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continued
The memories of this crushing of my spirit, reinforcing feelings of inadequacy at a
very young age, formed a pattern into my adulthood. I had a hard time finding a good job
where I could support myself and feel I was doing well. I pushed love interests away by
sabotaging anything that resembled a relationship, by either being too clingy or needy, or
by being too aggressive. I often had a hard time standing up for myself in certain
situations. I would just let it slide and cry about it later, as I did when I was a child
everytime I was humiliated by a judgmental adult.
In February 1993, I got a job in the Cayman Islands as an Interior Designer straight
out of College and lived there for a year-and-a-half. I had a 2-year contract. However, a
Caymanian who was qualified for my job wanted to start working after she graduated from
college. She had been a summer intern and the owner must have felt it was time for a
change. When I announced that I was going to go home on vacation, my boss told me to stay
at home.
On one hand, I was disappointed to have to leave and was going to try to fight it. I
had finally gotten settled and made some really interesting friends through the Cayman
Drama Society. I was also asked to produce the next show. Upon further contemplation, I
realized that I was really not happy there and the only saving grace was the people I had
recently come to meet.
Three months prior to my departure, a dear friend, whose family I had adopted as my
extended family, left the island and moved to Delaware. When I really looked around, I saw
that most of the people who I had come to know within the year and three months prior to
my joining the drama society were leaving around the same time as me.
After I got back to the states, I moved back in with my parents and had a really hard
time finding a good job. I was substitute teaching and working in my father’s
restaurant during most of the year, jumping from job-to-job, in-between looking for
something more fulfilling. During the summer, I would always land a really great job, but
it only lasted a season. After 2 years of this pattern, I finally got kicked out of the
house.
I spent the next month, November, with a dear friend who let me stay in a room for
1-month. In December, I started house sitting for my former summer boss who was going to
be in the city all winter and needed someone to watch his house. During that time, I
reached my rock bottom. I found a job in a trendy mall restaurant where I discovered that
although I grew up in the restaurant business, I wasn’t cut out to be a waitress. I
was so desperate to have a job, any job, that I was commuting an hour-and-45-minutes to
get to this place and was making peanuts. I cried often and loudly and realized that there
had to be something better for me.
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