see a President Trump, they'll start feeling like it's acceptable behavior because America just voted for someone who at the very least speaks the way they think. Even if, for the sake of argument, Trump never did those things that he mentioned on the recording, he did verbally prove to sex offenders/predators that he at least thinks the way they do. If he becomes president, the part of them that told them it's wrong will have no hold on them anymore and they're highly likely to up the ante; they won't hold back anymore. That is my biggest fear because I have, as mentioned quite a while ago, been sexually assaulted and I want their conscience to loom over them. I've also had a man on a bus talk loudly enough for each passenger and the driver to hear him and say, in much cruder language, that I must not be getting enough due to such and such. I didn't even turn around to face him because I wanted to be able to pretend that no one on that bus knew who he was talking about. If this carries on in a bigger way against all women, I'm going to be constantly on edge. Please don't dismiss this as an over-reaction.

If this problem included men in such a way where men were groped and kissed randomly by other men and then had all of society tell them they asked for it given how they dressed or that "boys will be boys" bullshit cliche, more men would be able to stand by our side and say, "yes, this is a huge emotional problem that needs to be addressed". And it needs to be addressed better than when Trump essentially said: well, at least I'm not ISIS, when confronted with the hot-mic issue in the second debate. I said essentially.

Please do us a favor, America, and help those women who have suffered abuse at the hands of men keep those occurrences behind them because right now these instances are being constantly replayed in our heads. I've forgiven those who have done me wrong in the past but that does not mean that I should then hand those people a metaphorical  "get out of jail free card" by electing Trump. (The jail being their conscience.)
It could be and should be these predators vs. the rest of America.

The Etymology of Passion

I found out shortly before the trail that the word passion is, in some manner of speaking, related to the word pain, more specifically it stems from the Latin word "pati" or "passio" meaning "to suffer". I had been surprised to learn this but looked it up after the trail to make sure I remembered right. So my passion for working with kids really means that every moment that I'm not pursuing this goal or not fulfilling this role, I suffer. It's been just over a year since I last worked, in any capacity, with kids and it's starting to drive me crazy. Maybe it seems a bit odd, but I truly feel that this is the role I'm meant to play in life, to be the voice for children struggling to fit in, who believe they don't belong. When I end up in the career I'm meant for, whatever it might be, my main goal will be to make sure children treat each other right, to make sure they consider what other people are struggling with before judging them. Even where there's a clear reason for judgment, there is also a chance to gain a deeper understanding instead. You never know someone's whole life story unless they're willing to be vulnerable enough to speak or write about it. That's not to say we should encourage pity, just understanding, acceptance and a willingness to listen. The passion I have for helping comes from the pain of exclusion. My passion stems from my pain allowing me to identify what my calling is. I have a hunch I could have used "our" and "us" in that statement but I didn't want to be overly presumptuous.

What IS the Meaning of Life?

While on the trail, I was once asked by a fellow hiker what I think the meaning of life might be and although I don't think I articulated my thoughts all that well at the time, the rest of my train of thought finally came to me as I got closer to finishing the trail. I had been asked this in New Jersey and the answer started firming up in my mind in Connecticut when I ran into Baby Chicken, Optimistic Dreamer and Gung-ho at a shelter. For whatever reason, a conversation started that afternoon that lead to me to share my history and I started realizing yet again that my desire to help children stems from my own experiences...I want to be able to help others through some of the same things I went through. To me, the meaning of life is about giving meaning to your suffering by turning around and helping other people reach the light at the end of the tunnel or at least showing them that there is a light to go toward. We give our lives meaning by doing so and that's empowering. This is my goal in life and I've taken a 2,189 mile scenic detour already, so hopefully the next chapter will lead me directly there. Hah.