That Time I Quit My Job to Date a Guy I Met Online (Part 2)
So, as I was saying in Part 1: I came out to my family, met a beautiful Italian man online (aka BIM), and decided to move 2,000 miles to secretly date him — all in the span of four months.
I moved into a house in Sherman Oaks (a suburb of Los Angeles) with no job prospects and enough savings to last me about eight months before I was completely destitute.
The clock was ticking.
Fortunately, my new boyfriend’s friend’s boyfriend’s friend (don’t even bother keeping up with who’s who in this story) was an assistant manager for a clothing store in Hollywood and told me he could probably get me a job as a sales associate.
I wasn’t thrilled by the thought of going back to my retail roots; I’d done my time in high school and college and was hopeful that I’d never again have to ask someone if they were finding everything alright. But I was in Hollywood, and I figured the more I struggled, the better stories I’d have to tell my friends and family back home.
Plus, I thought, not everybody gets to work in a trendy Hollywood boutique! Was I going to be helping celebrities get fitted for their next big event? Would I be leading them out the back exit to avoid the prying lenses of the paparazzi?
No. No I would not be.
Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum, as it turns out, do not frequent the American Eagle at the intersection of Hollywood and Highland. Most of our clientele were Japanese tourists and sunburnt Midwestern families who were dragged there because Mom reads Us Weekly and thought they might run into Kim Kardashian sunbathing on the Walk of Fame.
Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum, as it turns out, do not frequent the American Eagle at the intersection of Hollywood and Highland.
I was making $8.25 an hour performing the most mentally and physically demanding job I’ve ever had. (P.S. I’ve always believed it should be a requirement for people to work a month in retail — can you imagine how much more empathetic the world would be?)
My other retail gigs had been a walk in the park compared to this — mostly because my other jobs didn’t require me to wear a headset with managers covertly directing me to customers they thought should be assaulted with jeggings.
I thought back to how easy I’d had it just three weeks before: my own office, a comfortable chair, and health insurance. Now here I was sitting on the cold floor of the stockroom, savoring every minute of the one 10-minute break I had.
To add insult to injury, I had to pay $4 to park in the garage every shift. My boyfriend insisted I could find free street parking, but being a newcomer, I had not yet perfected the art of reading the hieroglyphics Angelenos call parking signs.
Long story short, I lasted three weeks before I resigned in exasperration. They didn’t care; I was a disposable commodity — a warm body who only needed to smile and fold mountains of clothes. I could be replaced the next day with some other Hollywood hopeful.
The next few months I watched as my bank account continued sinking. I had maybe four months left before I would have to say goodbye to BIM and move back in with my family, defeated, penniless, and unemployed — all because of some stupid, fantastical urge to live on my own terms.
Then around August, I was contacted by a recruiter who said her client was looking for a full-time writer. After three rounds of interviews, I landed the gig. It was for a weight-loss supplement that would eventually go out of business after getting sued in a class-action lawsuit. Fortunately that all happened after I’d moved on to another job a couple of years later. The important thing is that I was employed and in an actual, real-life relationship — and BIM was no longer the dirty little secret that I kept from my friends and family!
Six years later, BIM and I are still partners in crime. He’s my best friend. Like most relationships, we’ve had our ups and downs since we met that fateful day online, but I always try to view the downs as learning experiences for even better ups.
The point of this story — and I think there is one somewhere — is that the universe has this splendid way of working in your favor when you pursue an authentic life. When you have your eye on the prize — when you really want and believe in something — any setbacks or misfortunes you encounter simply become the fuel you need to drive you toward your goals.
When you have your eye on the prize — when you really want and believe in something — any setbacks or misfortunes you encounter simply become the fuel you need to drive you toward your goals.
Even as I was watching my money disappear — and folding t-shirts for poverty-level wages — and even when I opened my underwear drawer to find a sewer rat staring back at me with dog food in its mouth, I never once thought of myself as a failure. Because all of these “problems” were MY problems; they were the natural chunks of unpleasantness that came as a result of my pursuit for a happier ending.
I think Raghav Haran said it perfectly in his post:
Don’t be afraid to take one step back today to take two steps forward tomorrow.
Sometimes when you pause and take a step back, it gives you a bird’s eye view of the path toward YOUR happiness, not the path that makes other people happy.
Join me on Facebook at: facebook.com/samverbs. Thank you for reading!
