[This is a post from the series on sexual assault.]
I talk kind of a lot (kind of a lot, a lot) about how it feels like New York is “ruined,” or how other things that were sort of new with sexual assault guy are “ruined,” because he was the person who welcomed me to New York. He was the beginning of my time here.
But, my moving here is accompanied by so many cool things. We could say that my time at The Nightly Show should dictate my time in New York, because to some extent, it should have. I spent a lot of time there. It was an amazing experience. So, why would my experience with sexual assault guy dictate my time?
Logically, I can think on that. But straight-up emotionally, it doesn’t change that it still feels like it was a giant thing, that has the ability to sort of “ruin” New York – I think especially because I had such giant hopes. This was all something that was “supposed” to be soooo good.
But one thing I remembered while I was in Los Angeles this weekend is that my time there started in a sorta crappy way…
I got a job I didn’t really like. I was working for this event planning place, and found out one of the first events I was going to have to work on planning was for a tobacco company – which I really do not believe in. [I’ll tell this story more in full when I get back around to talking about my career trajectory and how all that worked.]
But anyway, I had already signed my lease. I was super poor (e.g. too poor to break it, among other things). I didn’t feel like I had all that many options… I wasn’t just worried about the fallout for me if I broke my lease, but I also had a roommate relying on me.
I cried to my dad on the phone while I sat on the floor of my empty apartment, wondering, “What are the ethically right choices here? Ethically, can I do anything for a tobacco company? That’s something I’ve been against my whole life! (I was a runner up in an anti-tobacco campaign for kids, where we storyboarded commercials to combat smoking.)
Buuuuuuut, to what extent am I really involved? I’m just ordering tents and stuff… Does that reeeeally matter?”
I wondered about these and a million more questions, and what I owed my job, my convictions, my roommate, the friend who did me the favor of getting me the job, and on and on.
And I know that having a little work crisis is not the same as getting PTSD and having a traumatic experience that flips your life upside down. But still. The very beginning of my time at that beautiful LA apartment – before a single piece of furniture was moved in – was marked with a lot of crying and anguish. I hated LA when I first got there.
And when I walk into my LA apartment now, I don’t think, “ugh, the place where I felt anguish and pain.” Now it just feels like home – comforting, welcoming, safe home.
Along those same lines, I didn’t toooootally hit it out of the park at the beginning of the time on The Nightly Show. My boss had a talking-to with me after the first two intense crazy weeks to understand if things were slipping through the cracks because I was moving across the country (and this was a temporary problem), or if I wouldn’t work out at the job. Thankfully, it was the former and everything super worked out. I turned it way around, and soon after, even got a promotion.
Things don’t necessarily end the way they start. And I think that could be true of New York too.
If I can learn to let the beginning of my time here go, I might find the awesomeness of the end outshines the beginning. I guess we’ll see…
[Also – giant asterisk here, though: While I think it’s nice to see the hope in this idea, I also used this idea to justify staying with sexual assault guy. “Sure, he’s being awful now. This is awful. But this still might just be the beginning. It’ll turn around. It’ll turn around. The end is not always the beginning.
And while I think that’s a beautiful idea I believe in, which should (hopefully) give hope to certain situations, it’s also an idea that used to hurt me as I clung very tightly to it. Sure, the end might be better than the beginning. But it doesn’t mean it will be.
…Though hopefully when it comes to New York, that will be the case. I guess we’ll see!]
[This is a post from the series on sexual assault.]