Five Years...

I was reading Hyperbole and a Half recently (thanks to my sister, who gave me the book), and one of the strips was about how the author wished she could go back and talk to her past selves with stern admonitions from the future.

Oh, how I can relate. I'd definitely visit middle-school Jen and tell her to stop wearing giant sweatshirts, because that makes large-framed girls look even bigger. I'd visit early high school Jen and tell her to please cut her hair, because it doesn't matter if your hair is long if it looks like it's completely made up of split ends. I'd visit senior-year Jen and physically restrain her from going to the salon and getting those awful hair extensions.

Past that, my decisions seemed born of necessity, and ultimately resulted in positive things, so I couldn't/wouldn't try to alter the course of history by, say, not going to Cottey (it turned out to be a really good school).

The other thing that made me really think about past/future Jen was a blog by my friend Heather, about her future selves. She spoke of herself five years down the line, when she would be 33, and 10 years down the line, when she would be 38.

I'm 38.

It really made me realize how long ago 28 and 33 feel to me right now. So I decided to revisit them.

On my 28th birthday, I spent the morning exiting a cruise ship, and the rest of the day at Disneyland. Hunter was six, and we were there with my extended family on a big Sonic-sponsored cruise event. That night, they canceled the fireworks due to rain, and I threw a big pouty fit internally.
I worked at Heartland then, and shortly thereafter they shut down for a restructuring, thereby eliminating my and countless others' jobs. Fortunately, I got a job in the pharmacy at Woods Supermarket.

Fast forward to five years ago, and so many changes. My divorce had just been finalized after eight months, and that eight months had left me a basket case. I had not been a great Woods employee in that time; in fact, I had been late to work almost every day of that eight months. They rewarded me in the fashion I deserved, by firing me two weeks after the divorce was final. I was divorced and I was jobless, and there were no prospects on the horizon. I had also gone from spending every possible minute with my son to only having custody of him fifty percent of the time. It was a dark, dark time.

So it is that I look back on these times in wonder. I remember the feelings I struggled with at the time, and the pervading feeling was hopelessness. I truly believed that I was at a dead end with nowhere to turn in each of those instances.

But what I wasn't looking at then, and can see now with that clarity that only comes with hindsight, was how many great things came of those dark times. For example, the networking I did at Heartland when I was 28 ultimately landed me many great relationships that continue to this day, and I am back there now as a PRN contract employee.

The five-plus years at Woods brought me to Marilyn, the woman who made it possible for me to return to school. I never thought I would be able to cut it financially, and she single-handedly moved mountains for me to be able to do just that. When I successfully passed the math requirement (something that I never, ever thought would happen on the first try) and received my Bachelor's degree, I realized that nothing could stop me from going on. There's no math in a Master's! They should really make that the tagline for graduate degrees. Except if that graduate degree is in math. Never mind.

I wonder what the 28- and 33-year-old Jens would think now if they could see me. I'll tell you what they'd think. They'd think they hit the freakin' jackpot. I'm married to the man of my dreams, and, provided I stop writing this blog and start working more on my thesis, I'm about to get my Master's. My son will be 18 this year, and he's doing very, very well right now. I manage the movie theater.

Any one of these facts standing alone would blow my younger mind, but combined together, well, I never, ever would have thought that my life in those dark days could turn around so drastically. Don't get me wrong, my life is FAR from perfect. My marriage isn't perfect - it's a marriage like many others, full of day-to-day minutiae and occasionally taking each other for granted (although I love the crap out of that guy). I have my dream job in Pittsburg, and my dream co-workers, but it all ends when I graduate. My son is almost a man, and I'll never get those years back.

The point that I guess I'm really trying to make is that maybe you're going through a really bad time right now. Maybe you think that there is no hope, that things can't possibly get better, that you have nowhere to turn. I know those feelings. I've BEEN those feelings. And I wish I could tell you to just breathe/meditate/treat yo-self and the bad will dissolve, but it won't. It takes time. But things WILL get better. Not dramatically, and not all at once. Sometimes it takes years. But out of the darkness comes the dawn. Cliche? Definitely. But it's still true.

Never, ever, ever give up.