Hot Potato

“I need some advice,” she says to me.

“You’ve come to the right place,” I reply, drinking directly from the bottle of Cabernet after shoving a handful of Cheetos in my mouth.

Clearly.

Even when I feel like a complete basket case myself, I somehow carry the ability to guide others through the bumps in their journey. The problem is my incapacity to follow my own guidance and I find myself stuck in a pothole over which I instructed everyone else to leap.

Is that weakness?

Sometimes I think it might be physically impossible to take our own advice. It’s like something that goes against our nature. We couldn’t possibly take something we already have.

We’re all just passing around the same advice like an endless game of hot potato.

“Shit! I don’t want this! Here—you! Take this advice!”

And where will we all be when the music stops?

You know, for someone who is quick to advise reaching out to others and even wrote a novel with this concept as a central theme, I sure do a damn good job of closing myself off.

Maybe that’s my adult rationality overflowing. I tell myself the things that bother me are invalid or silly, and that there are those with far greater problems. I twist reality until I believe keeping pain inside is strength. So, I bottle it up and don’t reach out. Then I’m a warm bottle of soda that comes closer and closer to explosion with every shake until one day I blow my top in a cosmic meltdown, spraying everyone in the vicinity with the stickiness inside me.

Let me pass you this hot potato of advice before the music cuts and I’m stuck with it in my sweaty palms.

Adulting does not mean sealing away your emotions nor hiding them from the people closest to you. Never be afraid of your feelings, and reach out to those around you for help. The moments following an emotional detonation bring unimaginable relief as my emotions fizz out around me.

Maybe I’d do better to gradually release the carbonation inside me instead of waiting to burst.

That would be real adulting.

But this potato is in your hands, now.

No pass backs.

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Make It Go

Inside, I feel a little like the wick of a candle when the wax is gone and the fire fizzles out. I’m short and charred, and would crumble between two fingers.

I am burnt out.

I’ve put so much in. Everyday another word, another hope, another idea.

Everyday another page.

Sometimes I’m not sure there’s enough in me. Someday I’ll dip my bucket into the well and I won’t pull up any more words.

I’ll be dry.

I’m giving this all I have. I’ve been blazing for weeks, a flickering heat with endless fuel shedding light in darkness.

But today, I’m burnt out.

I gave it everything, and now I sit and anticipate familiar rejection. And when it comes, I hope I can catch a spark again.

Because I don’t know what I’m doing.

“I don’t know what I’m doing with my life,” I sighed a I struggled to keep up with my sister’s stride. Her Brittany Spaniel, Ruby, was trotting at her side and my Doberman, Chevy, pulled me along.

“I don’t think anyone really knows what they’re doing with their life,” Sarah replied, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye.

“It’s just weird,” I continued. “I want to be successful. I want to work hard. But I don’t know what I want to work hard at.”

“Just do what makes you happy,” she offered as she halted to tear a twig from Ruby’s mouth. “The world would be a much better place if we all just did what makes us happy.”

Who’s the older sibling, here, exactly?

“Writing makes me happy,” I said, patting Chevy’s head and looking at the bare trees around us. The faded imprints of autumn’s leaves still lingered upon the concrete beneath our tennis shoes.

“Then do it,” Sarah told me.

“It’s not that simple,” I retorted. “I have to be real about this. What are the flipping odds anything I write is going to go anywhere beyond my office?”

“You make it go.”

I’ve been told before to keep trying. To never give up. That I can do it. But these 4 words in that small slice of time on the trail struck me. They collided with my body and left me stumbling.

I make it go.

Right now, I’m tired. I’m so burnt out I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.

But I will recover.

And I’ll keep at it.

Because that’s what we do as humans.

We pull strength from empty places

and we make it go.

The Universe I Create

Between the hemispheres of my brain, within the confines of my skull, a million words are flying. They’re soaring across an intricate web of thought. They build a world, letter by letter, a place only I can see when I close my eyes.

I am sane.

I am an adult.

I know it is all in my head.

But it’s real to me.

In my head, there’s a place only I can hide. In my brain, there’s a world I constructed from dust. In my mind lives a man with a villain to fight. It is all fantasy that only I can experience, places only I can know, people only I can love.

It’s just me and the universe I create with letters and words and precise punctuation that alters meaning and shatters perception.

Just me.

Until the day I pick up a pen, scrape it across paper. Until that moment I tenderly tap keys. Until the world I’ve built writhes and churns and the words overflow. They cascade from my ears and trickle to my palms. I hold them, just for a second, just until they start to drip from the spaces between my fingers. Then I release them, uncup my hands and splash them into the world.

I write them. I write them all, so that this place might become real…so that these people might be loved. They aren’t just characters, concrete and simple. They carry a message and tell a story and mean something more than just what they are. They’re a product of my passion and the fruit of my talent and the result of emotion firing and misfiring in my cortex.

“Stop playing pretend and be an adult.”

These characters are apart of me, imprints behind my eyes. I will be 108 before I put down a pen and give up my passion.

“Characters aren’t real. Don’t waste your time developing them.”

They’re real to me, and they carry a message of love and resilience and acceptance and hope that so many of us in this world need. Character development is vital to the success of a story. They don’t deserve to be blurry.

“You’ll never get published, save yourself the time and disappointment.”

57 rejections. 4 manuscript requests. Two writer’s conferences. Three agent cards, two almost-had-its, a new writer’s laptop, a custom logo, a website, and another four cold queries. Not a single instant have I felt like I’ve wasted even a nanosecond of my time. I look wonderful failure in the face and analyze how I can use that to get better. If that isn’t #adulting, I am not sure what is. Failure is not disappointment. Failure is glorious opportunity.

Someday, the world will read these words and feel these emotions and meet these characters. They will live forever, permanently stamped on paper to outlive my body and change the world long after I’m gone.

And I will smile every step of the way, because I’m killing it.

We’re killing it.

Mail in a Pile on the Counter

Time is bizarre. 

It’s something we can spend and save, make and waste, choose and lose. We can have too much, but mostly have too little. Time can fly, and time can also crawl. It moves systematically forward but never backward, and it never, ever stops.  

The concept of time makes my brain hurt sometimes. How can an hour seem to sluggishly drag by, while the last 28 years whirled by me, knocked me over, yanked me onward in its wake? It is stumbling to consider time lost and wasted is something we can never get back. And in those quiet, most precious moments that snuggle beside our hearts and leave a lingering imprint, we want so badly for time to stop. We long for it to halt in its tracks, pump the brakes, freeze around us in those minutes we wish to last forever.  

But it won’t.

Time will always continue on, and it will shove you along with it, because it never leaves anything behind. 

As children, time is something that just can’t seem to run fast enough. We can’t wait to grow up. We can’t wait for that vacation next month. We can’t wait for dinner. We. Can’t. Wait. Then suddenly we stop running and wish we could back up. We want to turn around, go back, do it all over, take it slower. But we can’t. Time’s magnetic field keeps pulling us onward. 

As an adult, I never have enough time. 24 hours is not sufficient. I cannot work full-time, cook, clean, work out, home improve, walk the dog, grocery shop, get gas, water my plants, weed, mow, catch up on Stranger Things, call my mother, see my friends, scroll Facebook, make all those Pinterest projects, fold laundry, practice piano, write my novel, and get at least 7 hours of sleep in 24 hours! IT’S NOT POSSIBLE. 

I’ve come to the conclusion that adulting means making time. Adults learn to prioritize and learn to function with little sleep and learn how to balance all the little things in life that pile up (like that massive pile of mail on my counter that I have no intention of going through any time soon). We have to make time and prioritize. We have to. Because time stops for no one. Prioritizing, like adulting in general, takes practice. Sometimes we’ll let things slip. Like the mail. Or the weeds. Sometimes even friends. 

It seems more difficult to maintain friendships now, especially when we have different priorities, incomes, lifestyles, careers, schedules, and locations. It used to be so effortless. Texting and Facebooking daily came so naturally and we had all the time in the world to meet up for spur-of-the-moment Hobby Lobby extravaganzas. Now, suddenly, my evenings are packed with the above list while I dump extra energy into a new job and I save whatever I have left for the struggle to launch a writing career. We’ve all got lists like this. We all have our shit and sometimes it’s not fun. But it’s part of adulting and we make it work. 

Watching those around me grow and blossom into adults over time (even if they feel like they’re faking it sometimes) has been fascinating. I’m an observer. That is, I watch people. While the greatest obstacle for me is to put in a syllable in casual conversation, watching it all happen comes naturally. I watch the way their lips move as they talk, or the habitual gestures they use as they tell a story. The way they smile can be worth more than the words they utter. Perhaps most interesting of all is the speaker’s eyes. It’s the level of intensity swirling within them that really tells the story. An observer soaks in every word and detail, storing it away. I don’t only learn about the speaker; I learn about the entire human race. 

I’ve watched many different people from different backgrounds and with different aspirations develop into adults and become parents. In fact, my husband and I are one of the only couples within my friend group without children. I think there’s an irony here, because everyone always thought I’d be first. I’ve always wanted a whole pack of babies, my own baseball team to fill the rooms of this house. As I observe everyone around me, I think maybe I should be feeling like I’m running out of time, like there’s this biological clock slowly ticking away as the world continues to spin. 

But I don’t. 

For the first time in my adult life, I feel like I have all the time in the world. Or, maybe I feel like I simply don’t have the time to take that leap yet. I have time, I don’t have time, who knows? Like I said, the concept of time makes my brain hurt. 

Adulting doesn’t mean becoming a parent. I will, one day, when I can figure out how to adjust all those priorities and fit my large to-do list into 24 hours. But in the meantime, I will fluidly move with time, spin with the earth, observe the beautiful transitions around me, and leave the mail in a pile on the counter.

Preschool Style

The concept of friendship is almost bizarre if you really think about it. What’s the moment your relationship with another human being suddenly moves beyond an acquaintance or coworker or stranger and into this friendship zone that comes along with a certain understanding of each other?

What drop of rain overflows the bucket?

As a child, forming friendships is effortless.

“Do you want to play with us at lunch?” The third-grade strawberry blonde called Rachel walked up to me. She had bangs, and her hair was straight around her shoulders. She wore a pink zip jacket with purple legging pants and nearly white tennis shoes that lit up as she waddled. She smiled, a front tooth missing.

“Okay,” I said quietly, shuffling my feet and brushing my tangled hair behind one of my ears.

“Nikki and I are going to play animals. We are shivering in the cold by the tree, waiting for someone to come rescue us.”

“Okay,” I said again. “Can I be a kitty?” Which is funny, because as an adult I am certainly not a cat person. Something living in my house that poops in a box and hops on my counter? No thanks.

“Nikki is the kitty,” Rachel said matter-of-factly. “I’m a puppy. Maybe you can be the bunny?”

I didn’t argue; I was just happy to be included. I twitched my nose like a bunny and stuck my teeth out in front of my lower lip. “Bunny,” I repeated.

“Great!” she exclaimed. “We will meet you by the tree after lunch time!”

Animal games at recess turned into lunchtime conversations, and lunchtime conversations soon gave way to Barbie games on our bedroom floors. Barbie games morphed to soccer games, and phone calls turned into Instant Message conversations on AOL. (If you’re under twenty, you haven’t the slightest idea what I’m talking about.)  Through these transitions, Rachel became my best friend. I met Rachel in the year 2000.  We’ve been best friends for nineteen years. And for fourteen of those years and counting, 300 miles sat between us.

We must be doing something right, here.

Somehow, we’ve gone from shivering animals to women with careers and houses and husbands.

WHAT just HAPPENED?

I want to talk about love for a moment. Because the concept of love and understanding it is #adulting. I don’t want to talk about the romantic love you think you feel at 16, or you know you feel at 30. Not a sexual love or feeling of lust. Right now, I’m talking about feeling love for another person, regardless of sex or age. Much like the love you feel for your sister or your father. But this person isn’t blood.

I’m talking about looking at someone and feeling like your world is so different with them in it.  It’s the difference between “I love you” and “I’m in love with you”.

Someone once asked me if I loved my best friend, if I loved Rachel. I wasn’t sure how to respond. They then prompted me, “if she died, would you cry?”

“Well, yes,” I agreed.
“Then you love her.”
Fair enough. But I cried when a friend’s mother passed on. Does that mean I loved my friend’s mother? Or did I cry out of remorse for my friend? I cried when I learned of Alan Rickman’s death. Does that mean I loved him? (Well. I did. But I didn’t know him. Just his characters. And that intoxicating way of speech.)

This “love” word gets tossed around a lot. We say it to our friends and coworkers like it’s just another word. I do think it is overused, but I also think it’s not just meant for the romantic feelings you feel for someone.

I love my husband. I love my sister and my parents and my grandparents and my aunts and uncles and cousins. I also love Rachel.

I was in 9^th grade when I realized that. I was moving away from the small town of Columbia Station in Ohio and heading all the way to Rockford, Michigan with my family. Looking back, this truly was the best move for my family, and everything worked out well. But when you’re in the middle of your freshman year of high school and you’re facing goodbye with your best friend since the third grade, there is no stopping the hot tears rolling down your cheeks.

I said goodbye to a lot of people that night, but I only cried when it came to Rachel.

I didn’t even cry saying goodbye to my boyfriend (who later turned out to be super-hero gay, so it’s all good.)

Despite the miles, we remained close. My connection with her was elastic enough to stretch 300 miles, and I am eternally grateful for that morning she asked a lonely third grader to play.

Why isn’t making friends that easy as an adult? Why can’t I sit beside you on our lunch break and claim you as mine? If I did that, you’d probably look at me funny and take your lunch elsewhere. But you should be so lucky for me to claim you. I’m a ride-or-die kind of friend. You need a shoulder to cry on? You got it. Need some comic relief? I’m your girl. Need a body buried? I own 7 acres.

The fact is, we don’t talk to one another like we used to. Perhaps children hold this elusive innocence and an uncomplicated understanding of the world. This innocence leads them to asking the new girl to play animals by the tree, and it changes her life forever.

Adults don’t do that, but maybe we should.

Let’s kick it preschool style.

Adults cry, too, you know.

You feel furthest from a functioning adult when you find yourself hiding away in the bathroom of DeVos Place in downtown Grand Rapids bawling your eyes out.

Let’s back up to how I ended up in that bathroom stall, pathetically watching the mascara run down my face in the mirror.

It’s funny how things sort of

   tumble

                                                                                    into place

when it was never a part of the plan.

Somehow, I survived my first year of teaching. And the thought of returning in the Fall was almost nauseating.

I remember standing in the back lawn of the high school as kids hurriedly and excitedly boarded the busses for the final time that year. I forced a smile and waved at those I knew (but didn’t really like).
“One year down…. 30 to go…” and I clenched my fists to avoid groaning out loud.             “It’s going to get better, right?”

 “right?”

“right?”

 “RIGHT?!”

I held up send-off and well-wishes signs with the other teachers and cheered as the buses made a grand exit. My sign said “Read! :)”. But really, I wanted it to say “GTFO!”

I wasn’t a social butterfly with the other teachers, so I walked back to my room alone once silence flooded the school grounds and there was only the distant diesel hum of the buses from the next street over.
I counted the dusty steps as I ascended to the second floor, running my hand over the railing, my mind desperately searching my soul for an ounce of excitement about the career I chose.

 There wasn’t any.

            “Shit.”

I stood in the center of my room, taking in all the debris scattered across the floor and the awful scent of pubescent adolescents. At least I had all my Spanish 1 lesson plans… next year would be significantly less time consuming.

I plopped into my chair and fired up my Gmail.

An email from the head of the foreign language department. Subject: 2015-Next Year’s Assignments.

                                                            Huh?

I opened it.

Amy – Spanish 1

Ginger- Spanish 3 & 4

Kaitlin- Spanish 2.

                                                                                                                        Dammit.

Spanish 2? You’ve got to be kidding me.

More lesson planning. And worse? The same assholes in class.

I could have pulled my hair out.

                                                                                                I can’t do this….

Negative self-talk never got anyone anywhere, but I was feeling so utterly defeated and burnt out… after year one. How do people do this their whole lives?
To mask my frustrations and busy my mind, I hopped onto Glassdoor to search for paying summer internships to earn some experience toward my master’s degree. That was my only way out. Two years of studying while working full-time.  Hard work. #adulting.

Fate, luck, whatever, I found myself working the summer for a company called NHA.  I would work in their IT department making course revisions for their internal E-learning modules.

                                                                                                            It was temporary.

Until I met Cindy.

                                                                                                Here’s where the fate comes in.

Cindy’s associate resigned the same day Cindy and I met.

                                                                                    That’s just too spooky to be coincidence.

Half-way through my internship with NHA, I was assigned a project for the Director of Special Education for the entire organization (84 charter schools across 9 states at the time).  She needed 13 engaging e-learning modules created from a horrible lawyer presentation about Section 504, and that was up to me.

I walked into an empty conference room five minutes before our meeting. I didn’t know it yet, but Cindy was almost always late. I took a seat on the far side of the table and worked to hook my laptop up to the TV display at the end of the table.

She came in like wind, almost silently and quickly, seamlessly and confidently. She looked to be in her mid-fifties, blonde hair cut short with brilliant blue eyes. She wore an expensive orange blazer over a floral blouse. She sat in the chair adjacent to me with perfect poster, and I couldn’t help but notice her long pale pink nails and a massive marquise-shaped wedding diamond on her left finger. She smiled at me before confidently extending a hand across the table for me to take.

She introduced herself with pride. I took her hand and consciously shook it firmly. I gave her my name, forcing a smile to hide my nerves.

“So nice to meet you.” Cindy opened her laptop and set her iPhone aside. It was far enough from her to not be rude, yet close enough to remain in her peripheral vision, in case she was to get an imperative call or message.

This lady is important.

“How long have you been with us?” She asked, making small talk as I prepared to begin.

“Just over a month,” I responded, looking up at her. She was gazing right into my eyes fearlessly. Suddenly a wave of intimidation swept over me. What was I doing?

“And how long will you be with us?”

“Until the end of the summer. I’m a teacher,” I explained.

“Wonderful! In one of our NHA schools?”

“No,” I admitted, breaking eye contact to glance at my screen. “Public school.” I told her I taught Spanish.

“You’re bilingual! That’s amazing. Spanish sure comes in handy. My husband and I run an orphanage in Mexico. Do you like it? Teaching?”

There was something about her staring at me in that moment that told me it was okay to tell her the truth. “No.”

She nodded. “Shall we begin?”

I kicked off the meeting, pitching my ideas to her, showing her all the “fancy” things I had learned PowerPoint can do that summer.

I’ve always been a decent public speaker, ushering my “teacher” voice from somewhere deep within. But something about Cindy made me a little nervous that day. Maybe it was her stature, maybe her demeanor, maybe her title and reputation. Regardless, I was nervous as hell running a meeting with her. I tried my hardest to seem professional, but still felt like a child playing dress-up.

As I concluded, Cindy didn’t say much, but she seemed satisfied.

“I’m excited,” she finally said after processing a moment. “This has been a long time in the making, and I am so pleased to see these 13 learning modules are going to come to life.”

I blushed and began packing my things. “I can get started right away, and perhaps we can have weekly touch-bases for you to review the content and—”

“Are you looking for a job?” Cindy cut me off.

“I’m sorry?” I was caught off-guard… I would soon learn Cindy had a special way of doing that to me.

“Are you looking for a job?” She repeated, a slight smile playing across her thin pink lips.

“Um,” I hadn’t given it too much thought—I didn’t want to let myself believe this position at NHA could turn into anything permanent, granting me escape from the classroom much earlier than anticipated. “I mean,” I stammered, suddenly not sounding so professional nor confident. “I am always looking,” I finally spit out, though I instantly wanted to facepalm. I resisted. “Yeah…if I found something I could do and that paid well enough…”

“My girl just resigned.”

                                                                                                    …what just happened?

Cindy understood my expression and continued. “Right before I walked in here. And I just love her, she does such a great job. But it really blindsided me! I am so sad she is leaving in two weeks.”

 Fate?

 Fate.

“So, there’s an opening,” Cindy continued as she started to pack her things. “Think about it, Kaitlin. Maybe we can meet again to discuss the job further. Especially if you’re not all that thrilled with teaching.” And at that, she left, just as swiftly as she had come in.

                                                                                                What just HAPPENED?

She gave me a shot.  She even helped me write my letter of resignation to the school. Resigning from a job isn’t easy. Writing a letter to the principal and superintendent to announce you’ve basically found something better and doing it in a pleasant and professional way is certainly #adulting.

There was something about her the moment I met her, and it went deeper than the first impression of intimidation followed by “I think I like this human.”

                                                                                    “I think I connect with this human.”

Cindy, Director of Special Education.

                                                                                    AKA badass.

I often joked that I was in love with my boss and would marry her if I could. I was just so enamored by everything she did and could do. She was, in my opinion and perception, the perfect adult. She passionately ran an entire special education program for 84 charter schools across the United States. She never backed down for what she believed in, and by golly your fancy law degree scares her not. She built an orphanage in Mexico with her husband and to this day gives those kids the life they all deserve.

She is a mother and a grandmother.  She has history. She is the image of professionalism and still manages to maintain a sense of humor. She cared about her employees as people.

                                                                                    She cared about me.

Once I finally completed my master’s degree (#adulting!!!!!), the thought of searching for my next growth opportunity played in the back of my mind. I searched casually for jobs, more the “dream come true” type. Just in case. But I loved my job. I loved working for Cindy. We were the dream team, man! I was so good with her, I could predict what she needed before she even asked for it. I understood her brain and I respected the hell out of her.

The thought of leaving Cindy and the Special Education Team I came to love like family sort of made me want to barf.  So, I never looked for my next career all that hard. I just knew someday, somehow, I would need to spread my wings. Like we all must at some point… that inevitable leap of faith one must take before the comfort seeps too deep. But for the time being, my connection with Cindy, the Team, and NHA’s mission was enough for me.

Cindy’s resignation two years into our adventure altered my entire reality.

We were sitting in a small room at DeVos Place in Grand Rapids. Leadership Summit was the biggest event of the year for the organization, and the team was preparing Cindy for her big presentation.

Looking back… there were signs. She glanced at her phone frequently that morning…more frequently than usual. She was unusually worried about the whereabouts of her boss…And there was an awkwardly placed slide in her presentation entitled

“personal professional announcement”.

In a way, I wonder if she left that slide in there as a purposeful foreshadowing… just for me… as I edited her presentation for her.

But I didn’t pick up on it.

 Not then.

Not until she sighed at the end of her practice presentation.

And her boss stepped into the room.

Then I knew.

            “I need… to make an announcement…” she started.

Shit.

            “This is probably the hardest professional decision I’ve ever made.”

Shit. Shit. Shit.

            She teared up.  “I have made the decision…”

Shit!

            “…to leave NHA.”

Dammit.

I shattered.

I felt as though something was being stolen from me…but unsure what that was. My entire job stood before me announcing her resignation. My emotional attachment to her burned behind my eyes and I bit my lip, struggling to keep my shit together.

                                                                                                                        I couldn’t.
She was my professional everything.

“I need to seek greater work-life balance in my life. I can’t keep living the way I’m living… I can’t keep working this many hours and drowning in my work. I need to be with my grandkids… I need to be a part of my family’s life. I’ve accepted a position with Grand Valley State University as a professor of Educational Leadership.

I cried.  I wasn’t the only one. The entire room was a storm of saltwater.

“No,” Cindy demanded between her own tears. “You all have to keep going. We have worked too fucking hard to go back now!” She fired up, red-faced, passionate, fists clenching. I would expect nothing less of her. “We have helped so many kids. I have been so blessed to work with such a fine group of professionals in it for all the right reasons.”

                                                                        And I can’t remember the rest.

I can only remember the relentless tears rolling down my cheeks, and then….

                                                            then the inexplicable sudden wave of cold fear.

Like being slapped in the face with an ice block.

What does this mean for me?

 What happens to me?

What about me?

Me, me, me, me, ME, MEEEEEEH!

I had selfish feelings as I drowned in emotional silence. I didn’t feel much like an adult. An adult would be able to keep her shit together and stand up and applaud Cindy’s accomplishments and be happy for her.

And I was happy for her.

Somewhere deep, deep,

deeeeeep

down.

All of our experiences were flashing before my eyes, from the time I picked her up off the side of the road because her husband was too late to take her all the way to work, to the time she handed me her personal credit card and told me to go buy myself a pair of shorts that fit because I lost so much weight. There was so much more between us than just a boss-assistant relationship. And now I was faced with losing that connection, and just plain couldn’t freaking handle it.

We adjourned the meeting, and everyone rushed to hug her and congratulate her. I hung back and waited a moment, fighting for some composure, still struggling to understand why I felt the way I felt.

“I’m so pissed at you!” I said to Cindy as I embraced her. We cried together a moment, and I didn’t want to let her go. “But I really am happy for you,” I whispered.

I had a complete meltdown in the DeVos bathroom shortly after that moment.

And was caught.
“She’s my entire job,” I tried to explain.
So pathetic.
I stood beside Cindy just hours later as her audience filed in for the big presentation. I worked her laptop for her, preparing the presentation and ensuring all audio settings were perfect. I watched Cindy out of the corner of my eye with vague fascination. What must be going through her head? She was about to announce her resignation to over 100 people in person.

“Doing okay?” I asked, touching her arm.

“Oh yeah,” she said, forcing a smile across her face. “And you?”

“Not really,” I said honestly, also forcing a smile.

“You’re funny,” she said. She said this to me often.

“But it’s true,” I admitted.

“I know.”

Did she, though?

“You know,” she began, staring off into space. For a moment, I thought shit was about to get philosophical. “I forgot to wear a slip under my dress.”

I paused a moment to study her before laughing. She wore the same floral dress she had worn to my wedding a year prior.

“Well,” I offered, “the only one who knows that is you. …And me. Now I know. Totally judging you.”

She giggled with me and brushed her blonde hair behind her ear. “Okay. Ready?”

“Always.”

She was flawless. And when she announced her resignation to the entire room, I felt my emotions spiraling out all over again. The crowd gave her a standing ovation as she signed off, and she cried.

It’s amazing what a little liquid courage will do for you. I sat at the team dinner later that evening, my head slightly spinning. The bar tender asked what I was having.

“Whatever can take away the devastation of my boss’s resignation,” I said.

Still not really sure what he gave me.

“I’m gonna give a speech,” I thought to myself half-drunkenly somewhere after two drinks and before the arrival of the dinner plates (as a rule, an adult should never have two drinks before eating… especially at a corporate event. To think I would have learned my lesson at this point… but a corporate Christmas party a few years later sure knocked me on my ass. Literally.) I awkwardly stood, taking my beer and a knife in my hand.

I clinked my glass with the knife at the head of the long outdoor table for attention. Cindy sat at the head just beside where I stood.

“We need to acknowledge the woman of the hour,” I began, gripping my beer glass tighter to hide the shaking in my fingers. Cindy reached up and took the knife from my other hand, laughing and joking about fearing for her life.

“Don’t worry, I’m already passed the anger stage in the stages of grief!” I razzed. “I am so honored to be standing here with a team of amazing people. And we can all agree the most amazing of us all is Cindy.” There was a round of applause in agreement, and I realized other tables around us were now silent and listening to what I was saying. “We are so happy for you. We have this awkward mixture of excitement and devastation that makes us all want to barf, but we are happy for you.” I paused as the team laughed, and I relaxed a little. “Really, though, I have one question for you… Are you breaking up with me?” The team laughed again, Cindy too, and she shook her head. “Never!” she said. I smiled.

“You are on a new adventure and you will be terribly missed.” I looked up to address the team. “So, if you all are, like me, #teamshinsky4life, raise your glass! Cheers, Cindy!” And glasses clinked. I bent down and air-kissed Cindy’s cheek saying, “I love you.”

And I meant it.

I resigned two weeks later.

I told everyone, myself included, that my resignation wasn’t related to Cindy’s departure. But part of adulting is being honest with yourself. And to be honest, I did leave in part because Cindy resigned. It’s true I needed to grow and move up and really start my career… you cannot remain in an associate position if you want to be a leader… but I didn’t have any desire to go to that office every day if Cindy wasn’t going to be in it.

Don’t get me wrong– Cindy wasn’t the only one I cared about at that office. I made some lifelong friends there. But between the hours of eight and five Monday through Friday, Cindy was my entire world. And if my entire world was going to shift, I might as well be moving up and out of it.

Loving and respecting another adult for what she’s done and how she handles herself is part of #adulting. Dealing with the hurt of my mentor moving on and making the decision to move on myself was #adulting.  As pathetically devastated as I was, this was a huge growth moment for me and pushed me toward success.

Don’t ever feel pathetic…the way I felt pathetic… when feeling emotion. It’s okay. You’re not the only one. Emotion is this annoying tag-along to our humanity, and it’s not always convenient and it is not always simple. But it’s always there, this glistening apparition trudging at our sides, something we always feel but can never touch. We drag it everywhere and we learn to cope, even when we don’t want to. Cope the best way you can, but don’t seal it up. Feel it, let it flow through your veins and remind yourself this is who you are,  and this is okay to feel.

To this day I still rely on Cindy for advice and comfort. Perhaps I use her as a sort of “crutch”, a small piece of comfort zone to retreat to… perhaps it would be more #adulting to let her go completely.

But I can’t.

She was key in my adult development, and I can’t picture life without her in it.

“I’m not sure that I love it as much as I loved NHA,” I wrote in an email to Cindy several weeks later, after we both moved on and began our new jobs. “But I am going to focus on moving up and being successful. I am going to focus on being the ‘Cindy’ to a team like ours one day.”

Cindy replied almost instantly. “You want to be the ‘Kaitlin’ to the team. Not me. You will pave your own way. You are strong. You are woman!”

Connect with a “Cindy”. Find someone who will always encourage you and push you forward as an adult and as a professional. Find your mentor. Find someone to coach you in adult situations when you are lost in the dark. Find someone.

A parent.

            A sibling.

                        A supervisor.

All of these and more.

#adulting doesn’t mean going at it alone.