Welcome to the future\'s land of make-believe
I feel like there is a tendency when someone specifically throws a malicious lemon at you, to throw it right back. But hey, free lemons are pretty cool, so it’s best just to take it and move on.
Today’s coping: hanging with some friends, getting my hair cut for the first time in about six months, and making some progress on some projects and organization.
This time around, the torment came in waves, so that I could deal when I wasn’t getting crap heaped on me constantly, but when it started getting worse, I really just wanted out. I had better things to do anyway, and now, instead of wasting my time on things that are so very irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, I get to work on what is important to me. My only real worry is keeping myself on task in a world of technological distractions, but I am developing a few mechanisms to keep myself in check.
Getting cut down like I did, and being written up on multiple occasions for “talking down to people” or “having a bad attitude,” it was pretty crushing on an already fragile self-esteem. But lookit: both of those are write-ups generated by someone who felt threatened. If you could have seen the laundry list of items on the list, it was truly laughable, so much so that I laughed as I tossed it in the recycling bin. I don’t need a record of ways I apparently sucked at life, when every single day, I had someone sending me a message or telling me on the phone that I was awesome, or how they preferred talking to me because I was the only one who knew wtf she was doing in that office. I listened, I cared, a little too much, to be honest. I used my creeptastic intuitive skills to figure out who was lying to me, and which accounts were on the brink of failing and needed to be cut off. But this did me little good, when I couldn’t get my superiors to act on it. I am incredibly glad none of this is my problem anymore, I can very honestly say that. My point here is, sometimes, I would get the feeling that no one cared as much as I did, and that maybe I should just stop even trying to take a little pride in my work. Even when I would get these affirmations that I was doing well, I wasn’t quite sure. But it’s funny what people will tell you once you’ve been cut loose, and when those comments didn’t cease with my termination, I was pretty much overwhelmed by emotion. There were tears and junk, but happy, grateful tears, to have been perceived as someone working hard, trying to help, when I was being told such a different story by my superiors (inaptly named, I think all can agree).
I wasn’t sure what to do when I got home after getting the news I was laid off. I immediately called my mother, who is the most wonderful person I know. I told her I’d be okay, it was a good thing, and I’m right, it’s going to be a wonderful opportunity to de-stress, re-group, and become someone better. She immediately dosed me with a batch of her motherly awesomeness, and told me that the first thing that popped into her head was a scene from Ghostbusters. Yoinked from a quick and dirty google search:
“For whatever reasons, Ray, call it . . . fate, call it luck, call it karma. I believe everything happens for a reason. I believe that we were destined to get thrown out of this dump.”
I later pointed out to her that it was funny that she pulled out a random Ghostbusters quote, since it was, in a way, like her very own giant Stay-Puft Marshmallow man. The sound of my mother laughing at that almost brought tears to my eyes, because it felt like such an obvious sign of how things are going to be fine, and most likely, they’re going to be even better than that. I actually articulated that to a few people today, how I sort of know things are going to be fine all the way down to my core, like knowing the sky is blue.
I have to say, I am amazed with the support I have gotten from people. It’s been a little overwhelming and unexpected. So you have your platitudes and you have genuine outreach of help. It’s kind of outstanding how amazing people are, and I kind of love people today. I kind of love myself today, and the direction in which my life is heading.
The reason I titled this blog entry “What the Public Needs to Know” is that I need people to know how much I appreciate all their kindness. In particular, the former co-workers who texted, called, or tracked me down on Facebook to tell me they were shocked or outraged about what they did to me. Make no mistakes about it: this was always going to happen. They upped their timeframe a bit, which was a little shocking, I will admit, but after that initial thought of, “Oh, so it’s happening today,” it was simply a matter of letting it play out they way I’d already seen it happen in my head. Too deep and introspective over here, not to mention freakishly intuitive. There’s only one person I know who utterly befuddles the be-Jeebers out of me on an intuition level, since I think he chooses his words so carefully that I don’t know what the hell he’s going to say next, and as it happens, it’s almost always brilliant advice. So to my “Mayor of Good Advice,” you know who you are, thank you so much, I always seem to have difficulty articulating exactly how much your friendship means to me.
Also thank you to pretty much everyone I know who has been completely supportive and wonderful, particularly the co-workers who offered to be references while I’m mucking through the trenches. I can only handle how I deal with the current events that have cut me off from a steady source of income. I choose to deal in the most positive manner I can. It’s another change for the better, in a life swept up in a metamorphosis and wonder.
Recently, I realized that the demise that I never really saw coming was my own. I was driving, I think I was on my way to the job I hate (which I was thankfully just let go from yesterday), and I had sort of noticed a pattern of how the closer I got to work, the sadder I would get. Sometimes, not always, there would be tears. On one occasion, I am not sure what triggered it, possibly a story on NPR, but I started violently sobbing, and a thought popped to the surface of my mind: “He killed me.” When the heart-breaker did what he did, and this was several years ago, he actually put poison in this version of myself that married him in the first place. And ever since that occurred to me, I’ve been mourning her. I know it sounds utterly bizarre, but it feels like the way it happened for me. I had been stressing out because of the impending dissolution, but once I got the date from my lawyer, it was like, “Poof, stress gone,” and I could start to deal with the loss, and learn what had taken her place. This entire odd little process has helped me in my ongoing quest to learn to worry less and cope better with stress.
So change is like death. I think that is what I am saying here. While one version of a self buggers off this mortal coil, something takes its place. One day, at school, I looked up in the bathroom mirror, and I didn’t know who was looking back at me. Like, I had no clue. I’ve recently lost a lot of weight, so that was part of it, but there was just something in my eyes that seemed new and unfamiliar. It took a lot of contemplation to process that that was what being happy looked like. And it looks damn good on me.
A bit of brainstorming on what was a totally gorgeous day:
Que sera sera: “The future’s not ours to see”, but I feel its pull, so hard, like a train I’ll be sitting on one day, lurching, as I travel to a city to which I’ve never been. It’s exciting, like standing on the porch, watching an electrical storm. The future is a place I believe in, so hard. I don’t believe in a deity, but man, I believe in the future. The future is born of the past, so learn from that, learn until you think completely understand it, and then keep learning more, because there’s always a better way, there’s always more to discover.
Name-calling: I am a writer. I am awesome. I am delightful. I am brilliant. I can light up a room just by walking in it, and I want to do as much of this as I possibly can in the future. Pro-tip: I’m fun at parties and dead useful during power outages.
Focus: I am learning how to take brilliance, build a focus for it, and make something positive out of it. Ideas are people, too! Except that one, that’s clearly crazy talk.
Graduate Studies: This is the shit, people. The MFing shit. For me, this is what makes it all start to make sense. This is what I should have done a long time again, except I couldn’t, because I wasn’t ready. I’m ready now, and I’m in the middle of it, learning to be a student all over again, and while there are lots of freak-out moments, it’s ultimately what initiated this marvelous metamorphosis that has oventaken me. Once I start to get comfortable in this new skin, I think I’ll start to recognize the face that looks back at me in the mirror. I’m not a kid anymore, I’m brilliant, and I need to start acting like it.
So that’s about all of this portion of the big brain dump. There is more to the metamorphosis, deeper psychological issues, but everything that this change is built on is steady ground. That is what has made the past few months so difficult. You have to fall apart to re-build, and the demolition process was not the kindest, but what is left is shaking bits of rubble out of her hair, and trying to be a fiery little ball of squee whenever possible.