Light at the end of the tunnel

When I started doing a lot overtime a couple of months ago, this all seemed impossible. I didn't know if I was accepted yet, but I always believed you speak things into being. So I expected the best, acceptance, and prepared for the worst, a second rejection, which I would not have handled well. As I said before, most of my friends and family were sure I'd be accepted this time. I guess somewhere in the back of my head, I felt I'd get it, but in the front, nonstop panic and constantly questioning the "how" of it all. You can't get student loans to cover your room and board. I didn't really want them, but I also didn't want anything to stop me.

And of course, the simple fact that I'm stepping out into the unknown. I've always considered myself reserved. Too reserved really. I need a plan just for the sake of having a plan. I need to know what's going to happen next or at least have a dozen different scenarios planned out ad nauseum.  I don't like surprises. So needless to say, this is a lot for me. I'm packing up my life, and cats, to move halfway around the world to get a master's. I know what I would like to focus on, but I don't know how it will translate into a job or hopefully a business.  I honestly feel like you don't really have any control over your professional life unless you are working for yourself. What kind of business would I start? I got no freaking clue!!!! See where I'm going here.  Yeah, me neither. Here we go.

Spaceships don't come equipped with rear view mirrors

Preparing for the move has been more  mentally draining than I expected. With the exception of this weekend, I'm working 50-60 hrs a week to have the money required to get a student visa. Seriously,  Finland says you can't come here without money in the bank to the tune of $7,500. As I've said, I don't like my job and being there so much is rough, but it's what has to be done. The sad part is, I know I'm already burned out. I'm two months into these 50-60 hour weeks and I have to do it for three more months to make the money I need. That's why I went ahead and took today off. I'll be back to the grind tomorrow. I have a GoFundMe campaign that is going slower than I'd like. My family doesn't really have any money to contribute. Dad will sell my car, but it has to happen right before I leave. Living with him has saved me rent, but it's a rural area with no public transport, so I'll need my car right up until I stop working.

Then there are my parents. I had lunch with my mom as a early Mother's Day get together. To say our relationship has been strained throughout our lives is a bit of an understatement. We never really talked about much. I personally find it quite absurd to confide in your mother or parent about things. Don't ask me why. Oh yeah, because their life experiences are completely different from ours and they mostly refuse to accept that. She's proud of me and she says it. But our personalities are so different. My parents have also always been quite blatant with their uneven parenting among their kids. But calling them out about it, well you get the same reaction as say, kicking a puppy. It also doesn't help that I'm a bit of a stubborn asshole, a trait I share with my father. Of course then there's my father. The heavy drinking, heavy smoking man from a small town in Louisiana. I took after him in the heavy drinking category for a long time too. Our similar personalities lead to just as many clashes. I'm prone to brutal honesty, sometimes to my own detriment. Most attempts to filter myself fail miserably. My dad has clearly suffered from some type of depression for a long time, but he prefers to self-medicate with alcohol. His memory is not good and hasn't been for a few years. Mentioning his diabetes and Crohns disease are not valid arguments apparently. I've been back home for a year and the two years before that when I didn't live at home, I always came over on an off-day to help with one errand. It always turned into a full day of work. Checking to make sure his bills were paid, not because he didn't have the money, but because he forgot something was due. The sink full of dishes that are started to smell funny. He hasn't checked his email, which is how most of his bills come now that he's retired. He asks if I spoke to my sisters. Yes, I did. He hasn't heard from them in a week and a half. It's 3 p.m. and he's drunk to the point where his speech is slurring. I tell him he's has to drink less. He says he's not drunk.

I leave in three months. Not two hours away at my newspaper in Lake Charles or 40 minutes away at my apartment. Another continent. An eight time zone difference. I've been trying to make him do more of these tasks himself. A short workday for me is 10 hours, so I can't do it even I wanted to. I never wanted to. I wanted my off days. I wanted to wake up to watch a soccer match and be able to go back to sleep. I wanted help from sisters. Help that hasn't and will probably never come. The sink filled with his dishes, but he cleared them before they started to smell. He's going to physical therapy. A year late. The bills are mostly on time because I'm still checking behind him. Two straight 70 hour work weeks put me out of commission, so I don't know where it is now. There have been more arguments than talks lately.

When I went to Finland in January and February we had an argument two days before I left. I only talked to him three times while I was gone. He wouldn't answer the phone most of the time. I don't know how long it takes for animals to start losing weight, but the cats were visibly skinner. The litter boxes overflowing. This is a parent child relationship to him. It's the one he grew up in and what he expects from us. You don't talk back or disagree. You don't question unhealthy choices. You pick up all the pieces falling apart. And after doing that for well over a decade, you surely shouldn't expect your parent to watch your pets for two months while you abandon them! I mean, start working on a master's degree in a program you love. Nope, not even a little bit. But those were his exact words. I've heard many people make jokes of their parents acting like this. That's fine for them, but this is my life. This is a cycle, one of many I'm trying to break. It's not a joke. I can't do it. My determination, my anger, won't let me. I don't like the anger.  Unless it's something they can brag about. Between the arguments, everyone knows that their child is getting her master's overseas. The master's they are not and can not contribute to. It's all about when it's convenient. But can I blame them? It took 34 years to accept that's where it goes. To ignore that they graduated from segregated schools and a government job was the measure of success. I'm over it all. Mostly exhausted from it all. I leave in three months. And I'm praying that it's not on these terms. I want things on better terms. I want to stop worrying about my dad. I just want things easy, even it's just for a little while.

*PS: title is a lyric from Outkast's International Players Anthem

Where are you going and what are you doing???

So picking up where I left off. Everything went really quickly from there. Emailing happened over the next two hours and Classmate was like, "I'm finna call YOU!" Right now? From Finland? Bruh, what time is it there!?! Fair warning, Classmate does not sound like that. He's very laid back actually and I'd freak out if he said any of these things in real like. He doesn't even curse, which is why I wonder why he's friends with my loud, vulgar ass. Anyway!! That's just how I'm hearing it in my head. This was a lot y'all. It was and still is a lot. An hour and half later, I had basically been told, "you need to get smooth the fuck outta there. Come get this master's degree and use that as a springboard to greatness and just thrive bitch thrive!!!!" He was sure I'd get accepted. Applications were due in two months. Ummm, whet!?!? I was trying to convince myself to even get off the couch. I was failing. I was so confused. I was so drained by everything in my life and this sounded like a great opportunity and I was just so tired. Too tired to move forward. By the way, that's what depression does to you. Get help. Sometimes you can't just fix shit by yourself.

So, Finland was now an option. Or at least I should make it an option. Finland's there. In northern Europe, so I should think about it? Why won't Classmate stop emailing me!?!! That was my brain at the time. I didn't know what I would do next outside of filling out an application. I knew I couldn't stay at my current job. I was not embracing the choice to settle into working at the conglomerate of a company. Why isn't this money making me happy?!?!? I had spent years as a broke journalist and convinced myself that was the missing factor. And back to Finland. It took a minute to calm my mind and just start to look over the programs more thoroughly. Being a history buff, I looked up the history of the country, which I knew nothing about. It was a part of a couple of empires before becoming an independent country in 1917. It's cold as hell there, which I later learned from personal experience. Small population, super hard language. None of this was making me gung ho for the country. I wasn't the most adventurous person before all of this shit I was going through. And where are the black people!?!? I asked Classmates this. Helsinki was the most diverse. I would not be in Helsinki.

Noooooope, nope, nope NOAP! If you hadn't noticed, I was looking for something you put the breaks on all this nonsense. Classmates' so crazy. I went to church that Sunday and told my aunt everything, from the two phone conversations, the email and the fact that I was paralyzed. She said she would pray and knowing that I had been in therapy in the past, she told me to consider seeing someone, even if was to just talk to our pastor and his wife. They both have master's in psychology and are big on promoting mental health. We fail miserably at it here in the U.S. Just the talk was a weight off of my shoulders. Also, she was so sure I'd be accepted.

I'll be honest, I was getting a little angry at that point. Mainly at myself. Like, why the hell can't I have the same level of confidence in myself that everyone else does? This is garbage! I decided, just take the next step, which would be reading the application requirements and process. I'd have help after that. I was terrified, but something, ANYTHING had to change. And it needed to be big. I was in a comfort zone. A miserable, depressed ass zone. Because let's be honest "comfort zone" is the wrong term. But I had settled into a very unhappy situation and despite how unhappy, I had resigned myself to sit there. Even with a possible out, I was just frozen. That first step took a lot. I had to keep telling myself, you'd only be losing some time. After about the 700th (seriously, it was a lot!!!) I actually started.

Officially official

Last week I learned I was accepted as a full-time student at the University of Turku School of Economics. I will be getting my master's degree in Futures Studies with a minor in Entrepreneurship. I plan to focus on environmental justice and sustainability. When I say this has been a rollercoaster ride that hasn't ended, I mean it! It's been filled with many trials, most still ongoing, and with three months until I leave, it'll continue to be a bumpy road. To take you back to the beginning of all this, it started a year a half ago thanks to some crazy men in my life pushing me out of my comfort zone.

It was the the end of 2014, and I was working a job that I really hated and I had been in touch with one of my favorite college professors via social media. He would always ask what I was doing and I would pretty much ignore the question because it really was a whole lot of nothing. In the middle of 2011, I had been laid off from my job as a journalist and in those three years, I had been applying like crazy, getting no response and going from one terrible job to the next. In my current position, I worked for a major telecommunications company. The money was good. The job was soul draining. A year in, I had resigned myself to making a career here. I'd use my funds for things I loved away from work: Running, I had enough money and off time for more destination races. Homebrewing: something I had written about extensively and I loved the home brewing community in my city and state.

I felt that was a shitty compromise, but I took it. I felt quite broken at the time. Until then, I had had a job since I was 15, either part-time or full-time. Even though other people were also laid off, I was sure I had fallen short somewhere and could have saved MY job. All these years later, some evil voice in the back of my head tries to creep in with those thoughts, but I've done better at quickly declaring that the devil is a lie!! I've come too far to believe such foolishness. I do still occasionally think it and have to check myself to stop the falsehoods. Hey, I never said I wasn't human. I try not to be though. I usually fail.

Back to the story. I had thrown myself into training for a triathlon only to run into my professor at the gym with his kids. As per his usual self, he declared we'd be talking soon. A few days later, an hour long call revealed all of the nothing that was going on with me. I was "thinking" about getting an MBA. I actually had been thinking about it in the run up to and actualization of the layoff. He mentioned a former classmate who was living overseas and doing quite well. I didn't necessarily have to move overseas, but I needed to "get the hell out of here." I remembered Classmate, who I considered a friend at the time, but I wasn't sure if he remembered me and asked professor to send a group email. He remembered me and the classes we took together. I was surprised.

We caught up and I learned about his awesome wife and baby daughter, then he got down to business. If I was looking for something business related that would translate well to the real world, I did need to consider coming to Finland for school. By "consider," he meant, "I'm going to bombard you with emails about different schools in Finland." And when I say "bombard," I mean seven to twenty emails a day. The first couple of weeks, I just clicked through most of his emails or responded to humor him. Classmate was always a bit of an odd duck anyway. Also, Finland??? Who and why? I barely knew the where. Thank you History degree. At least, I know where it is on the map. But of course,  I was already a year into a job I hated, still trying to accept the choice I made to settle. It couldn't hurt to read a few program descriptions right?