The Place Right Before

I have been trying to write this blog since August.  I was on the verge of heading back to school once again, but this time to complete the prerequisites for graduate school.

Now it's been almost a month since I finished that hellacious semester.  Fourteen credits of lab science and statistics while I worked full-time and had to navigate two schedule changes at work per week for four months.  While grandpa was dying and I was still grieving 2012's earlier losses.  I may have lost my mind had it not been for my friends and my yoga practice.

I submitted my application on Friday.  It was the final step of a decision that has been an impossible amount of work and at times uncertain determination.  Arranging references, writing essays, updating resumes, digging up old transcripts...all the while wondering what on earth I was thinking.

I came back to this blog on December 17th, but still couldn't find the words.  You'd been gone six months, and I was thinking a lot about something you used to say all the time.  I never used to understand what you meant when you referred to the physical place of your life as "The Place Right Before," but I understand it now. I'm living there too. Just like you, I also don't know what this next event is with any certainty - the place right before what, exactly?

This is what I do know.  Last month, I had a long-awaited conversation with my supervisor.  I sat down with her and talked about dropping to part time, eventually admitting to her and myself that I may even mean casual or resigning.

The relief - and the fear - that came over me were indescribable.  After all these years - 13+ years since that day, more than 11 years working on an ambulance - and I still don't know how to describe what this work has meant to me.  It has been my therapy, my healing, my attrition, and an expression of gratitude for my life.

It was good, in a way, to come to a career that didn't require me to feel deeply, though I nearly always did. I have needed distance from the experience and at the same time, proximity.  I have needed a role at the perimeter and this job was perfect for that.  It was never "healthy" to relive my trauma for so long, but those moments when I had to go for a walk after a call taught me courage and patience with myself.  Those moments gave me a depth of experience and understanding I don't think I otherwise would have found.  I don't know how else I would have rebuilt my heart.  But when I walked off that stage last April, wearing my pressed uniform, shined shoes, and a tie, having shared my story in all its ugliness and glory, I knew I had accomplished what I came here to do.  It has been a privilege to pay it forward, but I knew I was done.

You taught me then, Sharon, and you taught me this year - it is time for more.  I don't need to stay where my seniority, vesting, and income is "safe."  I know that I was meant to be here until now. I know that the experiences and the people I've known were energies and spirits intended to teach me and walk beside me.  I am scared, but in a new way - a way in which I know I'm not stuck anymore and the world is a wide open possibility.  The thought of leaving my work family has been my greatest resistance to this change, but as I emptied my work folder and peeled my name off my locker this week I realized - it is okay to say goodbye to the sorrow of my life.

I don't know that this is the right path.   I don't think I believe anymore that there is a right path, but instead, only the one I choose today.  I know that this path will afford me the opportunity to serve people more deeply, to learn more and continually, to own a home, to travel and live all the places I've wanted to, and challenge me in the ways that I've always wished my current work did.  But, should things not happen the way I've envisioned, I am somehow certain that I will find peace in this too.  My work does not define me. Whatever my life becomes, it will encompass my love of science, my love of healing, my desire to sing and perform again, my evolving spirituality and my deepening yoga practice.

I remember the Living with Loss session when I was the only client to show up.  We'd known each other for just a couple months, but since it was just the two of us, we sat outside by the lake and talked.  At one point I asked, "What are you, Sharon?" 

Quite intentionally, you looked confused but then said with a sigh and a smile, "I am...me.  Just me."

I didn't know what to say, so you followed up with, "I know, though, that you meant, 'What are my credentials,' so I am a social worker.  But I...me...I am so much more than that."

And so am I.  This must just be the place and time in life where we figure that out.  Every second of every day, my dear friend, I think about how I now find myself in your Place Right Before.