In my previous post I alluded to a D-list celebrity-style mental meltdown that I had following a lengthy year of living in debt and working my way into the ground. Now I shall present the details to you, in all their ridiculous glory:

It was a Sunday; the only difference from this day and other people’s standard Sundays was that I hadn’t had a day off in 18 days and was on my way to a friend’s wedding shower instead of zipped into a onesie, barrel rolled in a duvet, watching some sort of brainless trash TV like, “Taxidermy Wives” and eating my way through a deep dish pizza.

It’s never one grandiose thing that makes you crack when you’re burnt out; it’s just a series of small meaningless things. Insignificant events that would be otherwise inconsequential expect they build and build until your boyfriend just has to buy you the wrong type of Greek yogurt and you absolutely freak out into a tirade of, “I said 2%!! Honey NOT Vanilla! What is this Nazi Germany? Are you trying to starve me with this O% Yogurt travesty!”

Not that I’ve ever had that exact outburst or anything.

To give you some context, here are some of the small things that happened that day.

1. I dropped my phone instead of my coffee cup into a garbage can on the way to aforementioned wedding shower, smashing the screen (hashtag first world problems)

2. I had to be at a wedding shower. Decorating fake treasure chests with hearts and playing “What’s in Your Purse” is alone enough cause me to slowly slither beneath a carefully decorated cupcake table and remain in the fetal position with my ears plugged until someone hands me a bottle of wine and a straw.

3. I had to go to Loblaws to buy groceries immediately after said wedding shower. Sunday evening grocery shopping is a lot like rush hour traffic; except everyone stuck in traffic is hungry, has low blood sugar and is fighting over sale pistachios. It’s the closest I have come to playing adult bumper cars and it stresses me out on a good day. This was already not a good day

4. I had to pay for groceries at Loblaws and spending $80 on avocados and goldfish crackers is a weekly punch to the vagina.

But the real breakdown happened a mere hour later, when at home, I set about juicing limes for the only salad dressing I know how to make.

Let me set the scene for you: I am standing at the island in the middle of my kitchen, having worked 18 days in a row, emotionally on edge, hungry as fuck, hating weddings and everything related to weddings, staring at my broken phone, juicing limes so expensive they should be made from PURE GOLD, when the juicer slips out of my hands and four-limes worth of juice goes flying across the room and all over the floor.

Like I said, it’s never the grandiose things that break you…just a series of small things.

Staring down at the floor and the front of my shirt, now covered in lime juice, this is about the second that I started crying.

And I didn’t stop.

For 2 hours.

Bless my boyfriend’s little heart, he just stared at me, wide-eyed, having no idea what to do with the broken shell of a woman I had become, and set about fixing it in the only way he knew how…

By saying, “I’ll go get more limes” and immediately flying out of our house.

Now you don’t have to tell me that melting into a puddle of my own self-pity over a ruined salad dressing is not normal human behavior. And I say this having spent my life crying uncontrollably over some pretty ridiculous things: My childhood turtles suicidal tendencies, the movie Armageddon, Japanese Insurance commercials and those videos of dogs reacting to their solider-owners returning from tours abroad.

But never did I fathom that I could be brought down by a fruit mishap.

It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back life I had been leading. I had traded in a work hard play hard mentality for just work, ALL of the time. And it took me a battle with a juicer for me to realize that I had run myself into the ground for not one, but two jobs that I didn’t gain any emotional or professional satisfaction from.

My post-University carefree life of travel had been replaced with a 9 – 5pm job in corporate communications at an investment firm and in the end, rather than feel like I was progressing, I felt like I was moving horizontally, further and further away from the person I wanted to be. In short, I felt completely misaligned.

It was only when I was sitting on my couch, hours later, with fresh limes in hand courtesy of my still-flabbergasted boyfriend who I had long since banished to the bedroom that I whispered to myself, “You have to quit your job”

And I stopped crying…instantly.

Call it a sign, call it temporary insanity, but I took the thought and ran with it. So here I am, three months later, having traded in my desk for a coffee shop and my computer for one of those cheesy inspirational journals that reads, “Make Way For the New” on the cover, and I am finally starting to feel like myself again.

Some people thrive on routine, and enjoy steadiness and predictability. I have always felt most at home in the chaos of the unknown. I figure life felt like an out of control mess when I had the routine, so I might as well take the mess back under my own control.

I mean after all, isn’t that what life is supposed to feel like? Like we are all perpetually walking a fine line between beauty and certain disaster, hoping that the scale tips in our favor more often than not, and where surprises are not just possible but welcomed?

I have thrown all my cards in the air, and much of what the next year has in store for me is one big fat question mark, but I am sure of one thing: I have liked myself more in the last month that I have in the previous two years.

Let the scales tip where they may. Today I’m balancing at about 50% certain disaster and it feels fucking fantastic.