Grateful

8 1/2 years ago, at a pivotal point in my life, I was offered a job ... in California. I had no illusions about the organization (which shall remain nameless, though it is referred to by three letters, so let's say SFH). When they had gifted me with the $1000 that kept me in college my sophomore year, I knew that their greatest revenue came from beer companies. It is not super important, just tells you something about their so-called do-gooderness: it was very corporate. [Corporate, such a strange word that conjures different images for different folks.] I mean it was not grassroots.

I got in my car and drove three thousand miles to the new job, new life, starting over. I was in that space where I needed to be totally consumed by work so that I wouldn't think about anything else. I wasn't ready to process the failure of the marriage, the messiness that even the cleanest divorce creates, or even the new life that was before me. And boy did SFH supply the hours of work... and travel to new cities, and pressure and the like.

However, it also supplied something far more important. I wonder now if it was kizmet or if terrible work situations bring out the camaraderie in people. I don't know. But some of the people I met at that job have become my greatest friends, people without which I could not go on. To be clear, there were also a lot of people there who I am glad to never see again. But in that same vein, there were some people there that supplied endless comic relief.

Maybe it was just the stage in life that I was in. Everything was intense, so the friendships forged in that kind of pressure are stronger. I don't know. It feels different, though, mostly because it is the level of feeling known by these folks that matters. I know that my time in college produced similar relationships, some of which lasted only through the pressure and others that have endured for nearly twenty years.

Today, as I struggled through another emotional jungle, an angel of a friend who I happened to meet at SFH, sent me an email that put me right back on the sunny side of the jungle. She knows me...and it matters when you need to pull someone quickly back from the dark side. You don't have to explain, not because it is the same shit different day, but because she knows you. English does not adequately supply words, but that's as close as we get.

So, today, I am grateful for those god awful years of working at SFH and all the heartache and frustration that I suffered through because there most certainly was a reason for me being there!