When I was an undergraduate, I had a banquet serving gig at a fancy restaurant. Two of my female co-workers and I decided it would be a great idea to open a business together and escape the restaurant industry. We plotted and planned over scotch on the rocks at our favorite after work dive bar for several months and opened up a tea house inside of my dad's gallery space on a shoestring budget. We all threw $500 in the pot as startup.
Everything was shiny and exciting until a few months in, when customers dwindled and our profits were absorbed into inventory expenses. Staffing the store hours also proved difficult, as we couldn't part our day jobs (and I was also still in school). Then, one of the partner's sisters died of anorexia, and she cut out of the agreement.
Then there were two.
Another few months crept by, and I ended up absorbing much of the hours due to the family obligations of the other business partner. She had two twin boys and a jealous girlfriend who was unreliable with watching them. My business partner began nitpicking my father for the way he had his gallery displayed and ideas about how she thought the place should look to encourage our customers to stay. I tried supplementing our sales with live music nights and tea "salon" discussions, and "stitch n bitch" knitting nights, but in the end, I just couldn't run all of the hours myself. She bailed.
I was the last woman standing in the tea house.
It was really the end when I had a panic attack in my apartment over ants. Yes, ants. They were the thing I couldn't control. I couldn't get rid of them, there were so many of them, they were everywhere in my bathroom (okay, it was a trail of ants from behind the refrigerator in the kitchen... but I BELIEVED they were everywhere. It was very Salvador Dali-esque. I crawled into my bathtub and called my friend to come save me from the terrible insects. It was ridiculous, and terrifying, and completely irrational. I sobbed and shook in terror. I was completely overcome with grief and emotion.
Ants, it comes to be, are a big, enormous symbol in my life. A symbol of a problem that has taken over, of more than I can handle. Something overwhelming and frustrating and invasive, something that potentially has more survival instinct than I do in this crazy world (or so it seems, sometimes). In this moment of a complete meltdown, I am their host. I succumb to their marching, surrendering my apartment and all that lies outside my doors to their sticky little legs and clenching mandibles. I had to be coaxed out of the bathtub by the good friend. Therapy ensued. It would seem I had temporarily lost my mind, but really... I had lost control in my life at that point. I lost control over what I wanted to do and be. What was I doing? Whose life was I living? I was overly taxed, and something had to give. I could not sustain the amount of pressure that was weighing me down. I was drowning in commitments and expectations, in things I didn't even want for myself.
My terror of ants was the fear of failure that filled my body with sand, the fear of my family's expectations and the fear of having to say to them that I had fought, but I had lost. My dad told me something that shocked me after that, and it brought all of that nonsense to rubble: he loved me for trying. He loved me whether I had a stupid tea house or not, so long as I was happy. My mother loved me, too, and they really didn't care about the teahouse. They took it over and converted it into a coffee house, and now my grandma runs it as a hobby.
My happiness was (and is) all my parents wanted for me. It really is that simple.
Suddenly, life had clarity.
I was free.
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