When we first drove into town my husband made a comment about how he just new this new place would be such a great place and it would be a flourishing time in our lives! I wish that would have actually been true. I am still searching for the treasure in this “treasure state”. It’s been a very rough 3 years and 3 months here. No not everyday has been rough but looking back at my time here it has been such a struggle! I read a blog written by a girl here about how the only thing that can survive the rough conditions of Montana and actually grow is wheat, and reading her blog just brought me to tears thinking of how much I’ve struggled here.
My job is essentially still fighting the Cold War, and it has remained virtually unchanged for decades. We are taught to be “checklist monkeys”, and creative thinking is basically discouraged. Most of my coworkers are essentially at the same stage in life with almost identical backgrounds. It feels like high school all over again. It’s hard to explain to others how this job and environment make you feel about yourself. Before I left home everyone in my family wrote me a letter telling me how they would miss me, how proud they were of me, and how they knew I’d excel at anything thrown my way. While I sat and reread these letters the other day I just cried. I realized I’m not the same person I was when they wrote those to me, and I surely don’t like the person I am today. I feel like this job and life events over the past 3 years have changed my self worth to the point where I have no motivation to do anything. I use to think I could achieve anything I set my mind to with God’s help, and I did! Now I feel like there is not a single thing I am actually good at and I don’t feel capable.
A huge part of my struggle during my time here has been cancer. When I was 24 I found out I had cancer. It caused me to gain weight, be exhausted, have a nasty scar, among a million other symptoms. When I found out this news my husband was in Antarctica and I had no one physically there to turn to for support at the scariest time of my life. I couldn’t understand why this was happening to me and I literally felt like I was going to die. Unless you’ve felt that way before it’s impossible to understand. My husband came home to be with me for about a month but left again the day before I did radiation. God has healed me and I am cancer free now but the road I traveled has been so awful! I still do not feel normal but I feel so much better and I pray God continues to make me feel better! Having cancer substantially changed my career; when I was diagnosed I never thought I’d be punished or my career affected by it but it certainly has and that has made me incredibly depressed. Cancer has held a strong grip on my life and held me back from a lot including trying to start a family.
I’m at a point where I have to start thinking about my future and if I want to continue in this career or move on the something else. It’s incredibly terrifying. I want so badly to have a job I am actually passionate about not a job I am forced to do. The scary part is trying to make myself believe that I am smart, capable, and motivated enough to make it in any career field that I would be interested in. I do not want to be in a comfort zone; I do not want an average boring life. I’ve always wanted to be a lawyer and now that going to law school is an option for me, it excites me but scares me at the same time. I am just not sure that I can make it and I don’t want to fail!
I have to take ownership of my life back from cancer and become a person I actually like and am proud of! I have a lot of work and a lot of praying to do to get there but I am determined to make it happen!
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