After I left my seven years at Target, I really had no idea what I wanted to do but I had to find a job. I didn’t feel that schooling was an option for me. Reluctantly, I went back into a retail environment as a supervisor, it was all I knew really, it had become my identity. It was not good, I said it once and I will say it again, if they would just let me do the work and leave out all the social aspects I would thrive but it is basically impossible in a supervisory role for that to happen. After several months I had to quit. I found a job working in a check cashing/payday loan outlet. I had never heard of a place like that, I never even knew that they existed. As I interviewed for the position I was very much sold at working there because of the hours and the flexibility. It would be me and another woman working the shifts, which meant I would be alone most of the hours. The manager worked out-of-town so basically we had a lot of freedom.

Even after I started working there I didn’t fully understand what a payday loan was.

A payday loan was explained to me as being beneficial to people who were in a jam or needed some cash until their check came. It sounded like a good idea for those who could afford it. I quickly realized that most of the people who came in for them could not afford them. I still hadn’t come to full terms of how I felt about the whole business. I was too happy with having the perfect hours for me, the freedom in not having a manager hanging over me, being able to do my job and enjoy it with the accounting part of the paperwork, and number one being alone most of the time. I did not like the collections part, the calling people on the phone and the lingering feeling that something was not quite right with the business.

I quickly rose in ranks and was sent to various other stores in other states to help out.

The more I traveled the more clear it was that these places were strategically placed in lower-income areas. The check cashing part of the business became very disturbing for me. I began to notice what others had been telling me about the social security check days, the disability check days, the churches or non-profits that went through there to get their checks cashed. Other people seemed to “know” that something was wrong. There were a lot of great people that I met but it was also emotionally draining because they shared their lives. I ended up moving to another city and becoming a manager at one of the stores in a pretty happening downtown area. The store was located next to a liquor store and a convenient store.

As I worked in these places I understood that it was dangerous because we were behind bullet proof glass.

However, I did not comprehend the real dangers, like the fact that I had to wear a panic alarm necklace in case someone tried rob me. It didn’t occur to me that the people that came in could possibly be dangerous or be taking advantage of my sympathy to try to figure out how to rob the place. My manager and co-workers constantly told me to be aware, alert, do not trust anyone. Some of the people though, just had hard lives. Things they would share broke my heart and I prayed for them all the time. I thought possibly God had placed me there to pray for people who I encountered. Then there were others that I couldn’t even look at, I have spoken about this a little bit, I had encountered many people who  had like a blackness around them. They scared me and several I refused to help. I couldn’t their presence made me ill. My stomach would get in a knot and I couldn’t speak.

Thankfully there was only a couple of times that I was alone in the store when someone like that came in.

The other good thing was that since that particular store was such high volume, I was never alone for long. I still didn’t talk to them I would just cash their check or get their payday loan as quickly as possible and get them out. I was called rude and some not nice names on occasion. I had one guy threaten to kill me because I wouldn’t cash his fraudulent check. It was scary at times. There were many regulars that I grew to love, then there were regulars that made me so upset. The few drug addicted mothers who would come in high, their babies in the stroller, they would cash their social security checks, renew their payday loan and then go next door to buy lottery tickets, alcohol and cigarettes. There were times when I would just cry as I watched them walk out the door.

I tried to find help for them through ministries or churches but it wouldn’t last long and many of them had already used up those resources for help.

It was too much, I began getting sick. I got extremely ill and didn’t know why. This was the time that I started having severe cramping and at times would be unable to walk. I couldn’t eat, sleep and I was highly emotional. It became clear that I had to change something, my first husband was actually the district manager of the stores, that was how we met through the company. He helped me to finally find a doctor who was able to diagnose me with Endometriosis. I had a laparoscopy and they lasered off all the scar tissue they could, it was all over my right ovary and had covered my lower back. That is another story. We decided to move to his hometown and I took on the role of being a manager at one of the stores that was very low-key and I was the only employee. It was in a safer neighborhood and I got to spend the day reading, listening to the radio and studying whatever I felt.

It was working out perfect except, as I began studying scripture I started to feel that the work we were doing was not moral.

I remember one day I was auditing another stores payday loans, there was one that had been there for years. It was from an elderly lady, she was late on her payment so I had to call her. I found out that she passed away. She had a $100 loan that she had paid $1500 on in renewals. I felt sick. That one moment connected all of the other things that I had not really realized before and I could no longer work there. I had to quit, my father-in-law hired me in one of his insurance offices as an assistant. This short-lived position helped catapult me into a deep depression. I was told that my job was 80% nothing and 20% work. I cannot do that, I considered going into insurance but I had a problem with the ethics as well. I began to not be able to get out of bed.

I was diagnosed with depression and put on Zoloft.

I didn’t want eat, I didn’t want to talk to anyone, I made my husband call in for me, I couldn’t get out of bed. I started having pains again and feared that the endometriosis had come back. While diagnosed with depression, the doctor called it symptomatic and she felt that I was causing myself to feel these pains. She felt that all of it was mental and that I had no real problems physically. She could have been right, I really do not know. I decided that I had to move and I told my husband that we had to move to where my father lived. We moved there and then I went through another round of jobs.

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I have been analyzing myself since this whole anxiety bout has happened, I have been rather confused at the length of this episode. I will start to do much better then I will start to feel the effects again. As I have been going through my feelings and trying to find a logical reason, I believe I have found the root. I was concerned with me freaking out at the sudden changes of church, which indeed they have left me feeling quite anxious but surely this was not the only reason. That just didn’t make sense to me. There are several other things going on in my life that are normal anxiety triggers that have come up during this time and I am aware that these are making my anxiety worse than usual since they are all falling at once.

But this isn’t like me, I am feeling cowardly, like a weak and insecure person.

People who know me, know that I may be a lot of things but those three things are not me. So what is this? Why have I been hit with such a large dose of anxiety and why am I unable to snap out of it or reason myself through it much sooner? Diversity. Yes, the answer is diversity, well lack of in this area that we are living in. In the last 10 years I have made major changes in my life from moving to various cities, being in relationships, getting divorced, coming to a new faith, changing jobs, getting married, having children and seeking to find myself to name a few. I have had a lot of change and I have been able to handle it, at times I actually did much better. The constant change made things easier for me because I was always doing something, working on something, seeking out new ideas and new knowledge.

The places I had the least amount of anxiety were in the areas, the places where I was surrounded by many different people.

The best church experience I had was in a college town – very intellectual, new people, old people coming back constant change but the change brought about new ideas, new stories, new visions, new information that constantly intrigued me and challenged me to learn. The last 7 years I have lived in two places and though they are across the country from each other they are exactly the same. The people do not change, there is no challenge here. When I compare these two places to the two places that I lived where I thrived, I see with clarity the difference. The two places that I was not attacked with anxiety as much or able to control it better were places that had many different people, different cultures and beliefs. They lived in the US but were from different countries. I was around people who loved to learn, loved the arts, and they talked to learn about each other.

They really talked about interesting things and were very accepting of everyone.

There was another place that I lived that was much like where we are now and that is when I slipped into a deep depression and I was put on Zoloft. I was also diagnosed with endometriosis which caused severe pain and took over a year for someone to believe me. I went through two emergency room visits and three doctors. Finally the last doctor told me about endometriosis and sent me to a specialist with in two days I had laparoscopic surgery and on my way to recovery. I haven’t had any problems at all after I had children. Very thankful for that because when you are in physical pain as well as having anxiety on top of it, there are really no words to describe it other than life halting.

As I have been working through all of this, I see a pattern.

I recognize that what I feel when I go to church here is the lack of diversity and that makes my differences stand out much more. Now that I have a family with different issues I am in a constant state of seeing how different we really are from others. When I am surrounded by people who embrace diversity of thought, beliefs and ideas, I find them to be more accepting of my quirks and unique thoughts on life. Being surrounded by people who are set in their way of life, who understand their own language, everyone seems to know how everything should be around here  and if you want to be accepted you have to learn their ways. They are different in looks, income, social status but they have the same thoughts, same ideas, same goals and they see no reason to think that they should be challenged or questioned in any way.

I have anxiety because I cannot question.

I have anxiety because I am not allowed to be me without serious silent social discipline. The discipline are remarks, eye rolls, the blatant me being invisible and completely unseen by certain people. And I am not being paranoid, this time. How do I survive in a place that just wants everyone to be the same? And how do they know what they are supposed to be doing? Other people have moved here from different places and they still know the rules. I have looked and looked for the last three years in this area for groups, even outside of  church, I have looked for people who may have a bit of diversity and I have yet to find them. I will still keep looking because there has to be some out there. There cannot be an entire city of people who are unwilling to embrace differences, right? Anyway, as I think of this it has actually brought a lot of peace to me.

I understand the root of this particular anxiety bout and I will make changes in my life to try to help me and my family.

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