What Four Years of Real Estate Taught Me About Myself

And Why I’m Finally Moving Forward.

In the real estate world, there’s a saying that most agents will wash out within their first year, and if they miraculously make it to 4 years, then they’re golden and onto smooth sailing.

Well, here I am about to hit the four-year mark (with two of those years happening during a global pandemic, a divorce, a move, and losing my position on a team), and this nagging thought I’ve internally squashed for the past year is really starting to settle in and weigh me down.

I’m not actually golden, I feel as if I’m suffering under the weight of whatever is the heaviest metal in the world. Tungsten? Osmium?

Real estate, especially on a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, can be a cutthroat world. I thought I was made for this world because when I started, I didn’t really know myself and I overestimated my abilities. I thought that because I grew up in a cutthroat childhood, selling million-dollar homes would be a walk in the park.

But I don’t know what it is about me.

I know myself enough to know that in any relationship ever (be it platonic, romantic, or a client), I immediately welcome them into my inner world and think they’re the greatest thing ever since real Italian Nutella. I walk around the world and navigate relationships with the thickest, most optimistic, and rosiest-tinted beer goggles. I’m always excited to welcome another seemingly cool person in my life, and that every person I meet must be a good person…because no one I meet can possibly be as toxic as my own parents.

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I saw on Tik Tok the other day one of the most profound videos I’ve ever seen on that app. The creator said that every animal is born immediately with a survival instinct. A giraffe is born already knowing how to hold its head up so it can eat, a cub is born immediately knowing how to chase so it can survive, and a human is born into the world crying for help.

So when we need something, we cry for help.

And it struck me because I’ve never cried for help. In fact, in my entire adult life I can recount each time I’ve cried because it’s been so few and far between. I had the kind of upbringing where I had to suck it up, numb myself to survive, and take care of my siblings.

So as I approach my four years of working in Real Estate, I’ve learned that in order for me to keep going, I have to shut off this awareness of myself. I’ve learned that I’m a square peg in a round hole in the world of sales, 5 am hustle and grinds, and “how many prospects have you talked to today?”.

I’ve only made it this far because of how conditioned and how blind to myself I’ve been.

There’s no sugar-coating it, I hate sales and pushy conversations. I despise feeling like I have to convince people of my value as a Realtor and human so they can buy a home through me instead of the fifty million other realtors on the Island. I can’t do shallow, surface-level conversations with other realtors who are really just trying to scope out how my business is doing. And I don’t do well at an office, or at networking events because my nervous system is so wrecked that I physiologically can’t tolerate a thousand conversations happening at once in a large room. Especially one with terrible acoustics. After showing homes, talking to clients (as sweet as most of them can be), and being in my car and hearing the background hum of road noise all day, I feel like I want to end it all. I want nothing more than to melt like moss into a hole six feet under, to let out an exhale and give in to the earth.

I can’t keep going.

It’s through real estate that my optimistic goggles have flown off. I’ve learned that it's a world where it’s rare to develop a connection unless you’re contributing to someone’s paycheck. It doesn’t matter if you can’t make as many sales as you used to because your kid’s schools have shut down so you’re stuck homeschooling them, or that you’re in the middle of a divorce, or that you’re suffering through health issues from a toxic mold-infested home — if you’re not adding benjamins to a bank account, your humanity doesn’t exist.

My ex-husband used to say to me, you’re either the sheep or the wolf. You either progress with the times or you get left behind. And I’ve always naively wondered why in his narrative the wolves attack and leave the sheep behind.

If they’re both animals instinctually trying to survive in a harsh world, wouldn’t that mean they’re on the same team?

Am I the problem?

All I know is that the dog-eat-dog world is not the world for me.

So after all of my timely self-discovery, I finally reached a point where I know exactly what I need to do. Like a newborn baby, I cried for help. I mustered up the courage to throw my shot in the dark and I called my parents to see if they can throw me a bone (or three) by helping me pay for textbooks. Because tuition isn’t cheap, and neither is making a career change at the onset of our latest recession.

Their answer, not to my surprise, was a resounding NOPE.

We don’t need to get into details about why or exactly what they said, but my parents fall into the boomer category of “as soon as my kids turn 18, I’m done with them”.

One of the loneliest feelings in the world is to cry for help and have no one answer you. And so I’ll chalk this up as yet again, more life lessons learned the hard way:

When no one stands behind you, there is a silver lining to this. You have no one behind you to pull you back. Like an arrow, you can shoot clearly onto your path ahead, and sometimes the road best traveled is alone. It’s just you and your undiluted wants and dreams, and your own intrinsic ambition to get it done.

Awareness is a gift. Even if it’s exhausting to navigate this chaotic world after really tuning into yourself, at least now you’re not letting people walk all over you because you hope to make a sale.

If you have someone to cry to, cherish them. Love and celebrate them. The world needs more acknowledgment for the kinds of people who restore faith in humanity. (I would grow a third nipple on my forehead to have parents that I can reliably fall back on.)

If you don’t have that someone, we can fill this wound by being that person for someone else.

And my most significant epiphany courtesy of the Real Estate Gods…

There will always be a way. Humans are the most resilient beings, when we’re fed up and we set our mind on something — like making a career work without having to sacrifice our sanity, not only is it possible but it’s one of the most immensely rewarding journeys to growth.

This post was written through the lens of navigating work relationships as an autist with CPTSD trauma, and how people on the spectrum struggle with understanding the depth of relationships and boundaries; how or why others seem to know exactly how much to give. People with autism tend to develop close attachments to people before assessing whether or not feelings are reciprocated, and are prone to unknowingly developing unhealthy attachments and relationships with people that can end up leaving them even more hurt and confused by social and work experiences.

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