Two weeks after leaving my job, I made an appointment with my university’s career center. I requested job search counseling, hoping there was a secret answer that only the truly dedicated were privy to. It would solve all my employment problems. Then I could breathe again, without a tightness in my chest.

The office was quaint, with two degrees framed on the back wall and a bottle of medication beside the desktop. His name was Ricky. He had a semicolon tattoo on his forearm.

What was meant to be a forty-five-minute meeting turned into an hour and ten minutes.

“You’re doing everything right.”

I hated those words. They were useless to me, and further assurance that I can’t do anything to fix it. That big, metaphorical mess that tangled my life path.

When I landed a job at a law firm a few months after my graduation, I felt like I was taking the Right Step. I got a dog and a house right across the street from my friends. I took walks on the beach. I posted the good pictures. The successful pictures. I felt like throwing up each time I clocked in, and I cried during every commute home.

I became depressed. Then I became angry at being depressed. Each day, I slipped further from myself, but my life looked good. So I kept going.

When my heels floated across the stage, graduation robes swishing around my calves, I was afraid of what came next, but the hope I had was larger. That hope was eaten away day by day. I struggled to find a job. I compared myself to peers who had graduated with “better” degrees. I criticized myself for choosing a “stupid” arts major when I could’ve selected human relations or pre-law. I questioned my dreams and goals. I grew contempt for the past me who had believed she was making all the right choices. Every work experience felt pointless. Every morning I slept in felt like a missed opportunity. I listed every wrong choice that landed me in that cubicle, with more caffeine in my system than any 23-year-old should have in their body. 

Everything became something to improve. If I were good enough or better or smarter, I wouldn’t be trapped in a job that I hated. I would be achieving my dreams already. I spent my lunch breaks doom-scrolling through Instagram and LinkedIn. It seemed like someone else was always achieving a milestone while I was falling further behind.

Ricky explained to me that in his eight years as a career counselor, he had never seen a job market as chaotic and bad as our current one. There was a temporary salve in his words, I suppose—an encouragement that whatever was wrong was not my fault. That all my choices had been good, but they could never be right. 

I went home. I took my dog on a walk. I called my mom. I ate a salami and cheese sandwich. I didn’t apply to any jobs.

The truth is, no one is winning. There may be someone with a better career than mine, but they probably wish they had more time to spend with their family. There may be someone with a picture-perfect relationship, but they walk on eggshells every day. There may be someone with an amazing career and a beautiful family, but their health is always failing them.

One year post-graduation, and it is too easy to feel like I haven’t made any progress. The learning has been happening—a faint melody dancing somewhere above me. The black-and-white measurements I dictated my life by are no longer sufficient. I cannot take what I see online at face value, nor can I assume my friends and acquaintances are living better lives than me because they look happier. I do not carry their weight. I do not walk their path.

Two of my friends graduate this year. They confide in me their fears. I can’t tell them it’ll be okay, but I can promise that they won’t be alone.

The commencement speaker at my graduation, Judy Girard, founder of G.L.O.W. Academy, said a lot of good gems, but only one has stuck with me. 

“Don’t pick a job for the money.”

I thought she was ridiculous for saying that.

A year has gone by, and the job I took for money left me desperate for a life I didn’t want to leave.

In January, it snowed in my little beach town. Magic returned.

In February, I learned two of my friends had been surviving abusive relationships. Leaving is brave. Strength is quiet.

In March, three of my friends got engaged within one week. There is more love than I can see.

In April, I lost my job with nothing else lined up. My community stood by me.

The mourning doves cushion the silence with their trills; it’s May again. There are graduation cookouts and pool parties; it’s May again. There is no plan, and it is May again. I am back at the starting line. I taste hope on the tips of my canines.