Get Me Through

Monday, February 16, 2009

Finding Me

I am going through what I hope is the end of my quarter-life crisis because if it keeps on much longer, I'm going to skip any semblance of normalcy and coast right on into a mid-life crisis.

Mostly, I hate my job, and I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. This would be more interesting if I was not already grown up. Since I am, it's irritating. Mostly, I hate listening to people whine all day long. I have two groups to listen to: the "customers" and my "co-workers." These two groups spend the entire day whining to me about things that don't matter. And my co-workers are worse than my customers. To be frank, I don't want to save the planet, and I am sick of hypocrits who think they are saving the world by arguing over the last meeting minutes. You're not saving anybody. Stop being assholes. That is what I would like to say. Instead, I excuse myself and go hide in the bathroom for a few minutes each hour.

Then I come home to my real life and work two hours of overtime (for which I should be grateful) and plan my wedding, which, frankly, stresses me out. I should be happy to have lots of work at this time. Mostly, though, it is just really stressful. But, I need the money. Who doesn't right now? We all need money.

God and I are not really speaking very often. When we do, it's fine. I'm not willing to keep bending to fit into this job. If that's a condition of being on good terms with God, then I am probably going to be on the outs. Once this economy recovers, I am going to get the hell out.

I've given up on finding something that I will love doing. I would settle for something I don't hate every. single. day. I would settle for not dreading going to bed because it means that I will have to wake up and trudge into that job and sit there for eight and a half hours before I can go home and get back to my real life that actually means something. I would settle for something that kept me busy until the whistle blows at the end of the day. I would settle for something that pays enough that I don't have to work every fucking waking minute of my free time in order to pay for a garden, a house, and future fat babies and their college funds. I would settle for so much less than happiness if it just paid a living wage and didn't make me want to walk out on a regular basis.

The truth is, I am bored with everything except my fiance. He calls me every morning, and this gets me out of bed. And maybe if I didn't have him, then I wouldn't realize how good and shiny everything can be and I wouldn't notice that I am so fucking bored. Maybe without him I would think that everything was fine because I wouldn't have anything bright to run home to except two more hours of work followed by long, empty hours that I would have to fill with something.

But I did find him, much to a few people's dismay, and he made me see that I was only living half a life. There's a whole other half filled with vegetable gardens and lovely dinners and foot rubs and snuggling. Snuggling should come with a warning label. It is just that good.

Two people asked me when I'm going to go back to school in the last two weeks. I don't think I'm ever going to go back to school. I don't think I care enough about school. I mean, it might make me less bored, but I don't want what my co-workers have. Most of them have wrecked marriages or insane schedules or both. I'd rather stay in a lower level position. I once asked someone higher up the ladder than I how she balanced her outside life with her work life. She laughed and said, "What outside life?"

And that was the moment. That was the moment I stopped trying to struggle up the ladder. I remembered the book called Hope for the Flowers at that exact moment, and I just quit climbing. Why do that to myself? Why do people do that to themselves?

My fiance says that most people don't have the capacity to just realize what they are and change themselves. I do it a lot. I realized that I was turning into a corporate drone, and I just said to myself, "I'm not going to do that anymore." And I quit. I put in my eight hours, and I go home. And I would like to find a job where it is easier to put in my eight hours each day, but I'm never going to try to climb up the ladder. I think all that's up there is more pressure and more work. I would like more money, but I don't need more pressure and more stress and more work.

Why don't people have the capacity to change? It is my firm belief that everyone knows what they are, but most people can't face it. They pay lots of money to various people to tell them what they already know, and then they don't do what they need to do to get better. My fiance says that this is because most people can only change after years and years of therapy, and then only maybe. I don't get it. He says that people can't change the type of people they are attracted to. He's completely different than my last boyfriend because I made a concentrated effort to change who I dated, mostly because we were just so bad together. As long as we're apart, we're both good people, but together, we were terrible. I was clingly, and he was bossy, and we were both just plain old mean to each other. It was toxic, and it broke me, and it took years to get over it. But on the other side, I knew what it had been, I knew what I had been, and I knew what I was looking for. My fiance says it's not that simple for most people. I think he's wrong. It is that simple. It's just that it takes time, and people would rather spend that time in someone else's arms than spend the time looking inside themselves. Most people are scared of what's in there. I know what's in there. I know my darkest depths. I have few surprises left for myself. When you know your own depths, then facing them gets less and less scary, and changing becomes easier and easier.

I change myself all the time. One day, I hope I will become the butterfly I was supposed to be before my best friend killed herself. I cannot wait for the day when that death will stop affecting me and my decisions. I cannot wait for the day when I will no longer expect people to walk out of my life and leave me. I am always waiting for someone to leave me. Even my fiance. I wait for the day when he will realize my depths and head for shallower waters. I know it will come; I know it will cause me great pain. I don't care. I'm going with him until the time when he gives up on me. And when he gives up, I will change again.

I don't understand other people. I don't understand people who can't do anything they put their minds to. Maybe I'm just an elitist. Maybe I'm just smug.


When I get through this quarter life crisis, I hope I'll have become someone that my grandfather still loves.

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