On Saturday, a friend stopped by the house. I ran my hands though my short hair as I opened the door. Looking down, I surveyed my dirty T-shirt and sweat pants. She greeted me from the driveway, "Hi!"
I replied back quickly, "Do I look unemployed? I feel like I look unemployed."
She laughed as friends are wont to do. "You're fine." She added, referencing her own sweats from a race earlier that day.
I tried to laugh it off, but it's hard. While I've been in this position before, it was slightly more empowering in that it was done by my own hand. Right now I feel a bit shaken. Lost and confused. While I am in no way scared of what the future holds, I wish I could peek at it, if even just for a second.
Monday morning found me grocery shopping earlier than necessary. I walked the aisles, pushing a cart pondering those around me. Why aren't they at jobs on a Monday morning? What do they do with their lives that allows them such freedom? I considered stopping them and asking. But was scared that they would see the scarlet U on my chest and I would immediately be shunned.
For much of my life, I have known exactly what I want to do, and up until last week, I was doing it. I don't know the exact statistic, but most people do not use their degrees. I was one of the few. And while that doesn't mean I'm any more special than someone who didn't, it just meant that I've known where I wanted to go for a really long time.
Often, people cite mommies as having lost their identity, overcome by the poopy diapers and T ball practices, they are shells of themselves, absorbed by the needs of their children.
We're not that dissimilar, me and them. Where they throw themselves into their children's lives, letting the moniker 'so and so's mom' take the place of their name, I did the same with my career. I was a writer dammit. That was who I was. And while technically, I still am, I feel as if I've lost a sense of self along the way. I'm questioning me.
And frankly, I really don't like that.
