deep end

on not having answers

I’ve always been good at having a plan, at being the one who stays calm when things fall apart. It wasn’t about some natural discipline so much as a need to feel safe in a world that rarely permitted me to be anything less than composed. I answered emails promptly, remembered birthdays, made lists no one asked for, and carried band-aids for everyone else’s scrapes. People called me responsible, mature, and steady. I was often dubbed the ‘Mom’ of the group. Those were compliments I held onto like shields, because being that person meant I didn’t have to show the parts of myself that felt restless or uncertain.

But lately, my composure has unravelled, leaving me restless, unsteady, and weighed down by a persistent ache. I’ve been unemployed for over three months, sending out over eighty-four job applications—marketing manager, assistant, PA, front desk secretary—with nothing but silence in response. I feel that tightness in my throat, a knot threatening to spill into tears.

Everyone has been kind, telling me it’s a slow hiring season, that it’s summer and everyone is on vacation, and that things will pick up soon. I respond with a polite nod and move on, but really, I want to shake them and say, “What if you’re wrong? What if this is it?” Because I don’t know who I am if not someone working for someone else.

If you handed me a book of my life, I’d snatch it, desperate to know what happens next, to see if I’m still someone without a role to play.

The goals I once held tight have dropped off, and now my life lacks the clarity and conviction I thought I needed. The identity I’ve created for myself no longer fits, like too-tight jeans after a summer in loose dresses. It begs the question: What have I been chasing? And where do I go from here?

And I’ll admit that this vast space that I’ve been trying to make something of these last few months has turned me deeply cynical — because as much as I am a whimsical romantic, I also recognise the frivolity in spouting about hopes and dreams. The real world is so harsh, and I feel that the notion that if you work hard enough, you’ll achieve your dreams is a disastrous lie sold to millions of people. In B’s company alone, at least four people he knows are nepo babies, and it makes me wonder what the hell this is all for. It makes me deeply angry, which in turn makes me sad that after busting my ass through college and through two jobs that I marginally liked, I was the one left strung out to dry.

This time should be a reset, a chance to pause and rethink, but it feels like a breakdown. Yesterday, I lay motionless on the sofa, lost in that fog, until B came over to pull me out. “Enjoy this moment,” he said. “Something will come along and fill your time, and you’ll wish you’d savoured this freedom. You have nothing to worry about.” He’s been my anchor when I want to scream. I’m goddamn grateful for a partner who can afford our bills without my income, but it claws at the part of me that needs to contribute, to be useful in some meaningful way. It’s hard to see this pause as anything but failure when my identity has been built on having it all together.

I’ve been good at being good that I forgot what it feels like to just be. I’ve been reading more, writing more fiction, going for walks, completing puzzles, and listening to audiobooks, trying to fill my time with things I wished I’d had time for when I was working. Some days it works; some weeks, like this one, it doesn’t.

I really don’t know where I’ll end up. It’s gut-wrenchingly terrifying. I don’t know what form my life will take or who I’ll be when the waves settle — if they ever do. For now, I’m just here, carried by these churning feelings, letting them rise and fall without forcing them to point somewhere. Maybe acknowledging this uncertainty, these fragments of a story I’m still writing, is all I need for now.

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