Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash )
Today I quit my job.
For the first time in my adult life, I’m both unemployed and not a student. It feels like a massive weight has been lifted off of my chest but also that another is hanging over me, waiting to fall onto me. The strange part is that weight, the one I know is coming doesn’t feel as heavy. I feel as though I’ll be prepared to carry it because it’s a weight I truly would have chosen myself.
I’m ready to start living my own life and choosing myself. I’m ready to start dreaming of more for myself. I’m ready to start being myself.
I am also utterly terrified, but I’m going to do it shaking in my boots if I have to. The life I’ve been living up to now has not really been my own. So much of it has been a performance, so much of it has been theatre, with masks I’ve carried from childhood and new ones I’ve picked up along the way. So many masks stacked up on each other, blended, melded into each other and into me. I’m still struggling to find the seams, but I will and one by one the masks will fall away from me until I actually find myself.
I have so many people to thank for loving me into this position. I absolutely would not be here without my friends who have held me up during the many, many times I’ve completely fallen apart over the last few years. My sisters always inspire me to be better so they have something to look up to. When I can’t do this for myself, I’m doing it for them.