Fear Of Engagement

Last weekend I ran into a former coworker at the mall. She relocated from San Francisco to the L.A. area and is working for our previous employer again. It was so wonderful to see a friendly face from my past! Memories of a time when I had a paycheck, friends, and somewhere to be haunted me for the next few days. I realized a large part of me missed my life as a department store makeup girl. I didn't miss working weekends and holidays, standing on my feet for eight hours, or dealing with an often difficult general public. But I do miss having a professional identity and a way to make friends. After not getting a paycheck, of course. 

In the four years since I've worked I've become a recluse. For a long time after my two strokes my brain was fried. Darn near every public encounter left me either confused or in tears. I took a couple classes at the community college. That really helped pull me out of my shell. Engaging with the world, working on a deadline and cultivating relationships forced me to move forward in life. Going back to the gym even exercised my public encounter muscles. But I'm still a recluse, and have to admit I've developed a bit of social awkwardness. So when I got my friend's text, asking if I would ever consider returning to my former profession, I didn't know what to say. Lord knows I need the money. But, like everything else in my life, it all comes back to my health. I've got this outrageously high-maintenance lifestyle in place to manage my Fibro. It takes up a significant amount of my time and without it I get sick again.

So I talked to my friend and inquired about freelance makeup artistry. Then I hung up and freaked out. What am I thinking? I can't do retail! I'm not trying to go back to living on narcotics and tears of pain! I'm a writer now! Albeit unpaid, but I have to finish my book before I can sell it. Am I only considering this opportunity because it's familiar and won't challenge my fear of the unknown? Or do I need to shut my ego up and realize this is this a great way to make ends meet while pursuing my passion? But I haven't even looked into writing employment. Why would I just go backward without trying to move forward first? And the questions keep coming. The doubt and fear and uncertainty scare the dickens out of me. In an all together different way I'm facing a familiar cliff, and just don't know if I should jump.

Thanks for joining,
Leah  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Back In The Saddle

Image
Well I got back on the horse. What else am I going to do? Take a long walk off a short pier or go play in traffic? So here I sit ready to try again. Raw, insecure and uncertain, but here I am. As I sort through the disillusionment in my mind I realize many of the sanity-saving tools I employed along the way got dropped in the dust a while back. I fell into my old behavior patterns. I allowed negativity and demands to infiltrate my sense of responsibility to myself. It's a big job, to regain my lost ground. I can do it, though. Not all at once, perfectly or on the first try, but it can be done. Of course this requires a significant amount of isolation and reflection. Accepting some will grumble over the selfish action of me taking care of me. Realizing that is not my problem. In fact, expecting myself to get a handle on my issues and then resume a level of interdependent living is exactly why I wound up back here in the first place.  I have finally accepted I cannot go back....
Read more

Waiting On the World to Care

Image
This blog has sat silent for many moons. For eight full ones, more or less, I've been imprisoned in an exile of my own creation. Initially I was so angry about my health relapse I didn't know what to say, other than to hurl epic amounts of fury at my keyboard. I had no solutions, no answers, and nothing positive to contribute. So instead of spewing hate all over the permanent cloud of internet technology, I donned the hair shirt of self-flagellation and turned that anger inward. It's been a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad eight months. As I got sicker and sicker, I got madder and madder. The angrier I became, the more I sequestered myself. I refused to talk about my problems or how I felt. It seemed pointless, like it didn't matter. Nobody could do anything about it or begin to comprehend my reality. There was just me, an isolated island of misery, who wanted to do anything but talk about being an isolated island of misery. But nobody understood that either. I...
Read more

Incurable Fog

Image
One day while driving down the street I forgot where I was. Mind you I just left Target and was headed toward home so had certainly been there before, but in that instant I couldn't have told you where I was on the planet if my life depended on it. I had to pull over and cry for a while, gnashing my teeth and pulling my hair over the fact that I was thirty years old and becoming so sick with something so unfixable, I was literally losing my mind. Flash forward a few years to when I had settled into the reality of living with fibromyalgia. Working retail was a painful necessity that was quickly running its course, so I set about trying to figure what on earth to do to earn a living. Naturally, this required me to take a Spanish course at the local community college. Not because I wanted to earn money off my non-existent Spanish 1 skills, but because I desperately needed to know if my brain was capable of learning and retaining new information, and I took French in high school.  I wo...
Read more