INTRODUCING: ERIN

“I am completely and irrevocably broken.”

I’m assuming that, by now, you’ve watched David After Dentist. That pretty much sums up my life since June. I feel like somebody knocked me out and, while I was under, re-arranged everything I thought I knew.

It all started when I lost my job. Actually, I left my job for a “guaranteed” position with another company, who informed me 4 days prior to starting that they had given my position to another therapist.

I had to beg for a part-time job, all while being rejected for any number of jobs for which I am ridiculously overqualified.

Repeatedly, I was rejected for adult or geriatric therapy positions because I chose to follow my heart and develop clinical expertise in pediatrics.

I had to ask my parents for money. Again. And again.

The man I have loved for 9 years—the entirety of my adult life—informed me via text message that he’s seeing someone else. Worse, that this was no “it just happened” moment—it was a deliberate, thought-out, consequences-considered choice.

Side note: Suuuuuuuuuuuuucks, right?

Instead of listening as I shared my broken heart, some of my best friends in the world flooded my phone with a tirade of “he’s a jerk” messages as if deciding to hate him would somehow make me feel better.

And I rediscovered the fact that I am very, very alone.

I wish I could tell you that I held some sort of Gloria Gaynor-fueled moment of moving on and am good to go, but I’m not. I am miserable. I am inconsolable.

I am completely and irrevocably broken.

I think back to graduate school, when one of my professors was teaching about preventing patient falls. It’s the fear of any student to let their patient fall, especially during the course of a practical exam. Obviously, my professor knew this. He asked for a volunteer, had her start walking around the room…

…and then he made her fall.

As the rest of us stared at them in shock, my professor knelt down, looked the stunned student square in the eye, and said the words that stick with me to this day:“You’re never going to get any further down than the floor. Take thetime you need, and we’ll get back up when you’re ready.”

Whatever floor I have fallen to has to be located somewhere in subterranean Antarctica. All I can do at the moment is stare up at the tiny light at the top of this cavern and wonder how the hell I ended up here.

This much I know: It does me no good to try to hold onto the things I’ve lost over the last few weeks. They will not return, and keeping a death grip on the familiar certainly won’t help me to move forward. As the saying goes, you can’t write the next chapter if you keep re-reading the last.

It appears my challenge now is to figure out how to turn the page.