All this dwelling on my current situation has left something out. Admittedly, it's a messed up scenario that I absolutely should be dwelling on, but I want to let you know a bit about me. I don't want you to think I'm JUST the guy stuck in the teenage girl's body.
I had a life. Kind of.
The night this all happened, I was feeling really upset because my contract was ending at work. For years now I've worked an endless string of contracts. I don't know why I should be so despondent about this one, it was just the latest, but turning 30 in the new year - a year that hasn't come for me yet - and never feeling like I was on solid ground. It was starting to eat at me.
Before that I worked retail well into my twenties. I worked for a CD store in the mall until it closed a few years ago. Can you believe that? I could go to the Lakeville Centre, and walk into that music store right now and they would be charging $18 for a Coldplay CD, blissfully unaware iTunes was coming for them, and Spotify right behind them.
I'll stop myself there because the less you know, probably the better. Time travel is fucking weird, man.
I've had women reject me because I didn't have a career going, you know? My most recent ex broke up with me for what I took to be similar reasons, but then went back to her previous boyfriend who still lived with his parents. It was hard not to take that personally.
Okay, I'm not making myself sound like a real winner, but there's more to it. I'm just one of a million millennials (what we call people born in the 80s... or something. I can't remember if that term is being used yet.) who never got out of the starter gates. We went into debt getting undergrad degrees and were told to go find our way in a world that was too damn crowded with nothing to do and - hope I'm not spoiling anything here. I look around these high school halls and I can see that future for half these kids.
After my job ended, I had thought about going back to school, which... hah hah. Funny twist.
So, what? Do I live Jessa's life from here on out? Is there a time limit on this thing? Do I need to throw myself in front of a car again to go back?
Who can say what the rules are. I'm very antsy to get back, but then I have to figure out what I'm getting back to.
I hope I don't have to learn a valuable lesson before I can go back, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. I suck at learning valuable lessons.
Anyway. I loved that CD store job. It didn't pay well, but it was right in my wheelhouse. I got to be around music and movies that I liked, and meet interesting people (behind the entitled soccer moms and confused grandmas.) I was just definitely outgrowing it by the time I was done, and I never figured out who I was beyond that. So I've just sort of been... floating. And now I've floated here, I guess.
I've never romanticized my high school years - I was a bored/boring little nobody, and they neither sucked nor ruled. But seeing it from this vantage definitely makes me yearn for my youth, when there were a ton more possibilities and more energy. Which I guess makes it a good thing I'm here... and a bad thing that I'm trying to keep a low profile and not doing anything with it.
Okay, this was going to be about me, but I guess I revealed that there wasn't really as much to me as I thought. If that's the big grand lesson I'm supposed to learn, well done, now send me back please.
PS, stomach still hurts. Badly.
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