The Difference Between Getting and Needing

t w o

you could break me overnight
but there's no one like u s . . .

〰️〰️〰️

My job wasn't hard.

Let me rephrase that – my job didn't require the brain of a rocket scientist, but it also couldn't be done by any average joe on the street. There were certain requirements, a certain something you needed to be able to handle Donatella DiNardo.

Donatella, my boss and the founder (frankly, the brain) of the company that was DiNardo Designs (an oh-so unique name), was a spitfire. She had the body of an eighteen-year-old and the spirit of a senior citizen who had seen some shit in her day and served her time. I never really found out exactly how old she was; she never mentioned a birthday and I just assumed she was middle-aged. She had jet black hair that she never let go a day past a dye job, for fear of anyone seeing "her true self". I'd been working for her for four years and I still didn't know who that was.

To put it simply, job hunting was a bitch after I graduated college. Allow me to paint a picture for you.

I grew up in a mid-sized, very basic suburban town roughly two hours west of Philadelphia. Clearloft – more appropriately nicknamed "The Loft" by locals – was the type of town you dreamed of escaping once you were a teenager, because everyone knew too much and if you didn't get out, it'd suck you in forever. Sort of like how it did to our parents. So Gus and I, being the high school sweethearts that we were, moved to Philly prior to starting college since we both decided to attend major universities in the city.

We stayed at our respective schools for the first three years of college because there really wasn't any other option. Gus lived at University of Penn and I was at Drexel. By the time we were a year or so away from graduating, we got our own small, shitty, and astronomically priced apartment just outside of the city's central business district in an up-and-coming hipster neighborhood. With the help of Gus' distinguished investor for a father, no less, because we barely had enough money to buy groceries let alone pay rent every month. He was a little giving in that way, yet still so goddamn intimidating and powerful.

It was a studio apartment with mediocre lighting, a toilet that would flood too often, and the whole complex smelled on Tuesday mornings when they'd pick up trash. It served its purpose for just under two years before we moved to the place we were currently in. Still in the same hipster district, just in another area of it. The main thing was that this place was pet friendly, hence how Ziggy came into our lives.

Be that as it may, we made it out of college alive. Gus double majored in finance and business, focusing on economics to somehow follow in his father's footsteps, and I ended my educational career with a degree in design and merchandising. He secured a job long before we could even imagine what graduation day looked like, but I was slightly more disadvantaged.

If I was gifted with the ability to work with numbers and understand whatever it was that Gus did, I probably would have had it a lot easier. Instead, I went the somewhat fun route and ended up in the fashion world. Not that I couldn't have gone to college to be a nurse, or a lawyer, or a teacher, and not that there was anything wrong with those occupations – it was just that I didn't want that for myself. I didn't want to be like every other girl I went to high school with, and for that reason, that was why I was working for Donatella.

I'd done an internship with her while I was in school, since it was a requirement for me to graduate, and she kept me with her ever since. Turns out, fashion-related jobs in the Philadelphia area were pretty scarce, and everything seemed to be up by New York. Me, being the more realistic type, figured I definitely didn't have the money to move or commute there. At least, not yet.