Baggage
As life goes, the last two months have flown faster than I care to think. Yet, they have slugged by so painfully that I can not bear to think of them. This past week, especially, has broken me in ways I didn't think possible.
I quit a job that I was never wanted at, that I was treated so poorly a second class citizen got more respect than me, and in the end I was always left under water and barely breathing. In more ways than one I feel like a perpetual failure, as I've wasted far too many years trying to succeed in academia to never be given more than a passing bone and used to provide someone else with leverage to receive promotions and pay raises. Publications and reimbursement grants don't amount to much of anything when you are crushed under suffocating rent, student loans having passed critical mass, and nights littered with the inability to sleep from the side effects of Lupus and the stress of knowing you are less than a paycheck away from collapse. Most days I just can't breathe anymore. Then, then the days that I feel like I've caught my breathe it all comes flooding back when friends and lovers show their colors of disdain as they tell you to just go be a secretary and leave you standing in an emotional wake.
Years ago I learned that I had to deal with my own emotional baggage, as no one else will. Yet, there are times when we all need a shoulder to just listen. Someone to just let us fall apart. Telling a feminist that her feelings of failure aren't what feminist do and she's not allowed to have emotional letdowns . . . that is probably more crushing than waking up from a heat laden afternoon nap, after an emotionally scarring day at work, to find yourself shaking with rage and shame to only send your resignation (via email) two years later than you should have. One rage subsided, but the oppressive weight of shame and broken hearts presses more heavily than before.
The next day you find yourself driving, something you used to do on angstful nights, and as your car points east you exit the city that once held your dreams. You aimlessly drive, knowing eastbound means Long Island and the end point is either the ocean or the ocean. You find yourself buying a water and walking along your old alma matter, in a blazing heat so bright and intense you look down to see if your shoes still have soles, and you look around and see your favorite class sitting on the lawn while you jabbered about comics, gender, and political prowess of presentation and perception. You look farther down the academic mall and see you and an old friend smoking, while snow flakes began and he started singing a Christmas tune, then as you turn you see a long time love walking away as you stood there wishing things were different that spring day. Shaking the proverbial memory away, you leave remembering that first August day you came. The heat, the fear, the same walk to the parking lot.
The only difference are there are more blooms now than 16 years ago, and you are certainly worse for the wear.
I quit a job that I was never wanted at, that I was treated so poorly a second class citizen got more respect than me, and in the end I was always left under water and barely breathing. In more ways than one I feel like a perpetual failure, as I've wasted far too many years trying to succeed in academia to never be given more than a passing bone and used to provide someone else with leverage to receive promotions and pay raises. Publications and reimbursement grants don't amount to much of anything when you are crushed under suffocating rent, student loans having passed critical mass, and nights littered with the inability to sleep from the side effects of Lupus and the stress of knowing you are less than a paycheck away from collapse. Most days I just can't breathe anymore. Then, then the days that I feel like I've caught my breathe it all comes flooding back when friends and lovers show their colors of disdain as they tell you to just go be a secretary and leave you standing in an emotional wake.
Years ago I learned that I had to deal with my own emotional baggage, as no one else will. Yet, there are times when we all need a shoulder to just listen. Someone to just let us fall apart. Telling a feminist that her feelings of failure aren't what feminist do and she's not allowed to have emotional letdowns . . . that is probably more crushing than waking up from a heat laden afternoon nap, after an emotionally scarring day at work, to find yourself shaking with rage and shame to only send your resignation (via email) two years later than you should have. One rage subsided, but the oppressive weight of shame and broken hearts presses more heavily than before.
The next day you find yourself driving, something you used to do on angstful nights, and as your car points east you exit the city that once held your dreams. You aimlessly drive, knowing eastbound means Long Island and the end point is either the ocean or the ocean. You find yourself buying a water and walking along your old alma matter, in a blazing heat so bright and intense you look down to see if your shoes still have soles, and you look around and see your favorite class sitting on the lawn while you jabbered about comics, gender, and political prowess of presentation and perception. You look farther down the academic mall and see you and an old friend smoking, while snow flakes began and he started singing a Christmas tune, then as you turn you see a long time love walking away as you stood there wishing things were different that spring day. Shaking the proverbial memory away, you leave remembering that first August day you came. The heat, the fear, the same walk to the parking lot.
The only difference are there are more blooms now than 16 years ago, and you are certainly worse for the wear.
As the week rolls on, and the pressures mount and the catastrophes accumulate, your birthday passes with you waking up forty, alone, and mostly unemployed. A friend you made plans with vanished, and in the end it was like every other day with you spending it alone. today, though, decidedly more miserable than the past. Yet, when the people that you held closest can't be bothered to remember to say it, and then make it your fault since you aren't talkative and are keeping to yourself, life has shown another way of where you stand.
It's not about the birthday though. It's about being the failure, the colossal joke, the public recourse for everyone's amusement but your own. At some point I'll recover. In the meantime, I'll figure it out on my own since I've learned--once again the hard way--of where I stand.
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