Beauty on the Backroads

To say the last few weeks have been hard isn’t a strong enough word. While talking to a friend about our family’s current situation, I realized we had experienced unexpectedly difficult circumstances or received surprising news for multiple weekends in a row. First, there was the medical emergency on the side of the mountain. Then a week later, there was the news that Phil would be losing his job. A week after that, we learned that the lead pastor at the church we started attending earlier this year is resigning. And the week after that was Phil’s official last day of work.

It’s been A LOT to process and at times it felt like facing a raging ocean: after being knocked down, we’d stand up, shake ourselves off only to be knocked down again. (I was not feeling the Chumbawamba-like optimism: “I get knocked down, but I get up again …”)

When a string of events like this happens, I start to believe that everything is going to be bad forever. I start expecting that more bad news is right around the corner. My body goes on high alert, waiting for the next wave to come crashing into me. And I wonder if I’ll be able to get back up.

—

The first week that Phil was off work was a period of adjustment to a new normal. Our family schedule revolved mostly around his work schedule, which was not a traditional one by any means, and I found myself unable to keep track of the days because he was home every day. In some ways, it felt like a time of resetting. I thought maybe once his last day had passed, I would feel less anxious and stressed, but my body told me otherwise. Even though I was technically getting enough sleep, it wasn’t good sleep. I would wake up feeling drained and it was mostly because my mind wouldn’t stop thinking, worrying, trying to find a way out of our current circumstances.

When things go wrong or not as I’ve planned them, then I try to fix whatever is wrong. If things don’t go according to plan, then I try to plan my way out of them. I’m not good at accepting change I didn’t choose, and I put a lot of pressure on myself to solve the problem. But ultimately, I can’t fix my husband’s unemployment status. I can’t make the right job appear in our lives, and I can’t make it happen as soon as I want.

That first week passed. Phil diligently searched for and applied for jobs and had a couple of interviews. He also had a follow-up ordered by his doctor (did I forget to mention that all this time we still don’t know why he felt light-headed on the side of the mountain or why strenuous exercise causes him to still have the same symptoms?) with an infectious disease specialist to determine if he had Lyme disease. (He does not.)

I still felt like I was bracing myself for more bad news.

—

Hovering over all of this was an issue of some missing money.

During the summer, I applied for unemployment. It’s advised by our employer to do so, and I did it the summer before when school unexpectedly let out in March due to the pandemic. I did not expect to have problems, but because I do some freelance work in the summer (and probably because of staffing issues), my claim was pending approval all summer. I didn’t receive a single dollar the whole time I was unemployed, and I had heard horror stories about calling the department and being on hold for hours. I hate phone calls in general and I hate waiting on the phone, so I just avoided the whole thing until I’d gone back to work.

I called one day in early September to find out what was going on, and I was given a ticket number for the help desk. After checking the website to see what number they were “serving,” I realized it would be weeks before I’d get an answer. This was all before the medical incident and the job news, so while I wanted to know what was going on, it didn’t feel urgent.

By the time my ticket came up, whatever issue they’d had with my claim had been resolved. It was the end of September. I checked my dashboard to see when a payment had been issued, then waited for the money to show up in my bank account.

A week later, I still hadn’t seen it. So I called unemployment again and got another ticket number along with the phone number to the state treasury department to see if they could help me. We were now in the final weeks of Phil’s job and I knew that if we had my unemployment money from the summer, we could take a little more time with him finding a job.

I waited another few days before I tried to call the treasury department only to learn that they only take phone calls between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. That’s when I’m at work. So, I got frustrated and voiced it to some colleagues who assured me that making a call like that during work hours would not be an issue. One day, I got up the nerve to do it and asked one of my co-workers if I could use her room to make a phone call. I don’t like being overheard on the phone because I get so nervous and worked up about it. She agreed and I made the call.

The call center was “full,” the message said, but it gave me an email address to try. I took that option and fired off an email right away. There, I thought. I’ve done something.

But the next day I doubted myself. According to my email, I had the address wrong. I tried to call again and this time was on hold, but again, I hate waiting, especially when I’m trying to do other things. The message repeated the email address, and I wrote it down correctly this time. I sent another message, this time receiving confirmation that my message was received.

Again, I felt like I’d done something. A day or two later, I got a follow-up message asking for another piece of information. At least someone was working on my inquiry. But the way things had been going, I was convinced that whatever news the treasury department had for me was going to be bad. I imagined I’d somehow been scammed out of the money and would have to file a police report. I didn’t have a lot of hope.

—

The first weekend of our new normal was packed in a lot of good ways. Our kids had various Halloween events on Friday night. On Saturday, a group of women I know from church and book club took a day trip to Philadelphia to shop at H Mart. I joined them because it’s been years since I had a Saturday free where I could do that. Phil has worked Saturdays for what feels like our entire married life, so to do something for myself on a Saturday always felt like a colossal effort. It was usually easier to stay home or do something with the kids. I had an amazing time just talking in the van on the way there, shopping all the Asian foods at H Mart, eating a big bowl of comforting noodles and just generally escaping from my life for a day. Phil and the kids cleaned the house and went to the batting cages and we all reconvened at the house, exhausted and rejuvenated by the unexpected change in our routine.

The next day, Phil and I volunteered with our church at our local Pride Festival, and even though we didn’t attend church in our building that day, I felt amazingly connected to our community throughout the day. I was encouraged and grateful to be part of a community actively welcoming those who have been excluded by religious folks in the past. 

—

When Monday morning rolled around, I was tired but in a good way. I’ve been trying to do more journaling to help process all the emotions my body is holding, so on Monday morning I sat on the couch in the living room before the sun had risen and wrote this:

I’ve been focusing on the “bad” that could be just around the corner instead of hoping that something positive might surprise us this week. Help me have eyes to see the good and just enough faith to believe that this is not the end for us.

This is as close as I get to praying right now because I still have complicated feelings about God and religion. I had no special insight that things could change for us, but I needed to shift my thinking. (Earlier in these circumstances, someone told me they loved my attitude about everything that was happening to me, and I felt like a fraud. Because sometimes I don’t believe the words that I say. “It’ll all work out,” I say, while secretly believing it won’t work out and will end in disaster.)

I went to school with a positive attitude on Monday but by the end of the day, the hope that had buoyed me had seeped out of me like a balloon with a slow leak. I was deflated and discouraged but still hoping that maybe this would be the week that things changed.

—

Fast forward to Wednesday and I. Am. Done. Working in education was hard before the pandemic. Since then, it’s been exponentially harder. I came home from work that day feeling the usual frustrations and tiredness. I checked my email (because my phone doesn’t always get service inside my school building) and there was a message from the treasury department. I read it. Then I read it out loud to Phil to make sure I understood.

It said that my bank account had been disconnected from my unemployment account in August because of high levels of fraud with accounts from my bank, so the money was sent to a debit card that was issued to me. The message included a phone number to the bank that issues the unemployment debit cards.

My mind took off in several directions at once. I called the phone number and learned that the card had been issued to me 18 months ago, at the start of the pandemic, so I frantically searched my files for the card. I found it. I had never activated it because I preferred direct deposit. I went about activating the card all the while mumbling, “Does this mean I had the money all this time?” It took me several tries to create an account so I could check the balance on the card and confirm that the money was indeed loaded onto the card. I grew frustrated with the log-in process because it wasn’t working the way I wanted it to and finally after what felt like hours of struggle but was only a few minutes, I logged in and saw the dollar amount that was on the card.

And promptly burst into tears.

It was more than I was expecting because I hadn’t factored in the extra pandemic funds. And I hadn’t realized how much of a burden I’d been carrying until it was lifted. I felt like I’d been holding my breath for weeks and now I could finally let it out. The unemployment money means we can stretch out the job search a little longer if we need to. It means we have something to fall back on in the meantime.

At the same time I was learning this information, Phil received a call from one of the places he’d applied to. They’re really interested in speaking with him. An hour later I learned that my annual mammogram was negative. (I had no reason to believe it wouldn’t be, but still.)

All of it felt like hope.

Phil doesn’t have a new job lined up yet, but he’s had three interviews with more on the way and the places where he’s been applying have been eager to convince him to work for them. He has options, so we’re hopeful again that he can find something with better hours and better pay than what he was doing.

We are not out of the woods yet but it feels less like we’re lost in the middle of a forest with no way out.

We went for ice cream after dinner. I slept a little better last night. My shoulders feel more relaxed. My outlook is not as dreary.

—

In no way do I believe that in changing my outlook, in choosing to look for the positive this week that I somehow manifested good news. I’m not a “name it and claim it” type of person nor do I believe that the discovery of my unemployment money is some kind of reward for having faith. 

A part of me wants to believe that God knew we would need this money at this time in our lives and therefore the delays all summer were ordained. Part of me thinks that’s hogwash, a convenient way to make sense of the frustrations.

All I’m willing to say for sure is that this is the way things happened.

And this is the way things are right now.

For me, that’s enough.