This time around, coming home has been extremely difficult.

I made it halfway through college (finally!), but it took a lot to get here and now I have been overrun with challenges. Not saying challenges are bad, but I wish that I could have taken a break from being stressed out.

When I was leaving to come home, my flight was delayed. I ended up having to sleep in the airport and let's be real, who sleeps in an airport? I maybe got one hour of sleep that night. I had the first flight home the next morning and when I finally made it home my family went straight to the mall. After the mall, we went home and I had maybe an hour to get ready for my nephew's birthday party. I took a shower and changed my clothes--I still felt exhausted. After my nephew's birthday party, I went pretty much immediately to see La La Land with my friend. I had been up for so long at this point that in the dark auditorium I was having a really hard time keeping my eyes open. I fell asleep once which was amazing because I had fought so hard against my exhaustion. But that isn't where my day ends. My friend woke me up and then we drove to Torchy's because I had never had the tacos there and got food. We went to my house and ate there and as I was sitting at my kitchen table around 9:00 pm, I realized that I really needed to go to bed.

We didn't hang out for very long at my house because of this.

I went to bed that night and didn't wake up until a complete 12 hours later.

Everything seemed alright, but then my family went to San Antonio and when we came back, it felt like we had all gotten sick. I've had a cough for at least a week now. We had a great Christmas and a great New Year's and then I called my old job to see when they wanted me to start working again.

My manager asked me to come in and meet with her, so we planned a meeting for the next day (Monday of this past week). When I showed up at the building, my manager had just gone on her break. I sat down and talked to all of my old friends from work while I waited for her to come back. They were excited to see me and it was exactly what I had been missing for the past four months. However, the meeting was actually just to tell me that they didn't want me back.

I lost my job, I was sick and losing my voice and I had just dealt with a really long and stressful semester.

In all honesty, I really don't know what to do from here. I haven't ever had to go majorly job hunting before and this is definitely a new thing. It's weird not having a job. It's like you just all of a sudden have an influx of time to do things that don't matter as much as they could have if you were doing them because you had a job.

I guess the one thing I have learned from the past 4 months and the events that have happened over the course of them is that no matter what, we should always stay positive. I'm trying to stay positive and I think I can do it, but so far it has been extremely difficult to accept the fact that I will not ever return to the place that I spent 3 years at and had hoped I would someday become one of the managers there. I worked hard there, I tried my best, I worked when I was sick, I worked when I wasn't available because I got scheduled against my availability, I worked when I should have been with my family, but in the end, none of it mattered. No matter what I did, my GM had no intention of allowing me to progress and I need to accept that. I need to accept the fact that, despite all of my hard work, the odds were stacked against me in the end and I just need to find a new job.

The last four months (and three years that went down the drain) have taught me not to waste my time with things that demand too much of me.

They taught me that I need to move on and create a new life for myself. A life away from my past.