So I am going to preface this by saying that the job to which I am referring is part of a cohort and I was only informed last night because I've been hounding the same woman all week and she took pity on me -- if you are reading this and also applied, they haven't announced any of their decisions yet.
But I -- after a truly appalling assemblage of shitty behavior at work, beginning with "asking" my boss to leave our meeting early (a meeting about camps, which I do not run, and which involved group "feedback" on my work last summer, which I do not want) and ending with straight-up telling a group of eleven year olds that they will never accomplish their dreams if they cannot be bothered with understanding fractions -- got a call around five o'clock yesterday confirming that I have managed to obtain a nursing job. I attribute this to, in the following order: the apparently random scatterplot of God's blessings; my husband's pulling, dark-horse-like, into the prayer zone, while I just kind of vaguely gestured at God like, whatever, Dude, I give up; the amazing nurses who helped me get here through myriad study groups, teff cookies, textings-off-the-ledge, and favors of various kinds.
Of course, taking this job entails me leaving my other job, which entails what feels like a giant eff you to everyone, because essentially: here's what I want and here I am, doing it, and not doing what might be better for you.
One advantage about the constant barrage of shame and guilt with which I live is that the episodes in which I actually screw someone over -- the ones I know about, anyway -- are few and far between. I really try to ascertain the right thing to do - what will be best for everyone, not just me -- and to do that thing, even if I want to do something else. The areas in which I am comfortable putting myself first mostly involve things that I feel strongly have no real effect on others. For example, if you tell me I am inconveniencing or hurting you by not doing what you think I should with my hair or body or life, I'm pretty good at pretending you're telling very funny jokes, to record in my diary, because why would you think my body was your problem?
If, however, my decision is legitimately going to screw things up for you, it's much harder for me to do what's best for me in the face of its impact on you, because I know I can live with disappoint, so I need to do so, because what if you can't? And as a consequence of this, I've developed an extremely manipulative coping mechanism in which I do what I "should", with the understanding that I'll suck it up, but then do violent and damaging things to my body in an effort to communicate how actually not okay I am with this. I am a grown-up; I'm not a grown up.
But sometimes grown-ups have a third option in which they neither sacrifice what they want or lunch a savage brat-attack on their body over that sacrifice. Sometimes, it can be someone else's turn to deal with not getting what they want.
From the mouth of no lesser man than my incomparable father: my choices are obvious and mine to make. You can do whatever you want, if you can live with it. And after literally years of working for exactly this thing, I'd be a foolish crazy fool not to find a way to live with it.
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