Rearranging Existence

“Relate to your greatness and not your weakness,” the quote from my Bedtime Tea gave me a sliver of hope to grasp onto, as I had been doing for quite some time. Each abstract affirmation of beauty to come my way via the tea tags carried not one identical sentiment as the time before. Doubts about my capabilities, projected onto me from the outside world’s view, had been sending me into a merry-go-round of despair. My tea tags gave me a gentle reminder every night to keep strong in the battle of coming to the end of myself.

In 2020, at twenty-five years old, years after getting married at eighteen, getting diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at twenty, and reevaluating the Christian values I’d been raised with, I found myself in the midst of chewing on another oversized bite of life: divorce. Divorcing my best friend of ten years after growing up together and a marriage completely stacked against us would prove to be harder than any death I’d ever lived through.

Any grievous occasion humans go through in life tends to naturally bring up multiple parts of you, from the productive, your downfalls, and the goodness we possess. When I was married, I ran after God with my entire being, and I had no questions about who I was due to a taught security in religion. After getting divorced, I had multiple moving pieces, like career, finances, a future love life, friendships, and much more. An old perception of God also sat at the stand, facing the jury of my new lenses.

At the time of my divorce, I worked in an entry-level position at an ICU. Even though my position was not directly in patient care, I witnessed an abundance of lives saved and lost, and all the in-between. While I orbed on the outside of caring for the patients, the reality of life and death sat on the edge of my desk every single day.

Even though I had no medical background, I had a sturdy emotional balance about all of it, even with the tough cases I saw on a regular basis. I began working there in 2020 on the very day they mandated no visitors due to COVID 19. Within the week, N-95’s and full PPE became a part of the dress code.

With multiple COVID deaths on my ICU each day from Thanksgiving of 2020 until well after the first of the new year, I slowly began to learn how to compartmentalize emotions. I’d been going through a heartbreaking divorce, deconstruction of my entire Christian-based foundation, and learning how to mesh with a hundred different personalities of everyone I worked with. Multiple areas of my life hung in the air like juggling balls, each slowly coming down into my reach as a transformed object.

The job provided me exactly what I needed for many seasons in my young adult life. It helped me grow as a person, learn about work ethic, and supported me well. The benefits and incentives couldn’t be topped at any other job, and I even bought my first large purchase from my overtime dollars. After buying my new-used car, I needed new goals. I recognized my job had a financial cap, even with great incentives. I could not stay in a position with an earning limit and achieve my huge dreams. I’d been considering real estate for years and finally chose a curriculum with intentions to pursue it seriously.

After two-and-a-half years at the hospital, I felt emotionally sturdy about the tragic events the walls of my floor hosted. What I did not know until later was that my secure exterior had trampled over things I needed to address in life. However, the floodgates came crashing down that summer. A young patient arrived in my ICU after being found down for an unknown amount of time. They had two young children, including a baby.

After a few days of harrowing life-saving measures on our ICU, the nurse came to my desk to inform me of a visitor exception for the patient. The family could bring in the baby, something normally not permitted. I carried on as I would any other day and wrote next to their name, “Baby ok”. Staff members knew the patient would not recover and it felt heavier than some of our other cases.

I watched our camera as the family came to the phone in the lobby and picked it up. They gave me the patient’s info to be allowed in. “I thought they were bringing in a baby?” I commented on the lack of evidence of a child. As I turned to my right, the patient’s family member stood at my desk with a newborn sleeping on their chest. “We thought if they heard the baby, they might get better.”

My soul dropped to the floor. No matter how many flatlines I saw go across my screen, patient’s I saw in their rooms after passing, time of deaths I wrote down on the discharge sheet, family members I heard thanks from, nothing prepared me for that. All the casual healthcare banter that took place each day couldn’t surpass the futile hope in front of me.

I got home and began working on my real estate course right away. I knew, after all that time, healthcare had made me numb. The only reason I could identify it was the harsh reality of that baby, sleeping on their new guardian’s chest. It started to sink in how awfully sad the situation was, more so than others I’d been around for two years.

I had to get into a career where I did not have to separate so much of my days from my nights. I wanted to live in a world where I had the capacity to give compassion to all those who needed it instead of having to be shut off to survive. I no longer wanted to suppress sadness, because without sadness, I hadn’t been experiencing true happiness either.

With that, once the feeling of sadness over the sweet baby penetrated my heart, more began to surface. The emotions of everything I’d been trying to box up and keep from touching one another in my brain started to weld together. Happiness felt better than it had, depression felt stronger than I’d dealt with, and most importantly, empathy and care for others rooted deeper. Opening up one emotion spilled the rest that, by default, got compressed too.

Starting real estate while navigating my long divorce proved to be a challenge. The first thing a realtor does is begin networking to their sphere of influence. I opened my contact list in my phone and began inputting people into a spreadsheet. I knew hardly anyone at age twenty-seven. The doubt started to come in along with the deep evaluation of the standings of current relationships. Where did I stand with people, how did they view me, how did I come across, and where were my close friendships?

I concluded that, in getting married at eighteen and fighting for the life of my marriage for six years, I overlooked building a network of people around me, even when I went to the university. Not only that, but multiple relationships and friendships had dissipated over the years while being married and recovering from the divorce itself. Many sleepless nights with questioning over my personal struggle to easily connect with others became the norm.

Friend groups continued to wane, and I found myself completely alone besides my two best girls – who were busy with nursing school and work. Even my familial relationships were starting to feel broken as I got older and gained hindsight on what I desired to be an ideal family structure. Divorce, death, loss of a lifetime of a belief system, abandonment from friends, and deep self-doubt did send me spiraling.

For several years before everything came to a breaking point for me, I’d undergone tremendous growth. From living in a married bubble pursuing a Christ-centered life whole-heartedly, to being divorced and building a brand-new foundation with pieces of the universe I chose and explored. My world shifted in many positive ways.

Healing from a divorce and past religious trauma were only the first few rungs on the ladder I needed to scale. Next came family, work ethic, my health, and relationship building. I needed to save well for the future, as a single woman with MS, I had to provide for medical needs, present and to come. I needed to build friendships to live life with and guide my family to prioritize one another.

Starting a new career in real estate was tough with all the personal obstacles I needed to overcome, but it had to be accomplished because it was the only option – not just for survival, but to fully live life. Self-evaluation books, long conversations with myself in the car, tears to my cat, hours of journaling, and one too many SHEIN orders brought it all together. It still was not enough, as my questions over-ruled my action to solve the issues.

It all pointed back to me. I did what any other logical woman who felt like she was still a spinning teenager would do. I’d laid in bed, wasting the day until 3pm one afternoon. It was my only day off and it was almost over. As I stared at my bookshelf holding my knick-knacks, and notebooks full of personal musings, the one I built with my dad almost twenty years ago, it all clicked.

“If I don’t take everything off these walls, I’ll never paint this room like I said I would!” That’s me, knowing me – and how blessed that is! I knew I would get tired of my things, my precious pretty notebooks, being displaced. I knew I couldn’t stand my favorite knick-knacks being off a display for too long and I would have to paint. So, I took everything off the walls, stripped the room, took down shelves, and went off to get the supplies to paint my room.

After a few trips to Home Depot and repositioning my furniture many times, I settled into a new room. I vowed to keep the energy in my space clear of negativity and free from the heaviness of anything disruptive to my peace. I created a fresh environment for creating, healing, and discipline. My regular journaling habit became a mandatory part of my nightly tea-time routine, and the deep dive to understand myself and others expanded. My knowledge of spirituality, God, the universe, and karma started to flow through more naturally than before.

My first year in the real estate business might not have been stellar, but in order to build my foundation, it forced the unwinding of the old version of me in order to braid together the new. One of the very pivotal decisions in my life stemming from a life-altering moment in someone else’s led to an unstoppable conquest toward improvement in every realm. The need to become fully myself before engaging in a new business venture happened exactly how the universe meant it to.

Part of the journey to find yourself is losing yourself, everything you thought you knew, and all the people you thought you knew too. It is lonely and confusing while often times full of pain. Your heroes become just as human as you are, your enemies start to shed light on who you truly are, and you become who you are meant to be. As you move toward such, the beauty pours in with boastful evidence. The aches fade away, and every day becomes the best day ever.