I flee to D.C. in the ink black uncertainty of an indelible decision. I burn every bridge with the world of finance, with my last employer, with my former self. Even if I want to, I can never go back. But I already know that will never happen. I have eight thousand dollars to see me through to whatever is next for me in life. I am no longer using bank accounts. I keep the cash in a hole I cut in my pillow. I change my phone number. I have no address. I am off the grid.
what unemployment looks like
I have a place to stay in D.C. for a few months. Living in the sun room of one of my closest friends, cleaning her house in exchange for cheaper rent. I know I need to find an income before I tear through the cash I have in the same manor I have torn through every other amount of money that has ever touched my hands. The financial analyst who can’t manage her own finances amuses me even in destitution. Within a couple weeks I have my very first waitressing job. This is the life I want. I will write during the day while everyone is at work. I will wait tables into the early hours of morning to pay my bills. I will survive this way and I will answer to no one. I will do what I love without compromising myself. The tattoo on my right ankle reminds me of my unwillingness to conform, and my inability to get another corporate job without covering it. I will never cover it. I will never work for another place that cares what ink I have on my skin. I am finally living for me.
But everything isn’t as I planned. Getting off at three a.m. I end up drinking until sunrise, and sleeping until my shift begins again at five. I am not writing. There is nothing creative coming from me except the words for the poet I believe myself to love. And even those fall limp on unrequited ears. Where is this great creative spark? This great drive that will blossom into a book? With so many stories to tell I find myself drunk every day yet again. The snow stands in dirtied mountain ranges down our street and I spend my time with friends and bourbon. It’s alright for now, I tell myself. I have only just quit. I can take this time to have a little fun. Everything will fall into place as it should. I am just getting acclimated to this new life.
Frozen in DC
Three weeks into my very first waitressing gig, I am fired. Caught drinking a beer on the job, I cry when they call me and tell me never to come in again. It is mid December and I have no idea what I am going to do. The boy I thought I loved wants nothing to do with me. One of his closest friends drives my beloved Jeep into a pole one drunken night and disappears. I have torn through more than two thousand dollars in just a few weeks and now have no income. But a week before Christmas is no time to look for a job. I wipe the tears from my eyes and resign myself to enjoy Christmas and my birthday and look for a new job after the new year. I turn twenty-six on New Year’s Day and I believe wholly that this new year will be new in every way for me. At twenty-six I will finally know what I should have learned about myself at twenty. I trust in the universe to tell me what to do. I believe this when I say it. I am utterly lost.
