An Opportunity Lost

Today was a rough day.  The kind of rough day that shakes you to your core.  Makes you remember just how out of control your life is sometimes and how good cries are rarely pretty.

It all started last night.  I was invited to an ugly sweater party with some of my first year classmates and friends.  I made some so-called slutty brownies to bring and others brought cookies, veggies, dips, and “tiger butter”.  There were dough wrapped meatballs, fresh tomato and feta salad on pieces of bread, buffalo chicken dip, and chocolate dipped pretzels.  For drinks we have everything from various types of wine to champagne punch and hard cider.  Needless to say we had more than enough food and I ate wayyy too much.  It all tasted so good and my self-control went out the window.  I was stuffed, deliciously stuffed.

Naturally when I finally got to bed it was something like 2am and since I’m normally up at 6am my body is hard pressed to sleep past 8am.  As you can imagine I was awake and sadly wired at 8:15 this morning.  Because I felt like a ton of bricks, sluggish, and really unhappy with my weight (obviously thank in very large part to all the goodies I was probably still digesting) I went to the gym.  I then spent the next two hours there.  I started off with the stationary bike for 50 minutes, followed by 30-40 minutes of NROLFW stage 3 lifting (wooo, it’s getting rough), then 35 minutes on the elliptical.  What a grueling morning, huh?  And, unfortunately, I’m not above saying some of that two hour gym time was motivated by penance for the night before.  Not the most healthy motivation but I’m just being honest here.

After a shower, I headed to a lunch meeting at my church about the storytelling ministry I am a part of.  I decided to call my mom on the way to chat about some sad news I got about a local job opportunity.  It won’t be happening which means in order to work in the specialty that I want to tackle most of all (infertility, assisted reproductive technology) I may have to move away from where I am now.  I may have to move away from Jack.  I may have to leave a part of the country I am just so comfortable in.

When I got the news on Friday I was professional about it.  I spoke with the doctor about ways that we could continue the conversation and different patient populations I could see.  I held it together.  I still had so much of the day to get through that I couldn’t lose it, I couldn’t fall apart.  I mean, I was bound and determined to not let it have this huge effect on me.  I mean, it’s only one job and I knew it was a long shot, I would have been creating a position from scratch.  I admit though, I want to do that some day.  And the reason this opportunity didn’t work out had absolutely nothing to do with anyone being at fault.  It is simply a numbers game.  There isn’t a big enough patient population to “feed” a genetic counseling position.  I get that, and I respect that.  It doesn’t mean I wanted it to happen any less though.  I was born to be an ART/infertility counselor.

Anyways, I hadn’t really assimilated what had happened, what it all really meant.  Essentially, the way I see it now, the likelihood that I have to move to find the perfect position just increased.  And that’s scary (and in some small ways kind of exciting too, changes in scenery are neat sometimes).  So, on the phone with my mother, on the steps of my church, in broad sunlight, and in the middle of pedestrian traffic I broke down.  I cried.  I sniffled.  I heaved.  I caught my breath.

It was good to get it out.  It was better to let myself fully grieve that opportunity loss.  And this wasn’t the end.  After all, it is only November.  The “employment season” for freshly graduated genetic counselors is just really beginning.  But you know, in the moment, it feels like crap.  It feels like it is over.  It feels like nothing will fit you and your future careers desires that perfectly again.  I don’t know what it would be like to be so far away from the ones I love.  I could end up who knows where.  And the whole thing is happening so quickly and so slowly at the same time.  We have five months left.  FIVE.  Then we’re going to be big kids, with big kid jobs out there in the world…

So, yes, it’s easy to despair, it’s easy to shut down when what you so desperately wanted falls through your fingertips.  And it’s easy to think that long distance will be the end of lots of things.  But then you receive a message that makes you cry again but this time for one of the best reasons: you realize just how loved you are and just how strong your relationship is.

And suddenly things don’t seem so bleak, they don’t seem so overwhelming.  I wiped away the tears, gave a meek smile, and turned on some laughs to lighten the mood.  Comedy Central came through.  Achmed never fails me.

Questions: When was your last, good, “ugly cry”?
Who is your favorite Jeff Dunham character?