Friday, November 8, 2013

We measure what we value.

 
One year.
Twelve Months.
Fifty two weeks.
Three hundred sixty five days.
 
A letter was put into a mailbox a year ago today, and it would take another week to make it to my former employer.  A year ago today my life changed and I didn't even know it yet.  I've been having a rough time of it, both today and yesterday, but I've been blessed in a hundred other ways, and so that is making up for a lot of the anger and resentment and a lot of the falling apart that I am really wanting to do right now.
 
I am right in the middle of my second semester back in school, I have a 3.85 GPA, and my first assignment in my class, a 21 page summary paper on a book came back as a 100%.  I also got an email from my advisor (who, funny enough, is also my instructor this session) with my degree audit for the coming year, and her suggestion for courses for next semester.  If I take one class this summer, am able to get my distance courses taken in the spring, and am able to find an internship, I will graduate next December.  That is best case scenario.  That is, Sadie buckles down and everything lines itself up, and tax return is hefty, and airline prices are decent, and internship works out, and work gives me time off, and the planets align PERFECT.  If not, we're talking spring or fall of 2015.  BUT, it is possible for me to do it by next year.
 
I can safely say that without what happened to me a year ago, that probably wouldn't be happening.  I spent a lot of nights on my computer, drinking, and surfing the web.  A lot of the colleges I sent out emails to I don't even remember.  I don't even really remember how I ended up coming across Union Institute. 
 
I am not the same person I was a year ago.  I am still not sure if that's a good or a bad thing.  Maybe its both.  I don't have that same trust that my life is just going to float along and everything is going to be dandy.  I don't trust people that I used to, that I probably should, in the same way that I should, any longer.  It may not seem like it, and I have opened up a lot more recently, but I am a lot more reserved about the things I do say.
 
I hate him.  I know I need to let that go and move on from that.  I know that carrying that around inside of me will poison me from the inside out, but I'm not quite ready to let that go.  I'm not quite ready to walk away from the karma train on that one.
 
However, I am going to boast on my accomplishments.  How far I have come.  How far I have clawed myself off of that couch that I laid on for six weeks straight watching Netflix next to the white Christmas tree, eating waffle cone Breyer's ice cream and living off of the $8 of cash I happened to have in my wallet over my son's birthday and Christmas came and went.  I picked myself up.  I dusted myself off, and I carried on.
 
Now, if I can only finish what I started.