There is a little voice inside each of us that repeats: “Are you really sure you want to do this?” And there is a feeling deep inside our guts that provides a familiar sensation when something is off. Sometimes we listen to these signals and intuitive feelings, and sometimes we shut them down. I stopped listening to my little voice for a long time. Any red flag I saw I stuffed firmly back where it came from until I couldn’t do it anymore.
When I heard the garage door opening mid-day, mid-week, in early December, I knew something wasn’t right. My dad never got home from work early. My dad didn’t even come home from work remotely “on time.” As a child, I remember crying because I hardly saw my dad. When I went to school, my dad was still asleep, and by the time he got home, I was already in bed. He worked six days a week during my childhood years. We sometimes joked that when he finally had time for me, I would’ve already followed his workaholic footsteps, so I would be too busy. That’s why I knew when my dad was home during the day, things were not good.
The holidays are a really bad time to be fired. Not that any time is particularly good, but companies don’t hire during this time, money is already tight, and it’s supposed to be a celebratory time. My parents had finally, for the first time in nearly 20 years, purchased a home. It was to be my parents’ forever home. (We move a lot.) It’s spacious enough for extended family to stay during the holidays. There’s a three-tiered floral garden with apple trees in the back and a vegetable garden on the side. I joke that all I need is a few chickens and a goat, and I’d be living some version of Walden-meets-the-suburbs.
This was my parents’ upper-middle-class dream that they deserved after all of those years of taking care of my sister and me. My mom was a widow in her early 20s and grew up in a family that depended on church donations for clothes and government-sponsored food. My dad jumped in without any hesitation to raise my sister, even coaching her middle school basketball team. How many 22-year-old guys are willing to take on the responsibility of an 8-year-old stepdaughter?
My parents also looked out for my sister and me. I have minimal student loans because my parents mostly paid for all of my pricey liberal arts education, as well as my many medical bills. So the home purchase helped signify that this was their time.
My dad worked 34 years for the same company—something that is unheard of these days. He started out in the low ranks and ended up as vice president. Then came corporate buyouts and cutbacks. Neither of my parents went to college. My mom has been unable to work since her Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy diagnosis, but she never applied for disability because we were financially fine. The shock was instant.
I was worried right away—and my security was suddenly gone. I wondered: How are we going to eat? Am I going to become homeless? I never thought about money, and suddenly I had meltdowns about how expensive toothpaste is, or how accidentally tearing my tights meant I had to buy a new pair.
I excel in crisis mode. By the next day, I put together a resume and cover letter for my dad, something he never needed before. I searched through all of the available jobs and spent the next few weeks sending out applications. My dad neglected his home laptop for a few years since he was using a work computer, and I got his laptop back into workable shape. Things were looking promising. Then everything broke. The furnace, the kitchen sink, and the washing machine—all within a few days. When things are this dire, you can’t help but laugh. Luckily, a scholarship came in that I won, and I was able to replace these things.
I was still in my first semester of grad school when this all happened, but I began to care less about the work. The program felt wrong from the beginning, but I thought I could just push through the rough patches. I wrote papers, but I didn’t feel engaged or connected to what I was writing. Most of all, I no longer wanted to write about myself. So much was happening in my life, it felt wrong to have my entire graduate work centered around my experiences. I wanted to make a radical switch to screenplay. I wanted characters to play with.
When things hit hard, you begin to take survey of what matters and what is positively contributing to happiness in life. It doesn’t get to be much of a harder hit than having to sleep on a mattress on your parents’ floor so money can be saved by only heating one room. I rotated between focused calm to get through tasks and intense, anxiety-ridden panic. I had to pull myself out of it.
That’s where the waving red flags come in. All of those things I spent so much time ignoring, I no longer had the energy to push aside. I was unhappy with school, and one morning I decided to leave the program. I applied to a better-suited program without knowing if I’d be accepted, and fortunately it worked out. I keep few friends because I commit a lot to each relationship I have. I was entrenched in an emotionally damaging friendship that I hadn’t realized I could walk away from. I gave myself permission to. I worried I would make my world that much smaller, but I felt freed after having done it. I was able to better open myself up to the love my friends were giving me from my healthy friendships. I didn’t realize I could do things for me.
I was supposed to have a second date with someone who wanted me to go to a part of town at night where I didn’t feel safe. When I suggested relocating dinner, he wouldn’t back down and minimized my feelings. Red flags were sent a-soaring, and I listened. I declined that and any future dinner. Had my life not changed dramatically, I don’t know if I would’ve asserted myself.
I don’t feel raw or wounded from the changes in my family’s life. We’re already looking into putting that “forever house” up for sale—proving that everything really is temporary. It has, however, allowed me to see what is truly important. I know now what I can and can’t live without in my life. If anything, I’m able to live and love more authentically.