Sometimes you don't know where to start. Other times you don't know when to stop. Sometimes you're forced to stop doing something you love in order to save yourself.
I have been to school at JSU, Auburn, and a host of community colleges in between. Got a few degrees under my belt....fat load of good it's doing me. All I ever seriously wanted was to do hair. Well, do hair, be a lawyer, a doctor, a bartender....I'm wandering off here. Shit. Sorry. I have ADHD that is completely unmedicated.
I've wanted to be a cosmetologist since I was sixteen years old. That's all. I found a serious passion and I just knew it was for me. I let my parents, my ex husband, my friends, all of the people in my life EXCEPT ME tell me what to do. And it certainly wasn't 'Hey, girl, go do hair! You go be Dolly Parton in Steel Magnolias and WERK HUNTY'. No. They did NOT say that. They said it wasn't a real career. I needed to study business. I needed to study politics. 'You're so good at arguing, you'd make a perfect defense attorney...' 'You need to study marketing. Look at me, I make a hapgiliionn dollars a year and my life is a mess but outwardly I'm HAPPYYYYYYY [but I'm dying inside from all the cheeseburgers and nights alone] and it's a great life!'
They all told me no. And I listened. Until one day I didn't anymore. I was divorced a little over a year and had come to the realization that studying for my master's degree wasn't gonna cut it for me. I was really sick of academia. I wanted to study what the fuck I wanted. Dammit. So I did. I had ONE place in mind. The IVY LEAGUE OF BEAUTY SCHOOLS -- Aveda. One day I woke up, drove my ass up to Birmingham, and applied. I begged the application money from my folks (I think) and I got in. My friends helped me make a kick ass dress out of smashed beer bottle caps and I won a scholarship. I was PUMPED.
My journey began. God I was so happy. I had to be in Birmingham three and four days a week, 18 hour days -- counting my trip -- and I was deliriously happy. I missed my kid. I missed my boyfriend. But I was doing really fucking well and I was loving what I was doing and feeling challenged and good.
Then I crashed. Figuratively. The TN started to seriously flare up from the stress, and from all the chemicals and improper ventilation. I lost my place to stay in town so I was commuting over 60 miles one way. I nearly missed my daughter's entire soccer season, and I had no time in the summer with her. I was losing myself to this horrible disease and to Aveda. And I backslid. I had to stay home. And as a student with special needs, they had to accommodate me, right? But they didn't. They tried to keep me at a remedial level until I gave up. That was the option I was given. To give up. And I did. I had to. I could no longer afford the price of my dream of graduation from Aveda. It wasn't worth any more missed soccer games or bedtime stories or any of that. It wasn't worth my sanity. I was in so much pain, physically and emotionally, that I had to let go.
And I did. I'm still getting over it. I let my entire life, my entire sense of worth and well-being, ride on a variable of a place, of a dream, that existed wherever I made it exist. It wasn't contained in the walls of Aveda. I just figured that out today. I still cry. I still haven't been able to go back to visit friends or get that free blow-out that I don't need but want anyway because I know it will feel good. It makes me sad to think about even walking back through those doors because I feel like I failed. I feel like I failed my daughter, my family, my boyfriend, my friends, and myself. Mostly myself. I have impulse control issues, and I think Aveda may have been one of those impulses to change my life that I could have stepped back from a little bit. But it was soooo easy....so....right there...I wanted to rocket myself into the life I wanted, the life I've been chasing. I knew I was smart enough, I knew I was talented enough. I didn't realize how much it would cost emotionally. I slept my first week off. Just slept.
I still cry. I still cry over knowing I will never graduate with my class on June 13.
I've found my calling a little closer to home. While it's not Aveda, it's still damn good. And I'm damn good, and I'm going to be damn good at it.
Sometimes I think it's okay to give up if it means you gain something better in the end.
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