Humble

When my mother died, I remember being baffled by the most pronounced emotion I felt: Gratitude. My heart was always swollen with the things other people were doing for me. Not inflated like a balloon, but swollen like wounded knee. The body swells to prevent further injury, according to google, and that’s how I felt. Had I not been wrapped in thick love, I would have shriveled in the outside air.

That’s how I feel now, unemployed and feeling … (helpless? hopeless? future-less? impossible? overwhelmed? lost? anxious? depressed?) last night, for the first time in two months, I sat down with the journal that I write in daily and I consciously thought Caroline, How Do You Feel?

I can say anxious and depressed in a moment, because it’s a given. When you cry without warning and wake up with nausea, it’s just a thing you have. Situational, yes. Tolerable, yes. And also: totally normal. It’s normal to feel this when you have walked away from the highest paying job you’ve ever had, walked away from best friends and being comfortable and having a clearly marked path to walk on.

But what else? I realized that in confronting the I Have Anxiety Thing from the past year, I wrapped myself up in claiming that identity, and forgot a bit about what else I am.

I went to dinner last night with a friend I haven’t seen in years (which has been a trend of the past few weeks), who kept asking me, “If you had unlimited money, if you could do anything, what would you do? What do you love?”

I refused to answer him.

Something in me seized. I don’t know or trust him enough to open completely. I don’t have the confidence in myself to claim the things I love (art, dialogue about race, writing, building relationships, teaching). I don’t want to answer these self-help questions over a table at Olive Garden in such a flippant way when it is the exact question that has been Crushing Me For Months-Years.

I’ve spent the last full month in other people’s homes. I have eaten their food, held their babies, crafted beside them, felt their love wrap around all parts of me: in the clothes I borrow, in the yards I let my dog run in, in the drinks we share. I have been (in less dramatic words?) at the mercy of those who love me.

It is terrifying to ask for help, and utterly overwhelming to receive it.

The last post I wrote, I “knew” I was moving to Detroit. This changed when I went to dinner with a high school friend (yep, another one I haven’t seen in years). We sat with Korean tacos in a market in DC. He is calm and deliberate when he speaks. He makes eye contact and has an vibe of energy and seriousness and genuine concern all the time. As we sat, he looked at me, he asked,

“Are you doing okay?”

Externally, I glanced at my taco in my hand. I played with my hat or my teenage-boy-hair. I took breaths and smiled.

Internally, my organs set on fire. I felt pin pricks in all of my extremities, wondered where the exits were both literally and figuratively, and did everything possible to contain the scream and onslaught of violent tears that immediately throbbed behind my eyes. Are you serious, friend? You really going to ask that right now? 

I said something like, “No. I mean no but of course yes. I’m okay.”

In that conversation, which honesty just typing it out has me wiping my eyes in a Kalamazoo coffee shop, he worked out details of what I can do in Baltimore. He offered his room (I’ll tell my roommates you’re my cousin and you’re going through a divorce. I don’t think we can have dogs but whatever I’ll say I’m dog sitting…), promised to make a call the following day to a friend who just bought a house and needs a roommate, and started calculating cost of living, thinking of jobs…

He asked about my support network in Detroit, and compared it to my support network in Baltimore and surrounding cities. In more of the so-sincere-I-am-extremely-uncomfortable style of talking he said, I want someone to look out for you, and I will make sure you’re okay. I’ll get you set up. I want you to know you’ll be supported.

Real talk, my friends, just typing that God Damn Italicized Sentence I had to stare at the ceiling, take my glasses off, wipe my eyes four times, change the song on spotify, and come back to finish it.

This experience, this joblessness+, is Humbling.

I pretend, and act on the pretending, that I am independent as fuck. I move from state to state on a whim. I pay for international trips and take my dog to the vet. I get my teeth cleaned. I grieve for my mother as alone as possible. I go on tinder date after bumble date after man from the bar date and I don’t fret when we never speak again. I am used to this.

This experience, these weeks stretched into months, has me in a place of complete vulnerability. My footing isn’t just lost, I am in a current in a river I don’t know the name of, with my head hardly above water. Each time I reach my hand up, though, someone pulls me clear out, gives me clothes and food and a pep talk, and convinces me I am who I think I am, this is just, you know, part of life.

PS: I started posting on medium, if you use, keep track here.