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(via this beautiful collection, h/t pangea)
I have close to 30 tabs open on my macbook for grad school options and GRE things and “jobs for English majors since you decided to take Experimental Fiction and Postmodern Brit Lit AFTER you took close to two years off of school because you weren’t sure what you were doing with your life at 19” because I graduate in the spring. The anxiety tests my gag reflex daily. I think about my friends with law degrees and MBAs who can’t find jobs in this recession. I think about the future and how I along with countless others am possibly very screwed.
I opened this and she turned from drilling the side of a plane or a ship or whatever that is and looked at me from my computer screen.
“You don’t know what a hard day of work is, you spoiled brat,” she said, setting her eyes on me.
“I’ve worked before.” In retail. In a research library. In an art studio. I have parents who have helped me almost entirely with my college education.
“Look at the palms of your hands and tell me you’re not lucky right now.”
They are soft and I know that this recession has barely touched me while I’ve barely touched the world. She’s turned back and her hands are stronger than mine, red nailed, because she’s not scared of what’s to come, she faced whatever it happened to be.
There is no perfect path for anyone. I had ten different plans by age eighteen that have all changed or been derailed by twenty-three. Things change and life happens and you work with what you have. You have to do things you never expected you’d do and deal with that. Nothing is ever going to work out the way you planned and that might just be the best thing to ever happen to you.
