When Life Brings You a Book, You Read It

I haven't exactly been in the best frame of mind lately.

Since I've graduated college, it's been difficult for me to find work. Forget about work in my field - I just mean work, period. It's been a year and some change since I've been out in the "real world" - because for those of you who didn't know, college is in a mythical dimension - and my inability to get a decent job when I have a four-year degree and $65,000 in debit is pretty rattling. On top of that, a couple months before I graduated I developed Anxiety. That's Anxiety the illness, not anxiety the feeling.

So let's do some math, shall we?

Danielle + newly-minted-and-still-not-fully-understood Anxiety + money problems + having to live at home + having almost no social life = A person who is afraid to do anything with themselves.

If you're like me at all when it comes to math, your instant response to addition symbols was, "Wait hold on I don't get it."

Okay, so here's a word version of that: My student loan payments are through the roof, but I barely have enough money to pay them, so I'm living at home. Living at home is making me miserable, and I miss having my friends nearby like they were in college. Sometimes my Anxiety is so bad that I doubt everything about myself. But if I want to advance in my field at all, I need to move to a metropolitan area like NYC or Chicago and pursue it. Yet I have no money to move, and don't know anyone in large cities to rely on if something terrible happens.

So I'm petrified with fear. Unwilling and unable to go back, but too afraid to take chances and move forward into the future.

I'm part of a YA book club at the library where I volunteer (shout out to Sinclairville Free Library!), and the book for this month is If I Stay by Gayle Forman. Yes, this is a very popular book and I'm a little late to the game in reading it. Bear with me.

Just upon hearing the premise, I couldn't help but think that this is a book that the universe drops in your lap. When you are desperate for answers or courage or sympathy, and suddenly you find a book that seems too good to be true - one that sounds like just what you need. Honestly the scenario goes a bit like this:

To me, it seems that this is a book about the courage to live. To face your mortality and pain and find the strength to somehow see that life is worth living anyway, and that you can do it. You can move forward and forge a life for yourself and everything will be all right - well, mostly.

And I need that right now.

Every book gives you something different. That's what I'm hoping this book will give me.

Now please excuse me while I blow through this novel. More later.