synopsis

Aug 01, 2013 01:58

About two-and-a-half years ago, I took a look at my life and realized I was going nowhere.

I was constantly broke, and frequently cut-off from my friends and hobbies despite being within driving distance of both. My "career" was not moving forward despite my best efforts, and a few thousand dollars spent on conservatory training. I was effectively a college dropout on the cusp of a degree that barely seemed worth the effort anymore. And due to my lack of funds and near-constant state of depression, I was single and chronically alone.

It began to dawn on me that something had to change or I would be stuck in this downward spiral forever.

I don't remember when the decision happened, or even the conversation that solidified it, but I decided to move in with my parents.

I up-rooted the life I'd centered around my friends for the previous ten years. I finally chose to leave behind the people I'd ultimately chosen over my own family after high school... to be the dependent of the parents I'd barely seen over the past decade.

At 29 years old, it was beyond humiliating.

In Oklahoma I spent the first year completely friendless as I hid from the world. Including the parents who'd taken me back in, and who live just down the hall. I waited tables as I struggled to earn the cash that I hoped would solve my problems and dig me out of the hole that seemed to deepen each day. Throughout all of this, I shunned the company of my parents, my family and my co-workers.

Before the first year was over, I snapped. I was lost, in a number of ways both known and nameless. I'd worked and worked and worked, and lost all but the most fleeting contact with my friends and my home and was no closer to digging myself out of my hole or seeing any clear path toward my future.

The details will remain my personal business, but I slowly learned how to fight my way free of the crippling influences behind my failures. I developed plans and goals and a sense of awareness and focus. My second year in my parents' home has been defined by this slow push toward growth and understanding. And it has turned into my path.

Over two years ago I was broken and unfix-able. Not even by all the king's horses and men. But now, after all that time, I'm surpassing this dark era and leaving it in my memory.

When I go to work later today, it will be my last day at the job I've struggled with for the majority of my time in Oklahoma. It is one of the last steps before I finally leave this purgatorial time in my life. Within days after I turn in my last punch-out slip to my manager, I'll be in my truck, driving east toward SCAD. The trials of my time in Oklahoma will be in the past.

New difficulties will arise. I have not, after all, chosen an easy life. But they will be difficulties along the path, rather than in the search for it.
Previous post Next post
Up
[]