Nothing can prepare you to lose not just one, but two jobs in the span of three days, but a gin & tonic does make it go down a lot smoother.
I was not (as I later clarified to my family via text) imbibing alone at home between tears (though I had my fair share of them last week): after my local yoga studio where I teach and practice shut it’s doors and when Moglea, the studio where I spend my weekday afternoons painting, folding, and packaging greeting cards and other paper ephemera closed up shop. Rather, last Wednesday afternoon I stood in solidarity, plastic cup in hand around the dusty worktables at Moglea with my remaining coworkers, enjoying a final happy hour before we hung our paint-splattered aprons for an as of yet undetermined hiatus.
I share this not to weave a tale of my own woe as one of many left unemployed by the novel Corona virus, but to highlight those people who have stood with me, who have shown me innumerable kindnesses amid their own fear, uncertainty, and angst.
I don’t for a moment flatter myself to think my situation unique. But the people who have shown up for me in the past week to fill the blank spaces on my calendar pages with virtual yoga classes, my mailbox with a hand-written note, and my bank account with money to buy a myself a bottle of wine and a bouquet, they are special. And as someone whose 3-year-old catchphrase of ‘I do it my ownself,’ still holds true at 27, this past week has been a lesson in humility. I would be nothing without the support of my friends and family.
“Fears are better faced with our friends.”
Ironically (or perhaps, not ironically at all), the children’s book I have been working on for a year and a half and recently submitted for consideration to a publisher is, as I stated in my query letter, ‘a story about the intersection between independence and friendship.’
Indeed, this book would not be where it is today (traveling to a NYC-based publishing house) without the help of each and every person who read it, from ‘shitty’ first drafts to it’s current illustrative pages.
There is no guarantee my story will find a home with the first, second, or even third publisher I submit to. It’s a long road ahead, I know that. But like Marcella, the heroine of my book, I too have learned that fears are better faced with our friends.
