Hydrangeas in the desert: AKA My Take on the Job Market

 

Have you seen this photo by Nina Berman? It's part of an exhibit on war.

I saw this picture a few days ago, and it hit me. Hard. Because I was looking at people who understood. 

This photo shows everything that this wedding day was not. Can you imagine? Can you imagine getting engaged to your high school sweetheart? And then standing there at your wedding? And whichever person you are, this is not, not, not what you imagined. You didn't even know this was possible.

The bride looks shell-shocked. I get it. I get it that before all of this, she thought she had her whole life ahead of her. Planning her wedding day was nothing but excitement. Daydreaming. Stress about bridesmaid dresses and invitations. And then something horrible happens. More than a dozen surgeries later, she's marrying her high school sweet heart still. But it is not just his skin. He is a different man now. A man who has known a profound kind of suffering. How could that not change him? And her?

Where is the fairytale?

It wasn't supposed to look like this, was it?

And if you're her, it doesn't matter if you put on a brave face, or see the best in it, or count your blessings. It doesn't matter, because now you know something you didn't know before.

This is possible.

Horrible, terrible things are possible.

They don't just happen to other people. They aren't just stories you mute on the news. They are your life.

And it's probably not that she's jealous of her friend marrying a husband with skin-intact, though she might be. Who knows the millions of things she's feeling. But it's that her friend still lives in a world that remains intact. She doesn't know yet that horrible, terrible things are possible for her.

She knows they exist. She has seen some of it. There is CNN. Ok. Sure. But her friend doesn't Know.

That's sort of how I feel when people talk about going on the job market. Not everyone. But for a lot of people, going on the job market will be the most stressful thing they do this year (or next year or whenever).

That's just not the world I live in anymore.

It's not that I think getting a job is insignificant. It's not that I don't understand how scary it can feel to not know where you'll be in a year. It's not that I lack ambition entirely.

It's just that, my world is shaped differently now than it used to be. And I don't envy anyone their beautiful wedding to their fully intact high school sweet heart, and their trips to Disney World. I'm sincerely, deeply happy that lives like that still exist. It brings me a beautiful kind of hope.

But in my world, the most stressful thing I will do this year might be any number of things. But it won't be the job market.

However stressful the job market is, that won't be harder than looking at this:

The job market, I can assure you, won't be harder than enduring PTSD treatment for being raped.

And it won't be harder than the utter exhaustion of realizing my sheets have pee on them again, for the third time this week, and my dog is depressed because he's ashamed of his accidents. And each time I wash the sheets, I won't know if I'll be doing it ten more times or a thousand. I just don't know if Bandit will ever get better.

The job market will be the time I get to daydream about a new life, a fresh start and knowing that more time will have passed. I love time right now. The more of it that goes through me, the stronger I get. The stronger Bandit gets. It just happens. Like water filling a bucket. A very slow drip. Maybe the bucket leaks a little too. But that's Ok.

The job market will be a chance to do somewhat mindless work. Tailoring cover letters. Compiling teaching evaluations. Actually telling people about the new projects I developed last fall but never started.

The job market is my chance to pretend like I could be a new person in a new place.

But, my ego isn't all that invested in it. I don't think of a job as indicating much about my achievements or my worth. If it doesn't go well, I will try to stay here another year. If it does go well, I'll move on.

I just want the next year, and the year after, to be a little bit less painful than this one.

I want to move to California, where I have spiritual teachers, lifelong friends, and political allies. Not because California really matters to me. But because a few weeks ago, my therapist told me to do something nice for myself. Something that would make me happy. She said to find something small. Like buying flowers. Because I sat in her office, explaining that I'd come home from a conference, and my apartment had been trashed by my dog sitters. Maintenance had to come five times over the next two weeks to get all of the repairs done. I did the cleaning myself of course. And replacing the broken curtain rod in the wall. But I looked at her and said "it's just one more thing. This year. I came home. After being away for 5 weeks, and just back a couple days, and my home, my home I waited so long to get to, was defiled." I told her I was done. I had no more energy. None. Whatever shitty thing was going to happen next? I just couldn't do it. I just didn't care. I wanted to go home and stare at a wall. Except that my walls were coated in the same sticky substance Bandit's head was, and I hoped to god it was soda.

"Go buy some flowers, or something," she said. I was confident she Did Not Understand the depths of my apathy.

But, I dutifully stopped at Trader Joe's on the way home. Because. I mean. It's not like I had something better to do.

I walked into the store and I saw hydrangeas. Beautiful, glorious hydrangeas. My heart lifted. I love hydrangeas. That week at Trader Joe's the checkout guy didn't ask me if I was doing OK, in a concerned voice. (Which was good, because that had been pretty mortifying). I bounded into the car, and showed Bandit, and when we arrived home, I happily trimmed the stems and put them in a vase on my table.



The next day, I threw out all of the public health magazines in my bathroom that I have no intention of ever really reading, but that sit there, affronting me with how I could be using my time more responsibly.

And the day after, I bought copies of Vogue and Vanity Fair. I proudly set them in the bathroom, knowing that I'd never find anything more mindless or luscious than sitting in the bathtub, reading about Katy Perry's new album.

Why? Because Katy Perry's new album DOESN'T MATTER AT ALL!!!!!

Actually, having now read about her and watched her documentary, I have tremendous respect for her.

But that isn't really the point.

The point is that I had suddenly found not one, but two small things that made me happy. Even though I didn't get to go to Disney World this year, and I will never again live in a world where I naively think horrible, terrible things only happen to other people. I live in a world where horrible, terrible things can happen in my life, in succession, with no time to breathe in between them.

And I can still enjoy reading about Katy Perry.

In case you haven't grasped this yet: that is A Miracle.

A month later, California is simply an extension of that. And not just because KP is a California girl...

It's the only place left I can think of to live that would still be an adventure to me. There are all kinds of great reasons to head to Boston and Chicago and New York. Even LA. But the bay area has been calling me since I was in seventh grade.

And it feels right. It feels like it's time. And I don't even mostly care if I get where I'm trying to go. I care that I found something to care about. (Though let's be honest... if I set my mind to something...).

I feel like I walked through a desert with my skin off this year. And the fact that I can still have hope, and can be excited about anything is a miracle to me. It's not all cacti and sand!!! There are hydrangeas Bandit!!

My biggest challenge is that I have to do something that makes other people pull their hair out and worse, in the calmest, gentlest way possible. Because even though I found some water, my bucket isn't filled up. I have to face the reality that even if I'm on my way out of the desert, I am both stronger and more vulnerable than I have ever been. And I need to protect and nurture whatever little spark in me remembered that hydrangeas are beautiful.

Hydrangeas are beautiful.

Katy Perry is strong.

My brother is still dead. My dog is still broken. I am still hurt.

But, I can have hydrangeas too.

Even in the desert. If I carry a vase.

How freaking awesome is that?

That is what the job market is to me. Hydrangeas. In a vase. In the desert.

That, and a prayer that next year I get a pony.

namaste