soapboxdiner

Should I stay or should I go now?

I was going to come here and write something very morose, but for the last nearly two weeks, I haven't been able to get on the net 'cuz my wireless lost it's IP address and the ipconfig/renew was tits. So instead of pulling magic networking juju juice out of nether regions best left unmentioned, I ponied up the $70 to call tech support in India ... and spent the next two hours of my life basically upgrading router software and resetting the channel the wireless reads from.

/deathray vision

Anyways, Brici-somebody in India, you will be happy to know, is a reassuring 20 hours from Pakistan and safely enjoying his balmy 90-degree springtime weather. Among other things.

Anyways ...

Know what's been on my brain a lot lately, darlings? I shall tell you. Once upon a time, what feels like a very long time ago, I used to wake from my dreams with tears running down my cheeks. In my dreams I would hear the voices of those I loved who promised me forever, who left before forever came. I never saw them again, and I didn't know why they had gone. And all day long, every day, unbidden memories floated to the surface and I could see every recollection in my mind. I felt every emotion attached to those memories -- the joy, the rapture, the thrill of the future, and the loss, the grief, the confusion and the anxiety.

It's hard to paint a verbal picture that can convey what that experience feels like -- never forgetting, infinitely and intimately reliving every sensation. It's a little like taking a surgical scar, yanking out the stitches and ripping open the half-healed sides. On particularly poignant days, it would be like that, only saltier. Blows that an average person might initially reel from but could quickly shake off, recover, and forget. Not so for me.

And so, when I finally went to talk with a psychologist, she quickly diagnosed PTSD. Huh? You mean that thing that soldiers who've seen their buddies get blown apart by bombs during war come home and suffer? That PTSD? No fucking way, dude. I haven't suffered anything as dramatic as all that, and I'm one really fucking tough bitch. I pick my happy ass up off the ground when I've fallen and I march my happy ass onward, sometimes kicking and screaming, down the road. How in the HELL can I POSSIBLY have PTSD?

Well, apparently I could. Viva la conundrum that is me. And so my shrink gave me a list of assigned reading and I read every last book on the list. And the dreams stopped, and the voices waking me up stopped, and the emotion memories invading my consciousness every day stopped. And I was CURED, darlings! Isn't that fabulous.

Typing that out makes me realize how absolutely ridiculous and pitiful a human heart and mind and spirit can be. And it's ME, you know? The hell?

Oh, well. C'est la vie and shit. Move on.

And that's the thing I took away from the experience. Life can hand you big steamy, stinky piles of shit right in your left hand, and you have the choice to stand there with a big, steamy, stinky pile of shit in your hand, or you can shake the shit off, wash your hand and keep on moving. Action, darlings, is the best remedy for paralyzing fear and over-emotionalization of uncontrollable circumstances.

Only lately I've been remembering new moments and reliving the degradation and shame and humiliation. Stupid shit I can never go back and fix. Leaving the job with the County after blowing a wire because of stress. Showing them pages from this very diary, only to have them read about the my abortion and dating a cross dresser and dating the mortician who got me pregnant on our second date, who also disappeared when I told him he needed to help pay for the procedure required to correct the situation. Having those coworkers read all that shit I never intended or imagine they would, then passing it around the agency and finally having one of them blow the whistle on me (after I'd left the agency), so the Director read every last page of all my sordid dirty laundry. The girl I barely knew who emailed me, "I don't know why you would want anyone to read that stuff, but I thought you should know that it's going around the the Director is investigating your journal to determine if you broke confidentiality agreements. Possible legal action may be pending. Thought you should have a heads up. Take care."

And I ran into some of those people a few months later. I said hello and they looked at me like I was warmed over retard shit.

I think about that a lot now. And I think about walking out on the job at the hospital. I loved that job. I would have stayed there until retirement. And I packed up a box with all my possessions, left my keys and my badge, and walked out the department doors. I passed a coworker, I remember, and she confusedly asked me why I had a box, and where I was going. I didn't answer her. I was ashamed to admit that after months of trying to rectify the work relations with my supervisor, after stealthily looking for other departments in the hospital to transfer to, and interviewing, and hiding my unhappiness under a veil of attempted stoic professionalism, I finally allowed my last button to be pushed. And with the knowledge that more than a dozen of my coworkers in the 6-person department had been forced out in the last two years, I knew when the supervisor handed me a write-up for seom bullshit offense (the first write-up I'd ever received after having been in the department for 5 years), that this was the supervisor's last trick in her arsenal of ways to force unwanted people out.

And so I went to HR to complain. They point blank told me if I couldn't hack it, I should find other employment elsewhere outside the company. And I told them about the stress and anxiety it caused, and they said, "See your doctor."

So I did. And she put me on medical leave. And I packed a box of all my possessions and I left the company that same afternoon. And while I was on approved medical leave, my supervisor erased my name from the employee IN/OUT board on the wall and gave my cubicle to someone else. And she told every coworker and every doctor I worked with that I had a mental breakdown. And she said I would never, ever come back from leave.

And so I collected my six weeks of accrued vacation time and my six weeks of accrued sick time, and all my vested retirement, and I looked for other employment. And the place I'm at now offered me a position four weeks later making $700 less per month than the hospital, but I didn't care. I took the job, and in the first year and a half with this company, I was hand-picked and recruited for two promotions. I've been in this position for another year and a half, and am the assistant to the director, who is second only to the CEO.

And it is wonderful. I have freedom and responsibility and independence. People count on me. People freely come to me for help, for advice, to vent, to laugh. They come to me for a moment of sanity. People depend on me, trust my judgment, and treat me with respect and friendship.

But I worry so much all the time. I am under so much pressure to be perfect, to be fast, to be in all places all the time. And a year ago, that was fine. Everything else in my life was shit -- preforeclosure on the house, a rape trial to prepare for, a traumatized child who needed constant reassurance that everything was going to be OK after he witnessed his mother running out of her bedroom with tatters of ripped clothing hanging from her otherwise naked body whilst screaming and crying, frantically searching for a phone she couldn't find just so she could call 911.

I didn't want to deal with any of that, so I buried myself in work for a year, and I got through it. And he got through it. But now it's all in the past. And I don't need to bury myself in work to forget life. I have a life that is good, that I want to enjoy. Only I'm buried in work and the stress of trying to be all things to all people, perfectly and constantly, smilingly, stresses my ass out.

And the questions I wrestle with are, Are the memories of fear and humiliation and regret for past mistakes a reflection of my current state of mind? Is that call to arms (Take action when you feel helpless!) that I learned so long ago the cause of my desire to resign this stressful position and return to the lower paying and less stimulating original position? But all those actions I've taken in the past are now embers of bridges burnt by the wrong decision made at the wrong time in the wrong way. And thinking towards the future, how will I justify my decision to anyone looking at my resume, should I want to pursue other positions and other companies? All the advances I've accomplished and all the people who count on me -- how can I walk away now?

Is it all another bridge I set alight? Or is it a call to correct all those previous careless, miscalculed actions by an equal show of forebearance, patience, and self-forgiveness for being a well-meaning but imperfect creature? Do I stay and persevere here? Will the future here bring easier times? It's hard to tell, and there are irreparable sacrifices that come with either decision.

10:20 pm - 12.01.08
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