What's next?

This is one of those posts, where I will attempt to be clever, to be profound, and/or to shed some positive insight on something. But, I will probably fail, miserably.

Recently, I went with Chloe, her mom, her sister, and one of her best friends to look for a wedding dress for Chloe. She is getting married next February, about a year to the date of when she met her husband to be. I may have even written about the night my bubbly, light-blue-eyed friend let lose those eyelashes of hers and batted a boy into her charms. But I honestly can’t recall if I did write about it.

That’s still the blow of me being a blogger. Having given up the need for perfection, to just get my writing out there, as a by-product, of not looking back, my memory constantly fails me. Either that, or I’ve dropped my basket completely.

If I did post about their meet-cute night, I’d have bragged about what a great wing woman I am. I would have explained how I got up from the table Chloe and I had been sharing, and how I extricated myself from the conversation, leaving Chloe alone with this good looking, Irish, geek-sheik of a guy who I thought was a good match for her.

I would have gone on to say how I suffered through conversing with a table full of meat heads for as long as what I thought was necessary for the mating ritual to get off the ground for Chloe and this possible prospect of a man. A man who had already been leaning his way into Chloe, leading with that smile of his, one that emanates from his strong and jutting jaw. He’d also been beaming at her, with his own long-lashed light eyes, through retro horn-rimmed glasses. They’d barely noticed I was gone.

It worked, me ditching the table, because here we are now with a wedding in Chloe’s future. Not that I can take credit. That’s not where I was going with this. Where I am going with this is that here we are Now. For the first time in my life I was watching a girlfriend trying on wedding dresses, yet I didn’t feel a tinge of jealousy. Not even a spec.

I’ve been a maid of honor three times and a bride’s maid at least once (I keep thinking there’s someone, or another, I’ve forgotten), but this time I didn’t wish that it was me who was choosing the dress. I wasn’t mopping up silent tears somewhere inside—like I’ve done before in the past—or putting on a brave face and falsely grinning my way through, wondering whether I’d choose lace, beads, or bows for my dress.

I didn’t care, at all, about dress dazzle, about going for a sleeveless number or not for myself (which would depend upon the width of my arms), or if I’d go with a long or a short veil, or if I’d even wear a veil.

If you’re curious, I’d probably choose flip flops, the beach, and a dress I could throw in a wad in the corner as soon as the sex part of the evening was afoot. Along with a tasteful menu, I’d also serve Cheetos at my reception, just so people would wonder: WTF? And, because I’d want them to be faced with making a choice as they went to wipe the orange snack dust off their fingers: just wipe; wipe and suck, then wipe again; or suck the dust off first then wipe (which is really the best method). Being presented with these choices would leave many of my guests with a smirk, reminding them of whose wedding they are at.

Actually, the liar is back. I was putting on a brave face whilst sitting their amongst Chloe’s closest peeps, and there were some tears I was holding back. But it had nothing to do with me coming to another year of my life passing by and me not having found anyone to share my life with. I’m still convinced that’ll come when it does; five minutes or fifty years from now (Well, five minutes would be tough because I’m at home in my pajamas at the moment, so there’d have to be a knock at the door.)

True, you are probably recalling that I thought it might be this year I’d lock my lips on a winner-winner chicken dinner of a man, but, it’s look’n like my intuition might have been wrong on this one. But I am fine with being wrong. Really. And, it feels pretty incredible to be fine with something that used to consume me when I was younger.

Nah, the tears I was holding back were stress tears. Stress, stress, and more stress. Work stress. Home stress. That’s what is consuming me now and I don’t know how to cough it out.

The whole time I was watching Chloe beaming and battling between dress choices, because of cost, style, and because of the opinions from her loving peanut gallery, I was just hoping I wouldn’t dampen her day or spoil the mood with my shit. (I was seriously ready to burst into tears at any moment and call uncle on my stress.)

I was also silently feeling sorry for every girl who goes through the wedding planning ritual, and thinking: Blah, blah, cake, location, wedding dress, blah. Holy screw this!

It’s all so ritualistic and nauseating to me now (and this has nothing to do with Chloe), how it is supposed to play out for women, this wedding business. Societal pressure, religion, family expectations, self-imposed expectations, it all just punctuates the picking-out-the-dress part of it, and the every-other part of it, and makes all the parts of it not seem like me anymore.

I’m getting progressively turned off by the idea of a wedding at all for myself. It’s about the marriage and about the person you are going to be willing to fall in and out of love with for a life time. Once I’ve chosen the right man, eloping would probably do.

What the hell, though?! I was watching my friend trying on wedding dresses, and didn’t even have it in me to feel that normal jealousy any single girl would feel while watching a close friend get to do something she always thought she wanted for herself.

Who am I? How did I become the girl who cares less when and/if she meets the right guy? When did I become the girl who’d choose a great apartment, that feels like a home again, and a new job, that doesn’t feel like hell, over love?

I’ve always been a love conquers all girl. Now I am not? Call the press. Some stressed bitch has taken over my body.

What changed? When did I snap and become incapable of getting my rubber back? When did love become an after thought—something to care little about? Is this earth? Really? Am I going to wake up with an alien probe up my ass? Where did I go?

How have these stresses in life made me so overwhelmed with my experience on earth? The anxiety of a job has never gotten to me like this, to where I feel frayed at every end. Maybe not having the sanctuary of home to retreat to after a day on the battle field is what’s pulling my threads out.

Or, maybe I became this fritzed out, and this frenzied resemblance of a girl, the day my current boss, just a couple weeks ago, pissed all over me in a meeting. Is that it? Have I not bounced back yet?

I’ve never had a tongue lashing before, personally or professionally. I’ve certainly never gotten verbally beaten down within earshot of about 10 people who were just trying to sit quietly inside their cubes and offices to do their work. (I had a feeling I should have closed that conference room door the second I’d walked through it. Damn it! Why didn’t I listen to my intuition that time?)

But how could I know I’d get slammed for having the wrong information, information that was given to me by someone who was supposed to know their shit. How would anyone prepare for a public slaughter? The crowd doesn’t care if you are guilty or not. If someone picks up a rock, like the big boss (we’ll call this boss Bull #2), and throws it at you, for whatever you did or didn’t do, the crowd isn’t trying to discern your guilt or innocence. Mob mentality takes over. Then the buzz begins. “Did you hear? So and so got pummeled in the town square yesterday.”

This brings me to my next question (I have many questions I haven’t been able to answer for myself yet): Am I more concerned about what those 10 folks think, if they think I am failing, or if I think I am failing?

The boss, Bull #2, knew the information I had was crap, and that it wasn’t my fault I was mis-informed. That’s why Bull #2 was so mad. The boss was fumed enough to call five more people into a meeting later that day, including the person who’d mis-guided me, to let everyone know just how wrong we all were. (Go team!)

But the people outside the conference room, they didn’t know everyone got it wrong. They just heard I got something wrong and they just figured out that more people were in a room with me later that day and they could hear Bull #2 doing even more yelling.

Yet, over the years, I’ve learned not to care what others think (mostly). That’s why I am wondering if this is more about my own need to succeed, my own desire to feel good about what I am showing up to do 8 hours a day, then it is about what those other cube/office dwellers think about me.

I think what’s becoming increasingly harder for me to deal with is that I am being set up to fail. I am being treated like spackle, spread so thin and expected to fill so many holes, on so many major projects, that I am too busy trying to learn everything that I am not learning anything effectively. And, while failing at anything is tough, feeling like a failure at something that isn’t, remotely, personally satisfying, that’s weight upon weight. Weight I am not shouldering well.

Sadly, there is no comfort in the fact that I am not the only one feeling stressed by the atmosphere I work within or by the work being given to me by the big boss. Other people in my office, they are just as poised to snap like an uncooked spaghetti noodle. That’s what happens when you all work in the same larger environment and for the same bully of a boss who barks out a billion big-ass projects to be done simultaneously and to be done yesterday. Even those expert in their positions feel like they are drowning, failing.

One person I work with told me that their body went numb, that they had acute chest pain, and they weren’t sure if they were having a panic attack from the stress of work or were having an actual heart attack. They went to the ER just to be safe. That’s not good.

Someone else confided in me that the atmosphere of the office has got them so maxed out they almost passed out at the gym because they were having an anxiety attack while on the tread mill. That’s just as bad.

More worse is that those two people aren’t the only ones who have shared that the build-up of work, and the way Bull #2 manages projects, shifts priorities, and fears people into producing more than what’s realistic, is causing them enough mental anxiety that it is physically manifesting itself.

Well, at least everyone I work with is normal. If they didn’t admit to medicating with alcohol, breaking down in tears, popping aspirin for the headaches, or drinking the pink stuff for the upset stomachs, then I’d really wonder if the aliens had transplanted me to an unusual hell, where people aren’t emotionally and physically affected by stress.

But the absolute worst part, is that while Bull #2 could use a good kick in the soft skills, the big boss I had in the last division was also a bully and also used intimidation to manage (we’ll call that big boss Bull #1).

It was Bull #1’s threatening ways that caused my previous lead to snap. Guess who took that hit? Me. Wait, so I have been verbally beaten before. (How could I forget that?)

Yeppers, my old lead, who we’ll call Lead, let loose all over me in a meeting, too. I was trying to clarify something for our medium-ranked boss, so the medium boss could take the information back to Bull #1, and Lead’s Asperger ass, getting frustrated that the medium boss wasn’t understanding me, body shaking violently, face reddened profusely, and fists clenched fiercely, unleashed this frustration all over me.

Lead couldn’t have directed this frustration at the medium boss, who often musunderstood things, because that’s not how it’s done. Don’t you know? You always step on a lower rung.

Two of my co-workers, who witnessed Lead’s psychotic break, wanted me to file a grievance against Lead. They’d never seen such a thing. I didn’t file or go to HR. I just wanted peace before departure.

One of my past co-workers is still convinced Lead is a sociopath and I could be in danger. I still just think Lead has Asperger’s syndrome and couldn’t contain, in that moment, the silent rage of being so socially uncomfortable. (We’ll find out if I was wrong if someone finds my dead body in a ditch and Lead has left town.)

The shit really does roll down hill where I work, though. By the time it gets to those who want to do a good job, a lot of times they’ve gotta eat shit to do it. It’s sad, really.

When people are sharing their horror stories about the wildly inappropriate behavior exhibited by the higher ups (leads, department heads, division leaders, VPs, and so on), and they are actually competing over who has had the worst experience with so and so, or with so and other so, and this goes on all over, that tells me that I work in an environment, as a whole, which not only tolerates this behavior, it is considered the cultural norm.

But I'm fine with this bullshit at work, with all the loose ends in my life, with whatever this all means. This is life, right? We’ve all got stuff to learn, our dung to dig away from. And, sometimes, when we thought we made the right choice(s) to make life a little lighter, then we find out that we may not have turned the right corner, we can feel a little stuck. But, again, that’s life. I’m fine. I’m so NOT fine.

So why do we say we’re fine? Because we want to be. We want to be better than fine. We want to be great. Therefore, the best we can do is fake it until we make it. Faking it is part of keeping our inner world from getting gutted.

Is that the beauty of life, that because we gain knowledge more easily than we gather wisdom, we don’t always know what to accept, what to change, and we don’t always have the courage or the wisdom to know the difference or how to make the right change?

Is that how we learn, by failing? Is that how I got to where I am, where I tried to trade up on home and on work but seem to have traded fucked for both? What happens after the failure? What happens when we’re too busy licking the salt out of our wounds, or too exhausted from getting licked by life, that we don’t have much energy left over to re-balance one or more of life’s major stressors: work, finances, relationships, family, health, safety, security, or home. (A complete list of all of life’s stressors, along with batteries, and wine, has not been included.)

But we’re agreed, yes? This journey in life isn’t always gilded in gold. We’ve all been through hard times. Sometimes life’s shifts are easy. Other times, making a shift kinks the mind so much it feels like the very change that’s supposed to be making you stronger is more like taking a lightening bolt to the back of the head.

Then, just when you thought you were going to put the fire out from your latest zap, to keep the rest of you from being scorched entirely, you realize more smoke is coming out of your ears.

By my own making, my fragility and my fortitude have been on display for almost a year now. I’ve gotten better at not needing a character to hide behind in order to be open and share certain truths (or I’ve gotten better at caring less about what others may learn about me), but I’m not getting better at hurdling some of the boulders in my recent path.

Still. I’m a gear shifter. I know this about me, and you’re probably get’n this about me. As one of life’s passengers, one minute I'm riding sunshine. The next minute, I'm farting dark clouds of my ass and complaining. And, while lately, the forecast has been a bit rainy, and something smells funny, I’m still hoping for sunshine. I still believe it’s around the corner.

I hope so; because if one more dark cloud cuts my ass off in traffic I’m afraid I might get so banged up I’ll loose my bumper and won’t be able to take another hit, or, worse, I’ll run out of gas.

Ava, in her infinite wisdom, reminds me that it is all about perspective. Good point. That brings me to my next question. How is it that at first the experience of having taken on so many changes in my life (breaking up with a guy, moving, and getting a new job) made me feel more powerful than I’ve ever felt?

Yet, now, I miss the sanctuary and familiarity of my old apartment of 13 years (even with the butthead’s noise) like a divorcée might miss her pain-in-the-ass ex-husband. Seriously, I continue to mourn the loss of that apartment like the conclusion of a 13 year marriage.

I also find myself wishing for what my old job offered me. Not the management, Bull #1, the medium boss, or Lead (actually, in spite of the incident, Lead was pretty cool to work for). I miss the mind-numbing work vs. the extreme stress of this new position and the beyond stress of working for Bull #2.

Is it always about security and sanctuary? Is that why change is so hard, because it isn’t secure? Is that what I’m feeling? Or, is it that I can embrace change, but the changes I’ve recently made aren’t the right changes, yet?

This is a strange place to be in, where I am at, questioning everything, even my own reserve.

I know I have the reserve, though. I’ll eventually figure it all out. This, too, shall pass.

In fact, I am more worried about and for a dear friend of mine than I am worried for myself. This dear friend, who has gone through tragedy after tragedy in the last six years, sent me a text, than repeated in a conversation, that if it wasn’t for their child, they’d be done.

Yes, this friend meant done-done.

Wow. Ava and I have been talking about the fact that whatever it is, whether it’s this, or something else, we all have to learn to cope with what our current lesson in life is. But to see someone in my life having that overwhelming feeling continue to build, to get worse, so much so that it has gotten to a point for them that if one more thing happens they’ve admitted, they won’t be able to go on, that’s the ultimate loss of perspective.

That’s someone not asking: What’s next? Like, “Let’s go. Ready. Let’s get to the good parts. That’s someone saying: What’s next? “Is it going to be that one last thing that does me in?”

I’ve been left with more questions than answers when it comes to my own humanity, and there have been times in my life where I have felt vacuumed out, but even while I am going through what I am going through Now, I still feel great about where I’ve come to in life.

Under the tarnish of all this stress, I’m still shiny. I’ve had the pleasure of becoming a person who doesn’t want to apologize for loving herself. And I have come to this wonderful place, where I’m grateful, where I want to be me. Period. And, I want to be here, even if here, with work and home, sucks right now.

I know if you don't believe in life's magic, then everything in life becomes tragic. I know what it is to feel like you’re continually fighting to catch your breath, I’ve been there. It feels like you’re being robbed of your magic, your sense of purpose. A place without purpose and magic is a place without hope.

Part of the magic is knowing that in spite of everything we go through, we do, and our life does have a purpose. That’s perspective. That’s the magic.

I know this is a heavy post, but if there is anything fabulous to be gained from this post I would ask that you remind yourself, and everyone you know, especially someone like my dear friend, that because we are all connected, because we are all magic, we have purpose.

Stay fabulous and keep the perspective! Remember that whatever is next, hard or easy, it’s where we’re supposed to be because Now is all we have to get us to where we are going.

(And hey, depending upon what you call hard, getting something hard in your life might not be all bad.)