"It will be ok"

Somehow I managed to convince myself that I was ok with all of this through Christmas. And then my mom left, and my act dropped (hard). I put my best face on when I flew to Boston, but in that week there were countless conversations about my severance agreement, COBRA insurance, and finally, at what point the money will run out and I will have to leave Colorado (and move in with them). Reality became very real that week. And this last topic settled over me like an Eeyore cloud. I can joke all the day long about moving into someone's basement, but the reality is, I might not be able to make it through this on my own.

Scratch that. I already can't do this on my own. I needed help to understand my severance. I needed help from not one, but two different friends to polish my resume and cover letter. I needed a ride to and from the airport and I need almost daily reminders to stay positive and see my lay off as an opportunity. A chance to find my way to a better me.

But, the thing is, it's painful for me even to ask for those kinds of help.

I have lived life, for too long probably, as my own unit. I take care of me. And although there have been wonderful examples of people doing amazing things for me (some that they don't even know!) there have been some very memorable pieces of evidence that when I let someone in and start to count on them, they let me down. So taking care of myself, as much as possible, has seemed like the best policy for most of my life. This has been true for me, financially, for half of my life but has been true in other ways for longer than that. I left home more completely than most do when I left for school. And I also took the responsibility for the financial burden of that education at that time. So I count that as the moment of my independence. But the truth is that before that, I had been on my own in other ways. I had more financial responsibility than my peers, if not total financial independence. And I had other responsibilities too. I often found myself in conversations with adults where it became clear I was the grown up in the exchange, and I had had to be much more emotionally self-sufficient than I want my future, hypothetical children to have to be. I wasn't unloved, or uncared for, but some of the resources available to me were impoverished.

In much the same way that working too much to pay some of my bills in high school paved the way for me to know how to work four part time jobs in college at any given time, not having the ability to get what I needed at home paved the way for me to make families of the other people in my life. This the the blessing that was disguised in my first home and it's discontent - it taught me to get my needs met elsewhere. In high school I was part of a very tight group of five friends. We shared everything with each other, and looked after each other in deeper ways than most teenagers do. And these many years later, I am in touch with all of them, and one of them is the family member I visited in Boston. The very same one who initiated a conversation about me moving in if it comes to me not being able to make it on my own. Stick a pin in that - we'll be back to it.

This was the beginning of a long trend for me. Pretty much everywhere I go, I find myself joining other people's families or making ad hoc ones of my own. I have not one but two non-biological families in New Jersey, which was a place I did everything I could to reject on the cellular level for a full quarter of the time I was there! I went through a terrible break-up with my fiance after moving here to Colorado, but found that his best friends of more than two decades were more than happy to keep me in their family, even as he refused their overtures of support. I have family in NY, Texas, Seattle, Virginia, Illinois, Florida, Oklahoma, Connecticut, and Maine. And I have friends here in Colorado that are reaching out in ways that tell me that if I'm not yet in their family circles, they certainly think I'm worthy of their time and care.

I shouldn't be surprised that people want to offer their help, but I am. And I'm not only humbled by it, I'm . . . embarrassed to need to even talk about accepting it, much less actually take someone up on it. It makes my skin prickle to ask for a ride to the airport. It makes my insides ache to ask someone to help me tune up a cover letter. So what wound will come of needing financial help?

But the truth is, there is a very finite window, dictated almost entirely by the amount of my severance, that allows me to continue to be financially independent while job hunting.

Having to borrow money or move in with someone seems to me like the very worst thing that could ever, ever come of this. But it's a little silly to realize that I have helped other people in this way. (I had someone I didn't even know all that well living with me for a month while he found his feet in the summer of 2009. and another person was given a place to stay for three weeks later that year.) And I would do it for any of my family members (where family is a broad term for me) in a heartbeat - something my friends and family have hastily reminded me for every form of help that has been offered. My first instinct is to reject people's offers of help. My second instinct is to keep rejecting it. And my third instinct is to logically remind myself that it is my pleasure to help others, especially my friends and family, and that denying their offers is a way of being selfish. I had this conversation with my ex so many times, and in so many ways that even I am tired of hearing myself on this subject. How many ways are there to say, "People weren't meant to do everything on their own?" or "Doing it on your own isn't working." or "You push people away and hurt them when you won't let them help."

Well, there are at least 6 months worth of different ways to communicate this message because that's how long he and I have been having this conversation. So, there was a cruel symmetry when he, last week, pointed out that maybe the lesson I need to learn from this is to accept help and let people hold me up.

I wanted to slap him (just a little), but really, what I wanted was to stop myself from having to hear or face up to those words. He didn't say it unkindly. And he's not wrong. I just don't want this to be true. And it had been resounding in my head since my bestest friends had set a date with me to draw a line of trying to make it on my own with the formula of:

waning severance/savings + part time work + unemployment = not making ends meet and no full time job in sight


That line was drawn at an alarmingly soon date and calculated on the basis of numbers. I'm hoping for a different outcome and aiming for it by a rigorous job search.

I've had a deal with whatever universal powers there are for 15 years now. It goes like this, "I know I was made in such a way that I can't take prescription pain killers. Fine by me. Clearly, with the substance abuse issues in my family history, this is a good thing for me. So, just don't give me pain I can't handle on my own. "

This deal has worked, surprisingly. It has worked with countless broken toes, and a broken foot. It worked with a car accident resulting in a hairline fracture of vertebrae in my neck. It worked when my impacted wisdom tooth was removed. It worked when I had sinus surgery reconstructing one quarter of the face underneath my face, and two knee surgeries and the injuries that precipitated them.

I feel so lucky to have had that work out so well. So, being who I am, I feel like it's WRONG to ask for more. But I'm trying to overcome my crippling sense of pride to ask for another deal. I want to send out the request that if I am willing to learn the lesson that I can't do everything on my own, and set aside my pride, and accept help people are offering (which, really, has been overwhelmingly awesome. Everything from part time work to sending me job postings to help with my resume and getting it into people's hands to reduced rates on services I was previously paying for. Not to mention several offers of, "come live with me!") could it just be possible for me to learn that lesson without being in such a financial hole that I have to leave the life I built here? Could it be possible for me to keep living on my own?

Deal? Ok, let's shake on it.

My Boston fam told me that inexplicably written on the calendar on a day this year was written, "It will be ok." I have that same phrase entered into my calendar on the day we chose to re-visit me moving in with them.