The upside of rock bottom

“When we hit our lowest point, we are open to the greatest change.” – Avatar Aang

I hate when you’re at a low point in your life and people say, “You can only go up from here.” I’m the kind of person who on the outside is saying, “Yeah, thanks for that pick me up,” but on the inside is thinking, “Oh, it could get worse.” I could die. That would be worse. I could get cancer. Martians could hijack Curiosity and come to Earth and kill us all. Someone could steal my identity – although as a broke, unemployed college graduate, that wouldn’t be very beneficial to anyone.

I hit a pretty low point at the end of June. I had been out of school for about a month and a half, I had applied to countless jobs with very few responses and absolutely no yeses, and although I had finally secured a summer internship, it was unpaid with a pretty far commute. To top it off, on the first day they told me the internship could not turn into a full time job. The worst thing about being unemployed isn’t the fact that you have no income and soon your bank account will read $0; the worst thing is the mental discouragement that comes with constantly being turned down because you’re too young or don’t have 5 to 10 years of experience.

Then while all of this was going on, my boyfriend broke up with me. That was kind of it for me. I stopped my job hunt. I abandoned my dream to become a public relations professional. I was even considering moving back in with my parents – yeah, it was that bad. I felt like my whole life was caving in on me, so I just collapsed with it.

Then after five days of  this pity party for one, I woke up and realized how much of a drama queen, mopey little bitch I was being. I realized I couldn’t let one person redefine my life and my goals, and I reminded myself that I didn’t go to college for four years so I could go back to being a cashier at a hardware store. So I got out of bed, showered for the first time in almost a week, started running every morning again, and spent all my newly found free time (thanks to a lack of guy in my life) rededicating myself to my job search.

And you know what? Things didn’t get worse. They got better. Last week I started a new PAID internship, which I’m absolutely loving. AND in one day, two different companies offered me fall internships to replace my summer internship, which is ending this month. AND a completely different company said they’d like to set up an interview with me. AND over the weekend, my brother’s band’s producer asked me if I’d like to work with him and his production company later in the year.

While it hasn’t been any fun, unemployment has taught me a lot of things, but this may be the most important lesson. Like Aang said, when we hit our lowest point, we are open to the greatest change (Side note: if you don’t know who this Aang is, I suggest looking into Avatar: The Last Airbender and then The Legend of Korra. Trust me, it’s worth it). Hitting our rock bottom can show us what truly matters to us and how hard we’re willing to work for it. And while I wouldn’t say I completely hit rock bottom, I think hitting that low point gave me perspective and was the best thing that could have happened to me. Well, ya know, besides getting a job.