Everything in this place is turning and shifting, and I'm just trying to find my place in it all. It hasn't been easy, but I knew it wouldn't be. The first push was getting here, and now the second will be getting comfortable here. I've committed myself to moving out of my current apartment by the end of the month. The bedbugs got things off to a nasty start. I was so excited when my paintings arrived, I put them up on the walls and got back to my regular routine of painting every morning. Then I found bedbugs running down the walls, so the paintings had to be taken off the walls and stacked in the corner. I went to iron a skirt a couple days ago, and a bedbug came running out, so everything had to be washed and put in plastic bins. I had barely unpacked, and suddenly I found myself packed up again! I still feel very unsettled and almost in a chaotic state.
At the same time, I've realized I'm not 22 anymore. I'll be 27 next month, and I'm ready to make a home with my guy rather than just have a room with two girls. Thankfully he has seen it this way too, and has decided to transfer as soon as I find a place I like rather than waiting 6 months to a year. So the search begins again, and I'm looking in Brooklyn this time. We'll be starting a whole new chapter together, and I'm so excited for that!
On the job front, the dream job was a dream deferred. I've been interviewing for other positions, and in the interim I took a job at a natural food store in Brooklyn. It's funny the value judgements people place on jobs. When I told my roommate I'd be working at a grocery store, she recoiled in disgust. "Why would you want to do that?" She looked at me like I'd turned green or something. I told her I had a strong interest in natural health, and that if the other museum job I'd interviewed for called back, Id switch to that because it was higher pay. "Even if the pay was the same, I'd rather work at a museum than do...that." Yikes. And my mother was upset that I would take a job that paid so little ($10/hr) in such an expensive place. "How will you survive??" She cried. I told her things would be tight for awhile, but I would be up for a raise in 6 months. The job is enough to pay my rent each month with a small chunk left over, plus now I can get a discount on groceries. And Codi's arrival will soon ease the burden. I wasn't worried or afraid, but I found myself feeling...ashamed. I liked the place I was going to start working, but people were treating me like I was some kind of freak for taking it. I thought it was better to take something thank to be in NYC unemployed. At one point, my roommate declared, "You're so humble. I would never work for less than $15 per hour." I was beginning to feel...humbled. I called Codi and told him no one was happy for me or anything. "It's a start, you're just getting your momentum going!" he said. "You called me a few hours ago so happy about this job, and you've let everyone else get to you and make you feel bad about it. What did your aunty do, the one who ended up being a millionaire?" "She scrubbed toilets, did laundry, made beds..." I replied. "Exactly. She had to put up with all kinds of stuff, but she did it. She wasn't ashamed, and she used that money wisely." I realized that he was right. People could only devalue me if I let them. I thought about my friend who worked as a baker in a co-op for several years, waking up at 4am every day to go and bake, and serve coffee and tea. She worked hard and put her all into what she did, no shame in her game. And she used it as an opportunity to expand her knowledge of cooking and baking with natural ingredients. And my other friend who worked three jobs--two day and one overnight--to meet the income requirements for her fiance to come from Ghana. I realized I didn't come from a community where we placed value judgements on other people's jobs. We were always happy that brother or sister had a job period, and was making a way for themselves. What I'm doing may not be so glamorous, but I didn't come out here to be Carrie Bradshaw. When we work hard, those efforts will be rewarded in some way. It would be lovely to work in a museum, but truthfully I'd take having my art on its walls over working there, and so that's where my focus shall be.
That's the crazy thing about going to a completely new place: I was working so hard to get into the swing of things here that I took on certain ideologies that were not my own. As I get used to my new surroundings I can see a little more clearly, and bring those pieces of myself back to center. The only way I will last and succeed in any place is if I hold onto who I am, and always move forward with love. Who I am is enough.