yesterday, today, and tomorrow; a prelude, and a living nightmare

So I promised you folks the story of a series of events that were so horrendously sick and twisted, it borderlined unicorn-like surrealness. It reads well, but there's a few sentences of necessary prologue for it to all make sense. So, a handful of months ago, I was aimlessly shifting through jobs, trying desperately to find a single career that would allow me to actually enjoy waking up and getting out of bed everyday. My entire body was depressed; I felt depression in my marrow, infecting my blood and diseasing my muscles. What to do? Hop on a plane to my mother's house, where my self-loathing would blend into the seat cushions. On a random day of misery, my gray-phobic mother had a hair 'moment' and knowing that I too-oft take scissors to my own mop, asked for assistance, and I ended up dying, cutting and styling her and my aunt's 'do's. It was the first time I had felt decent about myself in a long time. In typical Kendra fashion, I ran with it. I'd always known how much I truly, sincerely liked to help women feel like women: pretty, renewed, feminine and powerful. Why hadn't I thought of this before? It was clear to me: I needed to get myself to beauty school and eventually open up the cutest vintage salon/DIY crafts & events locale.

Yeah? So, tenancious and led-by-a-bleeding-heart as ever, I secured a job as a Salong Coordinator at a boutique salon in downtown SF and I was refreshed, set, and ready for my new start on Tuesday. Great. Awesome. Right? You'd think so. But not in my life. Keep in mind this happened MONTHS ago, but here goes:

SUNDAY on my way home from the gym, I spontaneously decided to stop by my favorite farmer's market near my home. I ran into none other than my ex boyfriend from a year ago- yes, the one that dumped me overnight and whose actions sent me into such a tailspin that I had a nervous breakdown and had to be hospitalized. Bastard completely turned my life upside down. And there he was, in front of me, trying to pretend he didnt see me, with his new girlfriend, plainest and most unkempt jane ever, at MY favorite farmers market that *I* showed him, because it is in MY neighborhood, right by MY house. Bastard lives across town! WTF! Of course I 'said hello', and even asked the frizzy bitch if I could 'borrow him for a word'. I looked him in the eye and told him just how much I had believed all his devoted words, and just how much his actions had turned me and my life upside down and inside out. I did it all in a calm voice, classy demeanor and eloquent speech, and then I turned on my heel and didnt cry until I got home. Phew. Rough, yes. I did breathing exercises all day, got a little drunk, and waited for it all to be ok.

MONDAY I'm still reeling, but slowly recovering, in the best way I know how: a comfy blanket and my favorite tv shows. So I'm watching my favorite and most-viewed network when I see the ug-mug of my EX FIANCE: apparently, he's on a reality TV show about giving (get this) RELATIONSHIP ADVICE. WTF!? The man that gave me the WORST 7 months of a relationship hell that broke me emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and even physically, is now on international television dispelling relationship advice!??! What planet? AND! As my mouth hung open in SHOCK and HORROR, I witness the scene the network is playing in order to promote the dumb show: my ex fiance makin' out with his skinny bitch coworker.

TUESDAY I get up, determined that this new Salon Coordinator gig is the EXACT thing I need to forget what I've just gone through for the past 2 days and focus on me and my new life. I arrive on time for my first 8-hr day, and the salon gals, stylists, colorists, and aesthetians proceed to shoot me their best glares, stares, and eye rolls. Hmm. "New girl' antics, I think to myself, nothing I can't handle. By noon, I've taken so much snark, sass, attitude, rudeness, insults, and personal digs that I throw up in the bathroom. I should have known. How could I have possibly let it get by me that the bitch levels of the fashion industry and the beauty industry would be the same? The way these girls even talked to EACH OTHER made me feel ill; they are so cutting and mean and condescending- everyone is! to everyone else! That shit is CUT-FUCKING-THROAT. And I wasn't even their competition! I was a desk gal with no cosmetology license! When I do a 'job' or 'career', I do that thing because it fulfills me; because it is my heart's calling and my contribution to the world, however small, to make a positive DIFFERENCE. It goes against everything in my DNA to be so..so... just SO MEAN! I cried on the bus the whole way home, and when I got home, I threw up again, called the work phone, and left a message saying that the crew wasn't at all what I was expecting or willing to adjust to, and that had been my first and last day there.

Needless to say, the saga was a living nightmare. I'm crying now, just writing this and recalling the dark days that followed. I was broken. I didnt't leave my bed, much less my apartment for almost three weeks. I thought I was beyond repair; I thought this time had done me in for sure.

Somewhere, a month later, I realized that those were the three things I was dreading the most: seeing my ex boyfriend, hearing about my ex fiance's successes, and failing yet again at another career I'd thrown my heart and forseeable future into. The trifecta knocked me so far away from my life, that I was forced into a new perspective: that that, then, was as bad as it would ever get for me, and that that meant that the worst of it was over. I didn't have to be sacred of it anymore. I was free.

Obviously, from the post below, we can see that I've come a long way and lots of things have changed. I'd say that I'm still recovering from the triple-blow, and that might explain these tears. But it's the closest to Free i've been in years.

current mood: smeared current music: the mynabirds - let the record go