The Worst Year Of My Life

I don’t think much good ever comes from sharing the details of your personal life online, and I’ve been hesitant to do it. But I’m going to force myself outside of my comfort zone not because I want to, and not because I have anything to gain, but because I feel like I have a responsibility to. Because I don’t think God would make me as emotional as I am, make me a writer, and allow all of this to happen in my life if it wasn’t for a purpose, and it wasn’t for His glory. So reluctantly, and with a wince, I’ll do what I think He wants me to. I’m not going into painstaking detail because I don’t think that’s necessary to get my point across, and because I want to give some of the people I’ll be forced to reference as little ammunition as possible to launch into hysterics.

For a long time, I thought of my life in three categories: love life, social life, and professional life. More recently, I’ve begun to think of faith as a fourth category even though it affects everything else. But for a good portion of my adolescence and early adulthood, my walk with God wasn’t a priority. I always thought I’d get married and after we had kids and were mostly done goofing off, we’d start taking church seriously. It might sound crass or naive but some of the older couples I admired most had done the same thing. They had these wild stories about partying in LA and weekends in France together, and all these years later, with houses in the suburbs, having to leave work early to take one kid to football and another to soccer, going to church every Sunday, they still seemed incredibly in love. That’s what I wanted.

But after coronavirus I started grappling with the idea of my mortality, not because I thought I was going to die from a dramatized flu, but because things were getting weird. And I felt confronted with the reality that I might not be able to have my cake and eat it too. Out of nowhere I felt consumed with the fact that I could either die or the Son of God could return with no warning, and I wasn’t prepared.

All that to say, I’d been working on rebuilding the foundation of my Christianity for a while by the time what happened happened. 

I guess it makes the most sense to go in chronological order.

When I think about most of the men I’ve dated throughout my 20s, they were pleasant, and fun to be around, and I was attracted to them. They were successful in their careers, some of them were funny. But I realized that when things ended, while I saw potential in them, and could envision myself falling in love with them at some point, we didn’t have some kind of profound connection, and I wasn’t uniquely attached to them. 

There are three exceptions to this – meaning there are three men I’ve felt something for that wasn’t interchangeable and couldn’t be replicated, as it was specific to them as individuals. I’m hesitant to admit this, because I have a feeling that if the person I’m referring to knew how much he meant to me, it would only boost his ego, and that’s the last thing he needs. 

He wasn’t someone that had even registered as a romantic option in the first year or so that I’d known him, because the way he presented himself was so far removed from anything I sought out in men. The way he posted on Instagram, the things that seemed to matter most to him, his tendency to broadcast his wealth…none of it appealed to me. But when I started to get to know him beyond surface level conversations at parties and his cringe inducing social media antics, I saw him in a different light. He became one of my closest friends. And when he kissed me about six months into our friendship, I was completely caught off guard. A week and a half later, we were at Jimmy John’s, and I realized there, in that dingy sandwich shop, that I liked him. Maybe two hours later I told him, and honest to God, he seemed relieved. “I like you too.” We went outside to talk more, and he asked me some serious questions. At one point he said, “if it doesn’t work out, we can’t stop being friends. I can’t not have you in my life.” I told him I wouldn’t stop being his friend unless he did something unforgivable – which is of course exactly what he did.

After enough time passes in any given situation, I’m usually able to see it from an alternative angle. Once the dust settles, I can see where I might have been dramatic or self involved, and what I could have done differently. But in this case, the more time has passed, the more convinced I’ve become of my original position. He treated me horribly, and nothing justifies it.

When I first moved to Florida, I felt like I really belonged somewhere for the first time in my life. I’ve always had friends, but in high school, I mostly hung out with four girls. You have those friends that you goof off with in class and those people you’ll wave to in the hallway, but as far as the people I spent my time with outside of school, it was pretty much those four girls. In college, I had a falling out with one of my friends and isolated myself from our larger friend group. I made new friends but it was never the same. At my first job out of college, I formed extremely tight bonds with my coworkers, but we were scattered all over the country and I was terminated after just under a year. I struggled a lot socializing in D.C. I always felt out of place and insecure, and my political views weren’t doing me any favors. 

The first two years I spent in Florida, my social life was probably the best it had ever been. I ended up in this giant friend group – and while I wasn’t under the impression that 30 people could get along in peace and harmony forever, it was the first time in recent memory where making friends didn’t feel like a chore, and I didn’t feel like an afterthought. It was a sense of community I had never experienced, and I was excited about that part of my life finally feeling easy.

When people found out we were dating, they started talking about me like I was some kind of evil backstabbing whore because I had been on amicable terms with his ex, who was also in our friend group, while they were dating. I told my close friends that I was considering inviting her out for a drink to talk, because even though I knew I had done nothing wrong and that there was no “girl code” to violate with someone I’d never hung out with 1 on 1, and exchanged maybe 5 texts total with over the course of a year, I wanted her to know that nothing nefarious was going on, because if I was in her shoes, seeing my ex start dating one of his best friends, I’d have questions. I told him too. But my close friends said I shouldn’t, and he was adamant that I didn’t. So I didn’t.

There are a lot of things that I can get over, but there are some things that a friend would never say under any circumstances. And I found out that a different girl in my social periphery – that I had gone out of my way to help when I had no reason or motivation to – said something of that nature about me.

I was asked not to say anything to her, so I didn’t. On the day I sent out invites for my birthday brunch, she didn’t receive one, and asked if we could talk. I told her that I heard she said something about me that a friend would never say, so I could be cordial with her, but that was it. At the beginning of the conversation I told her I had promised the person who told me that I wouldn’t reveal their identity, and I couldn’t share what they said without doing that, but she had a hunch anyway. She pried and prodded, insisting that he was making up stories to try to isolate her from mutual friends. Even typing this out, I can’t believe this happened at my big age, just weeks before my 30th birthday and not my 13th. But I digress. She insisted she had never said anything bad about me, recounted being bullied in high school and said that’s why she would never do anything of the sort. 

And if I was maybe 10% dumber, I might have fallen for it. But something told me she was just a talented manipulator. I stayed on the phone with her for about ten minutes as she talked in circles, trying to convince me of her innocence. She texted me on my actual birthday, and I said thank you. But when it became apparent that I wasn’t changing my mind in time to invite her to my birthday brunch, she started calling up people I’d invited, begging them not to attend, then started telling everyone I’d abruptly disinvited them. And people that I had fed and welcomed into my home for over a year were either stupid enough to believe it or weak enough to go along with an obvious lie. Did I mention this woman is in her mid 30s? After that, I stopped engaging with the majority of my so-called “friend group,” because I saw them for what they really were…and it was kind of pathetic.

Then at the end of April, in what I thought was my routine meeting with my boss, I was laid off. He started the conversation, “we’re letting you go,” and I genuinely thought he was joking. Reality started to settle in. At first I was able to keep my composure but the more my boss spoke, the less control I had over myself. I started crying, and not calm, cool, collected tears. Not demure, not mindful. I started hyperventilating. My head was beginning to pound. The day before, the entire team had a tough conversation about numbers, but it didn’t even register as a possibility that my job could be in jeopardy that quickly. I left that conversation brainstorming what I could do to make a difference in the month ahead – not wondering whether or not I’d have a job tomorrow.

The week before, my old boss called me to check in. I said “the only things I have going for me right now are that I’m not fat and I have a job.”

Then I ruined two friendships with good, morally grounded people within a month of each other. About two weeks after I lost my job, I got so inebriated that I only remembered maybe 20 minutes of the night. I remember clutching my taser at one point. I remember sitting on a bench and looking at the ground for a prolonged period of time. That’s literally it. The second time, I shared something in casual conversation, not realizing how private or sensitive of an issue it was. Neither responded to my attempts at reconciliation. Initially, my plan was to give both girls their space for a month before reaching out again. But the more time went on, the more awkward I felt. They had stopped liking my pictures but were religiously watching my stories, and as silly as it sounds, girls know what that means. I didn’t know what to say to them, and with every day that passed the energy between us felt like it was literally rotting. It wasn’t just stagnant, and it wasn’t just dissipating, it felt like it was becoming heavy. So I ended up sending them farewell “no hard feelings on my end” texts before blocking them on Instagram, hoping that if I didn’t see them in my story views anymore, I’d feel unburdened by what had been.

And to top it all off, after the bar I went to for dollar oysters ended that promotion, I found another establishment offering the deal — only for it to close at the end of December. (Kidding…kind of)

This year felt defined by loss. I lost people that mattered a lot to me, I lost people that mattered much less, and I lost my job of six years. Every aspect of my life – my love life, my social life, and my professional life – had taken significant hits. And for a long time, I was angry at God because in my mind, this was the kind of devastation reserved for the people that were running from Him. In my mind, this was the kind of thing He did when He wanted to get someone’s attention. He already had mine. I had been steadily working on my relationship with him for four years. I prayed to Him about everything. What was He doing? What did I do? What was He trying to prove? I knew it wasn’t all random – it wasn’t all someone else’s fault. But so much of it seemed completely unjust and out of my control. It seemed like God was allowing tragedy after tragedy into my life that I couldn’t make sense of.

And I’d be lying if I said it all made sense to me now. It doesn’t. But this loss brought me the closest to God that I’ve ever been. As my career and my relationships were ripped from me, my faith was forced to soar. I know it sounds depressing. I guess it kind of is. I know that it’s upsetting to think that God will drag us through the pits of despair to meet Him, even when we think we’re already doing what we’re supposed to. 

But what feels like loss as it’s happening might turn out to be something different in hindsight.

I feel like the worst year of my life made me the best version of myself. I cook all the time. I read my Bible frequently. I’m writing more. I lost weight. I made new friends. I became kinder. More athletic. More understanding. And after more failed attempts than I can count, started seriously learning a new language.

I lost two meaningful friendships on my own, but I learned something from one, and maybe I can still learn something from the other.

I dated a liar and God took him away. I spent my time with spineless reprobates and He took me from them. I was stuck at a job with no path forward and He took me out of it. 

I don’t think he’s just a liar. I don’t think they’re just cowards with no conviction. Maybe I could have been more active in my role. But maybe what I thought was a loss was really a cleanse.

In a suffering unlike anything I’ve ever known, I felt God’s presence in an intensity I’d never known – and never could have known without it.

Broken people broke my heart. I’m a broken person, who owes God much more than those people ever owed me, and still, I break His heart. And through this heartbreak, I was able to begin to understand God’s love. 

The more I understand God’s love, the more I’m forced to challenge my instincts. I don’t want to believe people are complex. I don’t want to forgive the unforgivable – especially when it hasn’t been apologized for. I don’t want to love my enemies or pray for those who persecute me. But if good and evil exist in me, and God can forgive me before I’ve repented, I have to accept that they exist in other people, and I have to push myself to give the grace I don’t deserve from God to people that don’t deserve it from me.  

That doesn’t mean I’ve succeeded. But I’m trying, and I’m growing in a way I never would have if it hadn’t been for the year from hell.