The Flower Fades

I don't know about the rest of you guys, but so far 2019 has been crazy for me. I don't mean bad, necessarily... well, a lot of it has been, unfortunately, bad. But a lot of it is good.
And a lot of it is neither good nor bad, just different.
I'm trying to keep up with it all, to be honest. 
There's too many changes.

The most recent change being... I lost my job at the embroidery place that I have worked for 2 years.
Oh, don't worry- I didn't get FIRED exactly. They just had to let me go because the business is (sadly) dying. Our owner was busy trying to run another business, and as a result we weren't able to get the maintenance we needed to fix certain issues that were keeping us from getting business, such as faulty phone lines, faulty (and very old) email accounts, our software which was infected with a virus, among other things.
It's a sad way to end, but that's the way it is sometimes.
Businesses die.
The strong becomes weak.
The rich become poor.
The first become last.

Everything changes.
Everything.

I think there's a sort of brain complex that people get- I'm not sure the psychological term (or if there even is one), but I feel like the human mind tends to think as if things will never change. Oh, we believe that change exists, and we even look forward to it at times. We are not surprised when the season of the year changes, or when we buy a new device, or when we get a new haircut. We look forward to and even plan for those changes.

But I think when certain things actually do change, we're caught off guard.
Especially when the things we thought never would change, do. Like relationships. You're with someone you love, and you imagine as you laugh together that things will always be this way. But chances are they won't. Time goes on and you watch them become a stranger. Changes like that are a unique level of pain. And yet, they are surprisingly freeing..?
I don't know. It's weird to think about.

Anyways, that's happened a lot with me this year. Literally every month so far in 2019, there has been a change so in my life. Some of them quite major.
Being let go of this job being one of the major ones, especially since it was unexpected.

There is a verse in the Bible that I think of during times of change.

"The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our GOD will stand forever." Isaiah 40:8

Rather poetic, isn't it? It is sad, yet hopeful. That is the way with most seasons of change. It is sad, and often a very difficult time, but where would we be if we never moved on? How would we learn, grow, and flourish, if we are never torn from our comfortable cubby holes? (am i channeling Gandalf's energy right now..? i don't know.. but if i am, it wouldn't be a bad thing).

Life isn't meant to stagnate. It's meant to flow and change course and ripple... like a stream on a spring day.

I will always look back fondly on that job. It wasn't even like a job. I never clock-watched there. I never wondered or waited impatiently for my "shift" to end because there were no shifts. I went to that old house in the morning and opened everything up, and at closing time I closed everything down and locked the door behind me. I didn't pay attention to the time there because I loved all my various tasks there and never wondered when or wished I would be finished.

If it was a slow day (the kind which increasingly grew towards the end of my employment), I would do my Bible study or read a book at the front counter, stashing it away if a customer came up the front steps.
While being employed there I went through some of the hardest times of my life, and some days I loved being at work more than I loved being at my own cramped home. They say home is where your heart is most happy and comfortable. If that is true, my job was my home.
So, in a way, I've left not two, but three homes in the last year and a half.
Take the emotional (and physical toll) that moving once puts on a person, and triple it. Now you can understand why my heart feels like I've lost a dear friend.

I'm only 21, but honestly I feel so old. 
What will I feel like at 71, I wonder.

I know I care about things too much. I put care and love into things and then it changes or gets taken away. Why do I do that to myself? It's as if I like letting myself down. To quote Michael Scott: "I am ready to get hurt again."

Last year, Owl City (one of my favorite musical artists since I was 16) finally came out with a new long- awaited album, Cinematic. One of the songs was "Firebird", and in it there is a lyric:

Tell me why I look back, and I want to cry,
Sometimes I feel like we grew up too fast.
 
You and I had the time of our younger lives,
Sometimes I sigh and think about the past.

But it's alright, 'cause everything changes.

If 2019 keeps up like this, I think I might have to name those lines the official lyrics to describe my 2019. We'll see when I post my new year's post in December. *shrug*

Well anyways.
I'm gonna end this post now. It's admittedly sappy and sad and if it's all the same to you I think I'll just post this and forget I ever wrote it.
It is a lovely evening. It's summertime and almost twilight and the sunlight is streaming through my window, casting golden stripes onto my stacks of books on top of my dresser. So I want to go take a walk in my backyard and enjoy the cool evening temperature.

Here's a picture if it seems like I'm just making the golden sunlight part up to sound even more sappy:

Goodbye, friends.

~ Amaris // ☆