How I built the career I never asked for. (Part I)

A personal, almost invasive, three part explanation on how and why I became whatever this is.

Depending on when we met or whenever you started following my social media, you may have had one (or more) of the following impressions of me: sexual health educator, food influencer, NYU grad student, Paul Mescal superfan, that girl on that Gordon Ramsay show, Muslim reproductive health activist, Bengali chef in Brooklyn…etc.

Photo by Isa Zapata

They’re all true, all at once. And each label transcends whatever linear model of growth our brains are accustomed to comprehending. The key to understanding why my passions and work have seemingly “jumped” from one career to another is knowing that I never constructed hobbies or skills that weren’t already somewhere flickering within me. Every career goal I’ve set for myself was simply a tool to help me unearth years of independent learning and inherent curiosities before said goal even existed.

For the last 6 years, I’ve said yes to what felt natural. And guess what, fear is natural. Fear is the very sensation I’d like to thank for carrying me through the following phases of my working life:

1. Swamp Life

My parents had just left Georgia for northern VA (for my dad’s dream job) and I had accepted my first-EVER job in DC. I was a miserable young adult living with her very strict parents in a one-bedroom apartment. But I had a job, which meant I had money, which meant I had control, and therefore, I had a life. And for this, I was grateful.

The following sounds like a LinkedIn post…but I was hired as a Digital Communications Specialist at a progressive political nonprofit. Don’t forget these two words (digital and communications) because those are the buzzword lanes I drove to where I sit and write today.

I googled my dream jobs (long and short-term) while sitting at my actual job: Women’s Health Program Specialist or Reproductive Health Program Coordinator. Every role I lusted after required a master’s in public health, so I lusted after that too. I made trips up to New York (where my then-boyfriend and now husband conveniently worked) and New Haven to speak to professors at Yale and NYU. What did I have to say for myself? Not much other than what I imagined the educated and accomplished person I wished to be would say. It turns out—those are still my words, fruited from my internal library of very legitimate, ever-growing knowledge. I wish I realized how much I actually knew back then, but maybe I wouldn’t have run toward it all if that had been the case.

I studied for my GREs, hid the fact that I was applying to schools outside DC from my parents, and soon met a person my age who was in the middle of the very MPH program I spent every day dreaming of. We saw our passions mirrored within each other. She hugged me, befriended me, and guided me. She let me stay at her apartment in NYC whenever I visited. I applied to her program, and her program only (so if I didn’t get in, I wasn’t going anywhere). Not many people knew where I had applied, not even Rais (the bf/husband).

I received my acceptance to NYU’s Masters of Public and Global Health program with a scholarship and shared the shiny new truth with my parents and future partner. This is one of the many ways I’ve practiced telling people what I need or want instead of asking them for it—a skill that makes adulthood much easier.

2. Uptown Girl

I scrolled through a NYC roommate search Facebook group in the summer of 2018. Within two days, I scouted an NYU grad student with a beautiful Turkish cat who lived on an Upper East Side, tree-lined street, just a 15-minute stroll from Central Park. The deal was sealed. Once I knew my future address, I searched for immediate part-time work. I looked for high-paying nannying roles (not hard in the UES) since I had been a Kumon tutor, nanny, daycare teacher, etc in the past. Becoming a young adult nanny trying to make her big break in NYC was my attempt at romanticizing the ugly, terrible grit into rom-com glitz. Brittany Murphy did it so much better.

I cried almost every day after I finished my 6 AM to 6 PM nannying days. On days off, I would walk 2 hours from the UES down to NYU and share the horror stories on the phone with my sister (the only therapy I could afford). The child was rude, disrespectful, and verbally abusive, to no fault other than her parents’ behavior, of course. This broken 5-year-old from rotten parenting hell constantly let me know she controlled me and that she could “fire me” whenever she wanted. She spoke to all her service workers the same way her mom did—like their property.

Her mom fired me within 3 months. She then tried to cut my final paycheck even smaller than she owed. It would be the first of many times I learned that those with too much will clutch shamelessly tighter onto what’s not even theirs. Later that week, I spent an evening at my future in-law’s house and received an extremely disappointed phone call/slew of texts from my dad. He was scared for me and at me. My financial protection plan fell through, as did my claim that I was a responsible, self-sustaining young adult. I cried for the first time in front of my future MIL and SIL. They were supportive in all the ways they knew how to be, but we were freshly acquainted and I didn’t let them climb the mountain of fears I hoarded within myself. I wasn’t mourning the money (a privilege I was aware of), but the fact that the holes my parents predicted in my plans had indeed poked into fruition. And I was losing confidence in the risky behaviors I had, just months ago, paraded into New York.

As the city’s autumnal leaf-scape began to die, my sense of self withered with it. (Please let me get away with writing like Carrie Bradshaw for just this moment). For the first time in my 23 years, I couldn’t recognize myself or my state of mental health. And it was about to get worse!