I sat in the waiting room of the veterinary clinic with my cat in a carrier. She was nine years old and had never been this far from the house we'd just left.
On the counter was a measuring tape locked at twenty-four inches. I don't know why it stuck with me—maybe because it was the only thing in the room that wasn't waiting.
Two days earlier I had cashed my first paycheck from the bank. I put half of it into the savings jar for the wedding. The other half paid for this visit.
My fiancé was back home, still at work. The high plains stretched out past the clinic windows, flat and endless. I was twenty-five and starting over in a town where no one knew my name.
When the vet came out she said, 'You're doing the right thing. She'll be fine.'
I think she was talking about the cat. But I let myself believe she meant the whole mess of it—the new job, the engagement, the courage to take a first step into a blank page.
I would tell my younger self that the first payday doesn't have to feel like enough. That a locked measuring tape is just a measurement of where you've been, not where you're going.
I would tell her that the waiting room is part of the beginning. And that's okay.