Mari Andrew - Am I There Yet?: The Loop-de-loop, Zigzagging Journey to Adulthood

Chapter 1 | Overcoming Uncertainty

When I was twenty-four, I was working at an oppressive law firm in Chicago. I had many jobs around that city in my early twenties, but this one in all its seriousness seemed more finite. After I had worked there only a few weeks, the days felt meaningless and unendinglike I had signed my life away to this job. My friend told me with compassion and exasperation, This isnt your whole life. This is a season in your life. In a couple of years, well say Remember that weird time you worked at a law firm?

She was right. It was a season. A brief, informative season that ended up having much more significance than I could have predicted, but I always forget to add it to my rsum.

It didnt feel like a season at the time; it felt like the rest of my life. Thats how most seasons feel while youre living them, and then your surroundings transform just as youre getting settled in. The winter-to-spring shift is slow but dramatic, bringing with it a change of heart and wardrobe. The fall-to-winter transition is quick, taking place the very minute Santa Claus comes floating by at the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade. The end of summer is slower. This time of year is precious to everyone. It belongs to the soft cotton part of your heart that never ages past ten years old. You can smell itfresh pencil shavings and cinnamon.

Fall is a grieving period. Its beautiful and magical and has its own dress code, but its a season all about loss. Even if youre not sad to see summer go, fall is still heartbreaking, especially when rain sings through empty branches and leaves litter the ground like dusty garnets, waiting to be stuffed in black trash bags.

When I entered my twenties, an older friend told me it was my time to explore. I had ten whole years just to grow and experiment and push my limits. If you stumble, she said, thats a great sign. It means you found your edge. You tried something that didnt work, and now you know.

This insight has guided me. Ive tried jobs I didnt think Id be any good at and ended up learning gobs about my interests and abilities. Ive dated people I didnt think would be good for me and theyre still some of my best friends. Ive moved to cities I didnt think fit my personality and, for the first time in my life, found what feels like home in Washington, D.C.

All too often, I was anxious to feel more settled, to have it figured out, to stop learning lessons and just reap the benefits of lessons learned. The most helpful way to get over this anxiety was to think about my life as a collection of seasons, rather than as individual steps. Its tempting at this age to carry around a mental checklist of Things an Adult Should Have and a monthly report card with markings for each Life Category.

There were so many times I felt like I was sitting around waiting. So many times I was meandering around with a heavy heart, mourning the loss of a happier season without any idea what would come next, and when. I can see now that those were the seasons of lossmy own personal autumnsand they were some of the most important. Thats what my law firm job was: an autumn.

Life has seasons that mimic the earths seasons: times of abundance, times of cultivation. Fall is a season of loss, but it shows you up front what youre losing. Thats what makes it so sweet in its melancholy. You can watch summer slip away as a new world takes over. Youre a frontline witness to the ultimate triumph of winter, conquering warmth degree by degree, until one evening at five P.M ., the night swallows up the afternoon in a sudden coup.

Seasons of loss, like the colder seasons, are the hardest ones to endure, even if you logically understand they wont last forever. I once heard an interview with an artist whose father died at the height of his creative success. He was really close with his dad, and spent the next few years in a tense combination of obligatory gratitude and overwhelming sadness.

When asked to describe loss, this guy said that it was like having the casino cashier gone. He compared everything that happened to himany happiness, any difficulty, any mundanityto a poker chip, saying his father would validate those experiences like a cashier, making them worth something. His father turned every one of the mans moments into something meaningful just by listening to his stories.

After his father died, the man said he was sitting among piles and piles of worthless poker chips. He was dwelling in loss, running his fingers through it. He was a witness to his own grief. Its really hard to sit with loss; Im doing it now. My dad died in 2015.

But it takes so much discipline to resist numbing oneself and skipping quickly to the next season. Its even hard to watch someone else sit in it; hearing someone say Im hurting calls for immediate action. Its a lot easier to tell someone, Things will get better, Look on the bright side, or Everything happens for a reason!, rather than I cant imagine what youre going throughIm so sorry.

Just like seasons of the year, seasons of life dont have a finish line. Wearing a sundress in the middle of winter isnt going to make it go by any faster. Pretending the cold doesnt exist isnt nearly as effective as making the most of the silence a snowfall brings. Even the most die-hard winter-haters can probably find some beauty in a cold morning with hot coffee, and can appreciate that the inevitable return of summer makes those chilly mornings seem all the more cozy.

Now in September, I dwell in both actual fall and life fall seasons of loss. Im trying to learn from the calendar to make sense of life. Its not easy. Its also not my whole life; its a season. And there is a ton of beauty in it.