Yesterday was my last-ever fast food shift.
It doesn't feel real yet. There's still a part of me that expects to have to get up at 5.45am on Tuesday morning, because I have, every Tuesday, for nearly four years now.
I have a new job, in the theatre industry. I'm not on stage (or even backstage), but it's still theatre-adjacent, and it may very well be the closest I'll ever get to a sustainable career in the arts. I get to sit down on the job now -- that's a novelty. In fast food there literally is no sitting. There's barely even just-standing. You're always doing something, carrying something, stocking something, cleaning something, and you're always moving at full speed. Do that for 40 hours a week and... well, let's just say that my body hurt more after one fast food shift then it EVER hurt after any of the long weeks of dance rehearsals over my 20+ year dance career. The theatre is also paying me more to sit on a chair at a desk than fast food ever paid me to run myself absolutely ragged every single day.
I had been looking to switch careers for several years already. I was burnt out of fast food by June 2022, but held on to the job because I know now how hard it is to get a job in this economy... especially for somebody with a brain as broken as mine. I didn't want to leave until I knew I had something lined up. That didn't happen for almost two years.
After a year and a half of unsuccessful job-hunting, I injured my back pretty severely, and I'm pretty sure the restaurant only put up with my ever-increasing need for time off because even though I could hardly walk, I was still their fastest worker. (My doctor forbade me from doing any kitchen duties, and they had to schedule three people to take my place there. Prior to my injury, I worked the kitchen alone every morning.)
That back injury was a blessing in disguise.
When I finally got a doctor's note to cut my hours (which in itself was an adventure for another post), that finally left me with enough time (and more importantly, enough energy) to actually job hunt, and to actually follow up on leads and applications. And after two years, as we stared down the barrel of homelessness due to lack of income, I finally got a job -- an upgrade in nearly every way, in an industry and at an organization I liked and believed in.
As I walked home yesterday from my final fast food shift, I had sort-of-accidentally started playing Connie Scott's Forever Young album. And as I trudged through the final blocks of that final walk home, these words lilted over a bed of gentle keys into my ears...
You that are weary and in need of rest
You that are brokenhearted and oppressed
You shall find comfort here...
There'll be an ending to the twilight zone
There'll be a sunrise like you've never known
Morning will soon be here...
(from The Coming Dawn)
The sun is indeed rising. I can breathe for the first time since I was in Mary Poppins (July 2018). Maybe this is what hope feels like.
For years I was in a stupor -- get up, trudge to work, give everything I had, my soul, my spirit, for pennies with which to pay the growing bills, trudge home, stare at the wall in a fruitless attempt to find the energy to live, go to bed, dream of every possible horror life had to offer (if I even dreamt at all), then do it all again. I moved slowly, in a fog. The world around me was grey and cold and hard.
And now I'm waking up.
