What Do You Do When It All Goes Wrong?

Feb 1

First and foremost I want to thank everyone who checked out the website or even just clicked to check it out, it means the world to me. I had spent so much time wanting and wondering what it would be like to have something that is all mine and I finally do and it feels like this is something I was meant to do. It’s a full-circle moment.

As exciting as this launch was and how many months I spent coming up with the idea and the podcast to The Divine Twenties, my life in real life was falling apart. I became very ill a couple of days before Christmas and after having a temperature of above 101.5 I decided to go get tested and in less than 24 hours I had the results on Christmas day…. DETECTED. I had COVID.

I spent Christmas and what felt like an eternity inside my house quarantining with my mom and I thought my trip to Mexico being canceled due to having COVID would be the worst thing to happen to me, but days before returning back to work I decided to text my boss to let her know I would be coming back to work as I had planned and there I received the message: “Hi! I’m glad you are doing better and cleared! Unfortunately business has not picked back up yet so we are still really short on hours.”

I had lost my job.

I have never felt more anxiety in my life before, my heart quite literally sank reading that message. I’ve had a job for the past 5 years of my life nonstop. I stayed up that whole night trying to figure out how on earth I’m supposed to overcome this. How I’m supposed to pay for rent and my bills. I was so afraid to tell my mom because I knew she would be disappointed in me, I had already left the job I had that paid me well, and that she loved out of being in the worst mental state the last 2 years I had spent there.

Now, it’s been almost two months since I’ve had a job. I have genuinely never felt more alone, more afraid, or more of a failure in my life and that is the honest truth. I am an unemployed 21-year-old and every time I say it really doesn’t feel real.

I should be graduating right now or figuring myself out and I’m nowhere near. I didn’t know how much this would break me and boy was I in for a treat.

For the first couple of days I was doing okay, I was reading those books I had been putting off, finishing The Divine Twenties website but I would quickly realize how alone I would be in this journey because amidst a pandemic I had no structure and I would go days just sitting on my computer trying to apply to new jobs or just doing anything to fill my mind from how alone this all is. I did pretty good and was actually so surprised at how I was coping until I slowly started to realize how many days I wanted to just stay in bed not wanting to reach out to my friends or putting off things that I would try to write in my planner for me to do but then one day it hit me and the truth is I haven’t been able to overcome it.

I’ve been trying to ask myself the question: “what do you do when it all goes wrong?” because quite literally I do not know. I’ve tried to fill myself up with all the inspirational quotes on how sometimes you’re given these moments to overcome something and I’m hoping something comes out of this, but I also can’t ignore how awful these last couple of months have been, and how I have yet again hit rock bottom.

Losing my job is something I had never prepared myself for, not physically and definitely not financially.

I will be okay and that is what I am trying to remind myself but I’ve always had my education or my job determine my worth. I took those things to remind myself that maybe I could do something with myself so when it was all taken from me and I was left alone with my thoughts and days just passing by I quickly realized how much growth I have left. I don’t know how to go from here.

Do I pick a different career path? Do I settle for the crappy job at the expense of my well-being?