BACK IN THE DOGHOUSE
Someone whose name I can't recall once wrote a very famous book about depression in which he compared it to a big black dog. Someone else has just written a book expanding on that metaphor called "Shoot the Damn Dog". I am now going to borrow upon that metaphor, although not to such a violent extent.

I am back in the doghouse.

I may or may not have mentioned in my last post that a huge project was unceremoniously dumped into my lap by someone above me who was too lazy to do it herself. Last week I tried to take preliminary action in getting the project completed. To make a long and boring story short, this resulted in a nasty email exchange between me and my boss (I wasn't nasty, she was) and a ruined 4-day weekend.

I am thanking God tomorrow is Friday because I need a weekend to recover from my weekend.

I've decided it's time to go. Screw the raise I've been promised. My boss has now been stringing me along for 5 months and nothing has materialized. They had an opportunity to promote me and completely fanned on it. My boss gets nasty with me for just trying to do my job without any goddamn support.

Lately I've been trying to come to terms with the fact that I'll always be a low-level loser, despite how smart I am. I'll never be important or special or valued or loved by anyone. Except possibly my cat.

But I'm smart enough to know that I'm not the only low-level, unimportant person in the world. How do other people do it? How do other people go through life working at meaningless low-level jobs with no one to come home to without wanting to slit their wrists?

When I worked at Famous Hospital I was valued. Just for my ability to fetch a stupid chart out of a drawer while somebody more important was on the phone. Just because I can't do the jobs I'm smart enough to do doesn't mean I'm completely worthless. Why can't I convince anybody of that?

My friend with cancer hasn't eaten in about 6 weeks. Her brain has stopped producing certain chemicals, so she no longer feels hunger.

I wish I could just lie in bed and wait for death. I wouldn't have to worry about pleasing anyone, or about retirement, or paying my rent, or trying in vain to look beautiful just so some man might give me a second look. I could just quit.

I'm such a waste. I wish I had the guts to kill myself so I could quit taking up space and oxygen from the planet.

My apologies to all you perfect people out there with your perfect bodies and your perfect relationships and your perfect homes and your perfect families and your perfect lives. I just can't keep up with you. And if anyone is reading this, I apologize for the rambling incoherent nature of my post. I just don't have the energy to make sense.

Well, it's time for me to go to bed. Another 6-8 hours of Ambien-induced nothingness, then I'll have to spend about 8 hours pretending to be normal. Then I can give up for the weekend. I can just lie in bed and wait for time to pass. Except I have to take my cat to the vet because I'm bringing him in for boarding in a few weeks and he's not up to date on his shots.

OK, I'm shutting up now.
- posted by Pat @ 9:18 PM | 2 comments

 
DAMMIT I THOUGHT I WAS *DONE* WITH THIS!
This past Monday my boss calls me into her office and drops the equivalent of a neutron bomb.

No, she didn't fire me. At this point, being fired would have been a blessing in disguise. What she did was inform me that my colleague is resigning. This would be the ultra-efficient colleague who's been in her position for years and does the work of 3 people without breaking a sweat. The only reason my position was created was when it became apparent that she couldn't do the work of four people.

She's not actually leaving until late July, and my boss *hopes* she can have someone hired before the colleague leaves so there can be some training done. But that's not definite. The way it's looking now, it seems that I'm going to be opening the upcoming fall semester by myself. And I am shitting bricks.

Dammit, I thought I was DONE feeling this way! This constant fear of impending doom has been looming over me like Snoopy the Vulture in the Peanuts cartoon when he's waiting for Linus to walk by with his blanket so he can swoop down and pounce. It's been with me ever since I found out she was leaving, and nothing is making it go away. Except for a hefty dose of benzos, and that's only a temporary relief.

2 Fridays ago I ran into a former colleague on the way home from work. He is now in a mid-manager position at...well, let's call it Almighty Performing Arts College. He gave me his business card & encouraged me to apply for any available positions.

This past Friday I sent him an email and asked him to get in touch with me. He didn't, but it's only been one day. He may have been swamped or out of the office. Over the weekend I went to the college's website to look for positions. There's currently nothing available that's appropriate for me.

I really didn't want to leave. But seeing as how the world is about to cave in on me, and my boss is still dicking me around about my raise, I don't see any reason why I shouldn't at least start looking around.

I've come to the realization that shit happens everywhere. No matter where I go, I will not escape the shit entirely. And given the nature of my very fragile psyche, I will never be in a position to give shit, only take it. I will never be anything more than a semi-expendable grunt. But if I find something at Almighty Performing Arts College, at least I might be a better-paid grunt. And I'll be a grunt at a place that people know and recognize. I found out from working at Prestigious Institution that your street cred goes way up if you're working at a famous place, even if the work you do isn't that glamourous. Let's just hope APAC isn't as much of a nightmare as PI.

PS--My friend is still alive as of this posting. But as I've said, it's not a question of whether the cancer will take her, it's a matter of when. And no, I got no response to my letter. I wasn't really expecting one. She's too weak for that at this point.
- posted by Pat @ 4:15 PM | 0 comments

 
MAYBE INSANITY'S A GOOD THING
First, an update to my last post. I wrote my letter. And mailed it off yesterday. And I managed to write it without any of the sniveling self-pity I unleashed here. Well, maybe just a smidgen. But I was drinking when I wrote it, & I think that allows my thinking to be just a little fuzzy.

Why was I drinking? This is the time of year when I mark the anniversary of the death of one of my best friends. (No, not the one I just wrote the letter to--she's not dead yet. This friend died 6 years ago.) I mark the occasion by listening to her favorite music & drinking Mike's Hard Lemonade. I also go off my meds so that I can drink without risking any nasty drug interactions.

Here's what I've learned about being off meds: My sex drive has kicked up big time.

I've spent the past 2 weeks thinking about a college student I met about 3 weeks ago. And NO, he is not a student at the college where I work! What are you, crazy? Anyway, the short version is that I went to a performance, he was one of the performers, I talked to him afterward & told him he blew me away, and he responded by giving me an entirely unexpected bone-crushing hug. And now I can't stop thinking about him, despite the fact that I'll probably never see him again. And never mind that I'm almost old enough to be his mother. I even checked out his MySpace page. It's set to private, so I couldn't really look at it, but it's got a very nice picture of him.

So maybe being crazy and being on meds is a good thing. Because I generally don't think crazy shit like this when I'm on the meds. The bad news is I'm still lonely & have no chance in hell of ever finding a man. The good news is that when I'm on the meds it's more of a dull, aching need in the back of my mind as opposed to a raging inferno that consumes my every waking thought.

Not much else to say, except that I had my second appointment with the new p-doc yesterday. It went well. I don't think I was in her office longer than 10 minutes. I updated her on what was transpiring in my life, I asked for some prescriptions, she gave them to me, and that was that.
- posted by Pat @ 9:27 PM | 0 comments