Worst: Now. We put down my cat a few weeks ago and I was inconsolable. I still am having a really hard time. (Background: We got him and his brother in 1997. Some of you might recognize this as the year of the Flood, where basically Minnesota, the Daktoas and my province were underwater. Our house was fine, so my grandparents moved in with us as they were evacuated. I was 13. My grandpa had cancer, and was slowly dying, and we watched him slowly degrade while we went out and sandbagged, delivered flyers, etc and go to school. He was making messes of himself and my grandmother yelled at him a lot and it was not a good time. When the waters receded and they went home again, he basically went into hospital for the last time. In July, 2 days before our (I have a twin) birthday, one of our cats got hit by a car. We put him down 4 days later. A few days after that, grampa died. After we got into the car after the funeral, we went to the humane society and got two kittens and brought them home. One was the one that just died. Anyway, just before school started - 9th grade, which is basicaly the worst year of a teenage girl's life - our best friend moved away and we were left basically friendless in school. So those two kittens we got were our lives. Such was the worst year of my life.
I basically cried for days when Bo died on Febuary 14th. (Yeah, Valentine's Day). I've gone off birth control, so my hormones are pretty fucked up, I turn 30 this year and am questioning and regretting everything I've ever done (which is apparently a real thing for people reaching milestones), my dad retires next week, the house I grew up in and lived in for 27 years is going on the market May 3rd, and my parents are moving 3000 miles away by this summer. I don't like my job, but am afraid to leave it for another as it's a government job so I know I'll have a pension and will be able to retire, but I am completley unfulfilled. So I'm pretty depressed all around right now and am pretty low. I have a ton of potential and on paper am doing amazingly well, but my whole world is changing so I'm still a lost little girl who is begging her mommy and daddy not to leave her.
So... that's my low.
Not sure about my highest point, so I'll pick the day of December 13th(ish, I forget exactly) of 2011. The summer before I'd left a job I really loved as a school librarian at a private school because they cut my salary and hours. I'd been unemployed for 6 months before I got part time work in another school division and had been selling off my stuff to pay bills and being generally depressed. We sold off a ton of stuff, including books I had signed by the author... ecven my run of the Wheel of Time books singed by Robert Jordan, who was now dead. My heart broke every time I sold books, video games, clothes, furniture... but we needed to in order to survive. Anyway, I'd been working a few hours a day at a couple different schools to make about 6 hours a day of work, and I was lowest of the low so all I was doing was shelving books and yelling at kids. I hated it and had pulled a chest muscle doing the shelving, which is excrutiating. I'd interviewed a few weeks before for a government job I knew I wouldn't get (as well as many others, including my dream job in Alberta which I did not get).
Where was I? Oh, yeah... I was at the Media Centre for training as I was new to the school division, which one of my library school classmates and my old 3rd grade teacher worked at, so we were all having a good time. When I started there I'd been working an hour and a half a day at one school, but those two pulled some strings and had me covering the sick leave of another teacher to make it to that 6ish hours. So I was reasonably happy, but knew after Christmas that sick leave would end and I'd be broke again.
While training, my cell phone had been ringing, but I ignored it. I'd told my friend about my interviews and that I hadn't heard from the government job, and she kept hearing my phone ring and when training was done she looked at me and told me to check my phone. There was a message on it from my interviewer, so I figured I was getting the "no thanks" call, but I picked up the phone and dialed to hear it with firends around to support me.
Instead, he offered me the job and started listing off the benefits, salary and twice yearly wage increases I'd be getting, leaving me starting at over 10k more than the private school had been paying me. I stood there shaking and kept saying thank you while the women in the room were cheering for me. I hung up and got hugs all around, then went outside to my car. I sat in it and dialed my mom. All I said was "I got it," and burst into tears. So did she. When I'd calmed down a little, I called my sister and then my dad and then drove home crying because everything was now okay and I would be okay and I didn't have to worry about being able to afford food or shelter anymore.
! Here's the youtube series it's from, if you didn't know already. [http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0QrZvg7QIgpoLdNFnEePRrU-YJfr9Be7]
