Sometimes

Sometimes, your husband will ask how your day was and you can say honestly, “Fine, actually.” Sometimes, your brain is so exerted that you have no words for how much you dreaded driving in, how much you wished the day would end. Sometimes, you’re beyond griping or venting because even you’re tired of the story and it doesn’t quite seem fair to subject someone else to it, again. You might plop on the couch and ask for hug, but when the tension of the day washes over you, you can’t help it that your eyes fill with tears and dot your husband’s shirt. Sometimes, you have too many words for how hard the day was and you sting your husband with the barbs you kept inside for eight hours. You try to explain that you’re not mad at him, but it doesn’t feel that way at all.

Sometimes, you savor the time spent with co-workers because they are funny, smart people who are doing their best. Sometimes, a missed appointment here and a snide comment there will make you vacillate between being irritated and irritating. Raw emotions lie just under the surface, just waiting to burst out at the slightest prod. Sometimes, you say things you don’t mean and make faces you don’t intend. You’re mean. You hurt people.

Sometimes, you know what you’re doing for a living is making a difference and that no one could do the job as well as you do. Sometimes, you wonder if you actually like what you’re doing. You visualize something you’d like to do better and ask yourself if it’s really worth it to put yourself back out in the meat market. Sometimes, you think back to that time after college when the job search was more about survival and benefits than a fulfilling career path. You don’t relish retooling your résumé for every job possibility, tracking your application history, being rejected, and sneaking around to interviews.

Sometimes, it’s just easier to stay in a familiar situation, even if it doesn’t make sense anymore. Sometimes, the comfort of the known is so much more desirable than the craggy overhang of the unknown. Sometimes, you prefer your ergonomic desk chair to jumping off into thin air.

Sometimes, you reach the end of your rope.

And then you dust off the résumé.