I don’t want to uproot myself again

[Trigger warnings: unemployment, loss, grief.]

For the first time in my life since finishing grad school, I’m finding myself in the position of being (almost) unemployed but unwilling to move. 

For the past fourteen years it’s often been the opposite: I’ve quit many jobs because I wanted to move, or to move on, or both. 

Actually, a similar situation happened to me a decade ago, when I was living in Barcelona: in the spring of 2014 the start-up where I was working had financial difficulties and had to fire almost all its employees, me included. At the time, I was happy in Barcelona and unwilling to leave just then (I was ready to leave a year later), and the several months being unemployed there turned out to be one of the nicest periods of my life then. 

So many difficult and intense emotions have been activated by the news I received from my advisor this morning that my research contract can most likely not be renewed past this summer that I don’t even know where to start to process them all. 

I guess a good point to start would be my body. 

My body is telling me to stay. My body is crying — I am physically crying, tears are falling from my eyes (despite the testosterone from GAHT). 

I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to uproot myself again, not yet, maybe not ever. Definitely not now. 

My advisor is encouraging me to take the academic job in California, if I get an offer (which is not at all to be taken for granted). But my whole body & soul balk at the idea. 

I don’t want to leave this area of Colorado, and definitely not to go back to California, especially not that area of California. 

This is home, here. I want to stay here. I need to stay here for now. 

The sadness and grief I feel at the idea of not working at this institute anymore in six months time is huge. I’ve been part of this institute, part of this town, for two years now. I don’t want to leave, I don’t want to change again, not now. There are so many memories, so many people, many of them so important to me, connected to these places. 

And I’ve built a life here over these past two years. I’m still building it and it has started to really look up and feel really good only in the past couple months — really good as in like pre-pandemic, even better than pre-pandemic because I’m happier here than I ever was in California because I was so lonely there. 

If I can avoid it, if I can do anything about it, I don’t ever want to be so lonely again in my life. It would kill me. 

I recognize part of what I’m feeling now: it’s similar to what I felt last summer when the losses connected to my father’s death in Europe and the departure of my European genderqueer ex-lover really brought it home to me, made it clear to me at a physical level, that this is home for me here in Colorado. That I don’t want to leave here, not even to “follow the love(s) of my life”. 

I don’t know what job I’ll do. I’m too sad and hurt and confused and scared to really know now even what type of job I’d like. But I know I’ll start looking with all the motivation and intentionality that I have. And with all the hope that I’ve felt reborn in me, truly & deeply, in the past couple months. 

This might yet turn out to be a blessing in disguise: yet another challenge, yet another big change, and as such maybe yet another opportunity to grow and shape my life in ways that could be even more aligned with me & my dreams. 

As one door closes, another might — or must — open. I’ll start looking for that door.