Monday morning, I got the call.
“I’ve got some bad news. We’re not going to be able to bring you back.”
After a month and a half on furlough due to the diabolically stupid and assaulting tariffs, I lost my job of seven years. It was a punch in the gut that I took with a smile, because when faced with “fight, flight, or freeze” my first instinct is to fling pleasantries. Surprisingly, I didn’t cry. I accidentally rubbed the bridge of my nose raw in a botched effort to self-soothe. But I’ve yet to do what I’m famously known for: sob uncontrollably.
Maybe it was because I took the call out in the backyard—the warmth of a late May afternoon on my skin, the faint purr of the neighbor’s lawn mower in the distance, bare feet in the grass, birds chirping and singing overhead. All the conditions were right for a severe emotional spiral. I was three days into my period. My aunt had just entered the hospital unexpectedly. And not but a week before, my baby brother (only 19) told us he’s going to be a father. (Baby couldn’t beat the teen pregnancy allegations, I fear.) My emotional ground was cracking beneath me. But something about quite literally touching grass saved me.
Instead, my crash-out has been an avoidant one. A numb one. One that would probably be scored by the breakdown in party 4 u.
I’ve always prided myself on being a radical optimist. It’s been part of my identity for as long as I can remember. I find myself smiling when things fall apart because that’s easier than feeling those depleting emotions of anger, despair, or pain. I don’t disregard them, but rather I let them quickly roll through me so nothing icky sticks. I have Jinkx Monsoon in my head always saying, “Water off a duck’s back. Water off a duck’s back.” And for a long time, I thought that was strength. Resilience. Hope.
But lately, I’ve started to question if my optimism has been doing more protecting than healing.
Losing my job plunged me into the deepest darkest, most cavernous unknown. Everything I counted on unraveled. No health insurance. No income. No plan. Just static. What the fuck am I going to do? I have to do something I love. I’ll lose my mind if I don’t. But I need to make money! I can’t get sick. I don’t have health insurance! I can’t be 30 years old still in my parents’ house. They have to be so embarrassed of me. What am I going to do? What the fuck am I going to do?
But to succumb to my interiority would negate the beauty of my reality. I rise every morning enveloped in the warmth of my family’s love. A family that hasn’t kicked me while I’m down. But sees me, even when I can’t see myself. And I know—I know—what a privilege that is. In times of crisis, we might bite each other’s noses to spite our faces, but we also cling harder to one another. There’s six of us, after all. A lot of shoulders to cry on. So when any of us are at the point of bracing for impact, we’re met with the safety of each other’s arms.
I think (I know) it’s easier for me to hold onto what’s comfortable than to let in something new. I’d rather believe, blindly, that things will always work out than sit with the actual weight of not knowing. It’s why I stayed at my job as long as I did. I loved it and felt safe.
That gray area where my thoughts contradict each other, where my body says one thing and my brain another. It’s there, in that uncertainty, that I realize: I’m not as strong or brave or independent as I thought. And maybe that’s what scares me most. That I’ve mistaken my denial for resilience. That my sunny outlook isn’t always my super power—it’s escape.
And sometimes it all leaks out at once. All of the uncomfortable change. The painful growth. The messiness that comes when untouched earth gets tilled and turned. Life forces you out of your comfortability one way or the other. And when it does, there’s no going back.
I don’t have a tidy bow to wrap around this moment. There’s no “five easy ways”, no glossy affirmation that makes the fear go away. What I do have is the tiniest flicker of belief that this rupture is also a beginning. That maybe something is cracking open, not just falling apart. That maybe my optimism doesn’t have to be a shield, but it can be a seed. So I’m learning to sit in the tremors. To let the ground shake. To feel the shift instead of resisting it. And maybe (if I stay still long enough) I’ll hear what’s trying to emerge from all this noise.
Right now? I don’t know what comes next. But I’m still here. Feet in the grass. Heart cracked open. Waiting, not for luck, but for whatever comes after I finally let myself feel it all.
xxx Autumn
Thank you so much for reading!! Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss all of the fun stuff I have planned for the coming months. If you’re not ready to become a paid subscriber but would like to leave a tip, that would be such a blessing.