Just before I left the house where I nanny, the mom said, "It's hard to be an adult sometimes." I responded, "I sure haven't figured it out." She told me that it was okay, that I am young, and sometimes we just never figure it out. She went on to tell me that she and her husband (who are in their mid forties) have never found fulfillment in their jobs, that they find fulfillment in their family.
Without a doubt, this was meant as an encouragement, but I found myself fighting tears my whole drive home. For me, I need to find a career because I want to escape my family, specifically the situation in which I live with them. It's hard for me to say things like that in public places, I have a better family than a lot of people, but they have taught me a lot of lessons I need to unlearn and have not always been entirely supportive. As with all families, my relationship with them is complicated, and it's certainly not a way I would ever say I find fulfillment and I don't see that changing any time soon.
It could be that she meant something more along the lines of a family I would start someday. Well, for me, that's no more encouraging. I don't plan to have kids, and as I've been more or less single for 26 years, I don't really see myself getting married. I very much doubt there will be a period of my life where family is fulfilling.
So I started thinking about what fulfills me in my life. It used to be that I found this in my religion, but over the past year or so, I've become unsure of that. That has definitely been difficult, not really believing the thing that I clung to when I had nothing else was real. And now I'm approaching the point where I've lived back at home for a year. I'm certainly a different person than the girl who came home, who was a far cry from the one who left, but my financial troubles are nowhere near as close to being fixed as I had hoped, and I have nothing that I'm striving towards. I don't really have that thing that I'm good at, and my anxiety has been so powerful. I live in a house where my best friend is uncomfortable after 30 seconds and I'm nowhere near being able to leave it and I can't find the pieces I need to put together to get me going on a path to independence. I love kids and nannying has been such a welcome change and so much more fulfilling than selling shirts made in Asian factories, but it's not something I can make work physically or financially for the long run.
The only thing I can think of that brings me any fulfillment in my life is my friends. And frankly, that scares me. The thing about getting older is that everyone gets busier, and you find yourself losing touch with people and slowly having just a few friends. I'd say I have about half a dozen friends who I actually see in real like, and at least half of those have plans to move away at some point. Heck, I might have plans to move at some point, because I live in a ridiculously expensive area.
I'm really physically and emotionally tired and crying and I already took my contacts out, so I hope this is at least somewhat cohesive. My question for you is: Where do you find fulfillment?
Listening to: "If You Leave" by Daughter
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