This particular story is going to start on Friday morning; it's cold, it's damp, I am scared sockless that the baby is going to be a teething monster. I am praying my entire way to work, "Please don't let the baby be teething, please don't let the baby be teething, please don't let the baby be teething." I am almost sick with the idea that today might be like yesterday. I consider calling in sick, turning around, playing hookie! Anything to keep today being like it was yesterday. But I drag myself in to the apartment anyways. The parents leave, and it's the three of us, like always. Anna, myself, and the baby. We are sitting around the living room, and I'm trying to make Anna read. (Because Anna hates reading, this is always a monumental task). Finally, after about five minutes of frustration, I tell her that she can read with her mom when she gets home, and she agrees and puts away the book.Normally I would keep trying to make her read, but I'm exhausted at this point, and I'm doing my best to stay awake and not bite her head off. So, then we start talking and joking with each other. "Becca, if you do this for me, I'll hold the baby," she wheedles. "Well," I reply, "if you change her diaper than you can hold her." I'm trying to joke with her. This is something that I would say to my own nine-year-old sister. She doesn't seem impressed though. "That's not my job. That's your job. You're the one getting paid for it."
At this point, I forget that I am supposed to be the adult, and that she is not my friend. That she is a nine-year-old girl who tells her mother everything I say and do. I forget that I'm supposed to be mature and tell her that I'll do it, I was just joking, and let her hold the baby. Instead, I respond with something along the lines of, "Yeah, well there are a lot of things that I do that I'm not being paid for." I continue for a minute, before realizing that some of these things (aka, all of these things) are not for her to be hearing. These frustrations are something that I'm supposed to bring up with her parents, and I realize that some of them must sound really hurtful. I apologize, and go about changing the baby, and the letting Anna hold her. I then go and make Anna breakfast, and we continue about our morning. About twenty minutes later, a mother in the neighborhood comes and picks up Anna for school, and I am left to my own devices with the baby.
The day is better than the previous day. I do not feel the urge to hide under a rock. I don't have the desire to run away and never come back. It's a fairly good day. The baby has new teething medicine, and isn't in as much pain, so I'm not as frustrated as I was on Thursday. The day goes well, until the end.
I'm all ready to go home, when Anna and her mother come in. Her mother (we'll call her Lisa), sends Anna outside to walk the dog, leaving me alone with her and the baby. Normally this wouldn't bother me, but I can tell that something isn't right.
She begins the conversation by asking me what I had said to Anna that morning. I tell her, and then told her that I had apologized and asked for forgiveness, and that I thought we had made up for it. But apparently I was wrong. Apparently, Anna had a horrid day at school, because she couldn't stop thinking about our conversation. She left the house thinking that I hated her, that I was never going to be nice to her ever again, that I was going to be mean to her forever.
Well, that wasn't quite what I was expecting to hear, but I told Lisa that I would apologize again. Lisa went on to say that it would be okay, as long as I wanted to keep working for them.
At this point, I did not want to keep working for them. Not at all. Not one, single, iota. For weeks, I had been thinking about giving my notice. For three solid weeks I had been meditating and praying about when to give my notice. (Since they needed two months, I wasn't sure when a good time would be). And at this point, I was almost fed up enough to quit. But I offered up a prayer, and then plunged in.
"Lisa, I don't want to lie to you. I don't want to say that everything is fine when it isn't. That would just ruin the trust that we've built over the past few months, and I don't want to do that. But I would be lying if I told you that I hadn't been thinking about giving my notice for a while now."
She stares at me, almost in disbelief. Then she says, "Well, it makes sense why you haven't been doing your best now. I've had a feeling that something's been bothering you for the past few weeks anyways."
Well, that stings. I mean, hadn't I just said that I didn't want to betray her trust, but here she was, betraying mine? I was hurt, but I kept going.
"Lisa, I love you and your husband, and I love your children. I really do. But I have found there to be several stresses about this job...."
I didn't even get a chance to finish before she cut me off. "No. I disagree with you. I work very hard at making your job stress-free, and I think you have a very easy job."
Well, this conversation was not going as planned. But I plowed ahead anyways, and we talked for another ten minutes or so. I was sad, and she was frustrated, which is never a good combination when two people are talking about work. So I ended up leaving a few minutes later, sobbing. I felt fired. Originally, her and her husband wanted me to stay for another two months so that they could find someone else. But Lisa had ended the conversation with, "Well, we probably won't need you after break anyways."
Man, that hurt. A lot. I mean, I've never been fired before. Is this how it's supposed to feel? Are you supposed to be sobbing, and not know why? Are you supposed to be weepy because you are sad, but at the same time, you are overjoyed? I don't think so. But then again, I don't know. I've only ever had two jobs, and now I can say that I've had a fifty percent rate of being fired. Which doesn't sound good at all.
But, I hadn't really been fired, had I? I mean, she just said "probably". That didn't mean it was over, did it? As I walked to the bus, these thoughts kept circulating through my mind. I couldn't stop thinking about what had just happened. I was sobbing so hard that I couldn't breathe (except for those gasping breaths that make you sound like a fish out of water). I tried to call my mom. She didn't pick up. I tried again, and again, and again. Finally I gave up and called my father. He answered the phone, and I just started crying. He waited patiently for me to start talking, and finally I started giving him the story. I couldn't go more than five words without a fresh wave of tears making an appearance. After a few minutes of this, my dad began talking.
"Becca, I think you should go see a doctor. I think that you're depressed. I mean, why else would you be crying about this? You've wanted to leave this job since you got there, you shouldn't be sobbing over this...."
I hung up.
This is not what I wanted to hear. Not at all. I wanted some words of comfort, some promises of "life is going to be better", maybe even an, "it's okay". I did not want someone telling me that I was depressed. No. I refuse. I do not want to go see a doctor, at this moment, I did not want to even accept this possibility as a reality.
The bus picks me up, and I pull myself together enough to get on without anyone asking me questions. I begin listening to my book on tape, ("Eat. Pray. Love"), and settle in for an uneventful ride back home. It is. I make it home, stagger up the steps, and realize that the door is locked. Good. That means that no one is home. So I struggle with the lock for a few minutes, and then run inside, slamming the door behind me. I throw my belongings on the floor of my bedroom, slam the door, curl up in the fetal position, and cry myself to sleep.
Well, I'm pretty sure I'm asleep, because the next thing I remember is Vince knocking on my door, asking if I want Chinese food or pizza. (Vince is the youngest son of the family I am staying with, and he's visiting home for a bit). I turn over groggily, tell him that I want Chinese, and then drag myself out of my cocoon. I have been sleeping for over two hours, no wonder I feel like I was just drugged and dragged to a remote location. I make it upstairs, and settle in to the rocking chair in the living room. Vince is sitting on the couch and asks me nonchalantly how my day was.
"Awful. I was fired."
He turns to look at me. "Oh. Well, that's unfortunate." We eat the rest of the meal in silence. Tom and Therese ask me a few questions about my day, but it isn't until later that night that I tell Therese everything that happened. She gave me a big hug and told me that God was answering my prayers. I agreed, although there was still a slight disconnect between my brain and my emotions. I played cards with Vince, and then went to sleep an hour later. I woke up on Saturday feeling slightly better, although I wasn't sure how to feel about it in the first place. Finally, through the course of the day, I told Vince what had happened, and he was pretty good about cheering me up. He let me play some card games that I could win, at any rate. Later, Therese suggested that I write an email to Lisa, explaining some things that had not been said in the conversation. That way the whole incident on Friday would be a victory for the Kingdom, and so that Satan couldn't worm his way in to the whole thing.
But try as I might, I could not write the letter. I didn't know how to say what I wanted without sounding like a terrible person, someone who was trying to blame the whole situation on the other party. That's not what I wanted. I thought a lot about my book on tape this weekend. Elizabeth Gilbert is a fantastic writer, and this is about the fifth time I have either read or listened to this book. But this time I kept thinking about her divorce with her husband. She has a section dedicated to the divorce process, probably because this implemented the whole idea of the entire book. But there's a specific quote that I kept thinking about.
At this moment, she is talking about writing the divorce settlement. She just wants to be done with this divorce because she doesn't want to cause him any additional pain. "My first attempt at settlement was a fifty-fifty split. You take what is yours, I will take what is mine. We split everything from the house to the furniture in half. But my husband did not want that. So I suggested a new fifty-fifty split. He would get everything, and I would get all the blame."
The first four times I read this I did not understand it at all. I mean, how rude, right? How inconsiderate of her husband, and she shouldn't give in! But this weekend, I finally knew what she was talking about. I reached a point where I did not want to bring up any more hurts. Since I love this family so much, all I wanted to do was to peacefully leave their lives, and even though that didn't seem like it was going to happen, that's all I wanted. I felt like saying, "Here, take all your problems with me, let me have my problems with me, and I'll take the blame for the mistakes I made, and everything bad that happened. Just go and be happy, and find a new nanny. Don't be angry with me anymore, I'll give you what you want."
Most of the world doesn't truly understand this concept. Or there is the mental recognition, but not the emotional attachment that should follow. But I fell in love with this idea. Just let me take the blame for all of this please, just let it be over.
Because the baby had a doctor's appointment on Monday to get some hearing aids, I wasn't supposed to go to work until noon. Well, since all of the buses either leave very early or very late, I arranged with me friend to take me. We had everything planned out, and then Lisa texts me. She says that she will come get me. My immediate reaction is "NO! Anything but that! I can't spend a whole half an hour in the same car as you! What will you say to me? Are you going to hurt my feelings even more? Please, anything else." But I steel myself for the ride, and she comes to get me.
By the time she has fully parked in the driveway, I am out the door. I am ready to go. I have all my stuff, and am ready for the day. But as soon as I open the passenger door, she steps out of the car. She comes around the front, and precedes to tell me that she is nervous having me around her children, that she doesn't think I will do a good job of looking after them if all I think about is wanting more money, and that she had a bad feeling about me coming back. She writes me a check for the first half of December, asks for her house key back, and then leaves.
I slowly gather up my stuff, and walk up the stairs to the house. I am shaking so hard that I can barely turn the handle, but I make it inside. Before I'm even fully in the door, I throw my backpack in to a corner of the room, say, "Guess who just got fired?" and burst in to tears. (Poor Vince. He must think I'm going crazy. He must think that he's going to go crazy having me around for the next week. And let's face it, I'm not doing a good job of appearing in control of my mental capacities at the moment). I make it to my room, and face plant on my bed. I stay there for about four hours. I did not think that this would happen. I thought that my suffering would be staying at this job for a long period of time, and all of a sudden, it's just all gone. I'll never get to see Anna again. Never get to play with the baby again. I'm devestated.But four hours later, I get up and start laughing. I can't stop laughing. Here I am, lying on my bed, depressed, because of the very thing I've wanted for a while! I've been worrying about how to leave for the last two months, and I didn't even have to initiate the conversation! The relief floods over me as I sit on my bed and laugh.
God has the funniest way of answering my prayers. He really does.
Not to say that there aren't still moments where I am saddened by my recent unemployment. Or that I am not upset by the whole sticky mess that was left behind. But there are also pure moments of clarity where I realize that I never have to go back, that I will never have to wake up at 5 to commute an hour to work, that I will not have to deal with a teething baby for a while, that Primela gave me a prophecy that came true immediately.
(You all were probably wondering when I was going to bring her up again, weren't you).
Sometimes I just sit down in shock when I think about the conversation I had with Primela on Thursday evening, and think about the events that immediately transpired. This woman, not really knowing me, felt God calling her to tell me something, something that happened overnight! I can't even begin to tell you how amazing this makes me feel.
A few times over the past week, I have had second guesses about the job. "Maybe I should throw myself at Lisa's feet and beg for her forgiveness. Maybe if I apologize enough, she won't hate me. Maybe I'll get my job back if I bake her cookies." But then I remember:
God gave me a direct word about leaving this job, and then it happened.
And who am I to argue with God speaking through a woman on the bus?
Some of you are probably confused as to why this one is included in the series. Well, I debated for a while, because the connection is much weaker than the first two. But I thought it was pretty cool that I got a prophecy from a woman on the bus, and the fact that it came to fruition the next day. I also wanted to let people know that I was unemployed all in one place, and I didn't see the point in making a big deal about it. I mean, it happened, but I don't want to exacerbate the problem. But the biggest reason that this is included in the series? I am one of those women on the bus. I sometimes forget that I am a mature adult who rides the bus, and thus, is allowed to be included in my series of vignettes.
Thank you for your time, I hope you all keep reading my stories!
Becca
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