When Life Gives You Wormwood, Make Absinthe... Then Get Toasted

I read an obituary yesterday.  Normally I don't read them if I don't know the person who died, but this was unusual in that the person, who was a journalist, actually wrote her own obituary before her death.  So, wanting to know what she thought was important enough to be what were basically her last words, I read it.  And the sentence which stood out to me like a beacon on a dark hill was one that she wrote to her children:

"...always remember that obstacles in the path are not obstacles, they ARE the path."

This sentence hit me like the proverbial two-by-four, probably because it was one.  All I could think of was that Hekate (or Someone Out There) finally found someone who had the words to make it clear to me.

And it was definitely the right time for it.  This illumination came after receiving some rather devastating news from my director.   Due to various things having absolutely nothing to do with our department, we are going to have to move several people around, and the result is that I am losing my private office with the huge windows overlooking lawn, trees and sky.  Instead, I will be working in a shared office with no windows.

Now, to truly appreciate the extent of my devastation, this office was the last reason I still had for actually wanting to go to work.  No raises since 2007, increasing workloads and health care payments, boredom from being in the same venue for the last 15 years, and five years of frustration looking for a job where I can actually use my degrees have all really worn me down.  This room was the only bright spot, both literally and figuratively, left in my work day.  And now it's being taken away because someone in some other department wants to show they have clout.

This is where the wormwood and absinthe come in; they're the goth version of  "when life gives you lemons,  make lemonade".  If the obstacles ARE the path, then going around them is impossible; the only way to continue on is to go through them.  Very well, then.  And as Christine Jette says in her book, The Shadow Tarot, "There is no going over, under or around the Shadow; the only path to freedom is through the darkness."  Since I can no longer have the light at work, I shall embrace the shadows.  My new work space will be decorated as a haven of gothdom for me.  I'm looking over things that I have at home that I can bring in; I've already got a lovely picture of an antebellum skeleton lady in front of a broken-down mansion (that I bought for our front bathroom but didn't use) ready and waiting to be hung in my new space.  Here is the picture, from the Etsy shop of The Mighty Squirm, without the frame it's in now:

 

 Just think Scarlett O'Hara sitting on the lawn at Tara, only one hundred years later.  Isn't it incredible?? 

I'm also haunting Etsy and GothMart, and I plan to continue my bi-monthly trolling at EcoThrift. I'm going to make this new space SO incredibly goth that most people will be too scared to bother me, heheheh...