Resignations and Revenge

Like anyone who has ever had a job—I have fantasized about quitting my job frequently, especially when ridiculous things happen.  How empowering and rewarding would it be in to pick up your purse in the middle of being yelled at by your boss, grab your coat, walk for the door and just say, “Guess what?  I quit.”   I’ve had this little fantasy running through my brain every time I’ve been called down to the carpet for something.   Sometimes it’s so vivid in my mind that for a horrifying moment I think I’ve actually said something out loud. 

However, when it came down to actually giving my notice yesterday, the whole exercise was surprisingly civil. And to clarify, for the vast majority of those I work with I have ZERO animosity and I even will really miss working with them.  But for maybe a few key players, I was really looking forward to saying the things I’ve choked down for the past year.  Mostly out of fear of the repercussions, which in my mind always lead eventually to me turning tricks and living in a box by the river.   So when I turned in my little piece of paper, a carefully crafted gracious letter of resignation, somehow it felt like a breakup where you think of all the terrible things you want to say to your ex, but instead you just end up giving him back his CDs and wishing him well.  And while the vindictive, insane part of my brain is kicking the back of my eyeballs screaming, “you should have said THIS!” overall I’m glad I was tactful and diplomatic.

They say revenge is a dish best served cold, and I think everyone at one point in their lives has imagined themselves to be Robert DeNiro’s character in “Cape Fear,” doing sit ups in a jail cell, laying in wait to take revenge upon those unsuspecting fools who wronged you.  My five year high school reunion is coming up, and I can’t tell you how much I wanted to come back with a huge diamond ring on my finger, a lawyer/doctor/Jew/ on my arm, and 30 lbs missing from my frame.   That would show ‘em—all those assholes who were mean to be in High School.  

Another thing they say about revenge, however, is that the best revenge is living well, and the more wisdom and life experience I gain, the more I realize how true that really is. This is why I’m not going to my high school reunion.  And that’s why I have every intention of making sure that I leave work on the best possible terms—instead of ripping off my clothes like the incredible hulk and flipping over desks on my last day.  Because I don’t need to exact revenge for all those times I was made to feel like a child, or the late hours I worked without so much as a “thank you”, or the times I was yelled at over something for which I had no responsibility.  My revenge will be living well.  And in a little less than a month I’ll be in Baltimore.  And I’ll be living well.     

"Create Your Own Story"

As a kid I used to read those "create your own story" books.  At certain points in the story you had to chose between two plot lines and then turn to the appropriate page.  Sometimes the choice you made would cause the story to end abruptly, whereas other choices would lead you to a happy successful ending.  This was a stressful exercise for me.   It felt like too much responsibility and I always ended up looking ahead to make sure the choice I made would be "the right one."  This is probably a good metaphor to how I make decisions in my adult life.  There is that same panicky feeling under the weight of expectation and certainly the same desire to cheat, look ahead, and make sure I pick the right thing.

Similarly, I play the "what if" game a lot of the time.   I was talking to my friend Ryan last night, and he said he would allow himself to ask "what if" until he had to say it three times.  At that point, he felt he could confidently label it a pipe dream.  For example, "what if I had said x that night" followed by "what if when I said that she said y," and finally "what if when she said y we got back together and then got married."  Three "what ifs" probably not going to happen.  Reasonable strategy.  I, in stark contrast, give myself 500 hundred "what ifs" before there is even an inkling in my mind that what I'm aspiring towards might be irrational.

People generally have two distinct attitudes about life; either there is an order, a destiny, which even free will cannot upset or cause you to deviate from or life is a series of cause/effect situations completely determined by our free will.   I do not want to believe the second circumstance, because if there is no one in the driver seat of my own life but me, I am fucked.   I couldn't even create my own story in a book I read in second grade, how can I possibly create my own life?

I've been grappling with this whole concept recently because I am slightly paralyzed with fear at the thought that I am making wrong decisions.  In the deepest, darkest recesses of my mind, one incorrect choice can alter my life irrevocably--so the decision to sign the lease on this apartment vs. that one might be the difference between being successful, happily married and living in the suburbs or dying from a heroin overdose on a smelly mattress in the projects.   Seriously.  So obviously, I cannot chose the wrong one.  

I don't know why I visualize it that way, but for some reason I have the idea that there is a path my life is supposed to follow, and I must follow concrete steps in order to get there.  Except I don't know what they are, and I won't know until I'm on my deathbed and everything turns out to be shitty.   Like I'm baking a cake with no directions but I better fucking figure it out or my cake is going to end in wasted potential, abortion, drug abuse, and general malaise.   That may be a bit of a mixed metaphor. 

But still, I really would prefer if someone else would create my story for me.  It's 2012, I'm all about outsourcing.

My tire

I don't remember very much about eighth grade health class and most of what I do remember is about someone asking what "snow-blowing" is and my teacher being a lesbian.  I do, however, remember a diagram we were forced to look at during school.   It was a tire, a simplified version of the "wellness wheel" with divisions for different areas of your life.   Categories like, "home", "friends", "work", "school", etc.  And the point was, when you put too much or too little emphasis on one area, your tire won't roll.  When one area of your life is shitty, all areas of your life become shitty.  I think conversely, the opposite is true--when something starts going well, even the parts of your life that aren't ideal seem suddenly less shitty.

The proof of this was staring me in the face this Thursday when I had dinner and drinks with Claire and Sam.   The three of us have been enjoying nights out since July, right after I started my current job.  The phrase, "what a difference a year makes" doesn't even begin to cover it (and lest you assume I have the counting skills of the guests at a shotgun wedding--I know it hasn't been a full year).  Claire, Sam, and I all had really tough situations this year.  In all areas; family, work, love, housing, etc.   Interestingly enough, as soon as Claire and Sam left the office for their new jobs, everything else seemed to line up.    Like one minute everything is terrible, the kind of practical joke terrible where you get hemorrhoids and a puddle splashes up on you as a passing car drives by.  The only thing they're clinging to is the prospect of a new job and then BAM!, great new relationships, renewal of old ones, ten pounds lost, and for emphasis, a magic dewey glow.  During this period, while it was great to get together, after a while it was difficult to hear about how life had turned around and was fabulous for everyone else when I wanted to do nothing but pull the covers over my head and listen to Matchbox 20.

Last Christmas, in the midst of this, I was so dismal and depressed, I had started going through the stages of grief for my own life.  Denial:  There is no fucking way that it's Friday and I can't stay up past 10pm.  Anger:  I did all the right things; good grades, moral decisions. How can this be my reward?!  Bargaining:  Ok, if I focus really hard on work and a diet, life will give me happiness, yes?  Depression: Matchbox 20. Acceptance: I actually skipped that stage.  Instead, I started looking for my exit strategy.   Happy to say, I found it.

So when I walked into dinner and saw Claire and Sam sitting there--instead of being secretly jealous with grey skin and an even grey-er disposition.  I got to be happy too!   I did some weird pinup shit with my hair, I put on red lipstick...I even made jokes!  And not all of them were self-deprecating (most were, I'm still me).  We laughed.  I told them the story of a lady at my work asking if one of my areas was "diverse" in a stage whisper and how I responded, "Not much diversity, the area is pretty much all black".    Further proof that I have my sense of humor back and don't take myself as seriously as I did a month ago.

I'm pretty much full of all the hope and optimism that has alluded me for the past couple months. Things are going to work out.   That is hippie bullshit I've never believed, and instead I've operated on the assumption that "no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse."  But I believe it now.   I'm going to start completely over, for the second time in roughly a year, but this time I'm not doing it because it's what someone else wants and I don't know better than to argue.  It's because I know what I want. And I genuinely don't give a shit any more.   As I said in the self-indulgent picture I posted of myself with my cool fifties hairdo, "Shut up, bitch.  I'm fabulous." Now if you'll excuse me.  I'm out to get a massage.

My own private Oz

I get nostalgic about very few things.   I'm not one of those people who is prone to romanticize things that happened in the past, so walking around my old elementary school for example, does not invoke a longing for an innocence long gone by but instead the memory of spoiled milk and being teased for needing a training bra in third grade.   While my peers cried at graduation and wished, "college would never end" I snuck sips from a flask full of vodka cranberry and made fun of the masturbatory aspects of the ceremony with a classmate from the INS program.  I have thrown away all the old love letters, but kept the old gifts from past relationships.  I am not often accused of being sentimental.

One of the few things that does make me sentimental, however, is Washington D.C. My time spent there a few years ago was one of the few times in my life I felt like everything was coming up Annie. That city is my fucking Oz, and I was pretty damn happy not to be in Ohio anymore.   I made professional contacts, great friends, and on more than one occasion, stupid mistakes that I should be too embarrassed to talk about but I'm not because, firstly I have no shame and secondly, they make hilarious stories.  I typically think of myself as someone who plays it safe, so it was fun for once in my life to get giggly and sloppy at Happy Hour on a Tuesday or to have to ride the metro in last night's clothes while the hip moms were on their way to their morning yoga.   When I went back to the Midwest, I said goodbye the the yellow brick rode and settled back into the day to day drudgery of adulthood, but it gives me a huge amount of satisfaction to know I used to be fun an wild and that few who know me now would ever suspect. 

So driving into D.C. Friday after my interview in Baltimore was quite literally like coming home.  As soon as I got to Chevy Chase I started to get tingly with excitement, and seeing the Capitol building in the distance is every bit as thrilling for me as it is for an adolescent boy to see a woman naked (I can only assume).  Adding to that excitement, I had roughly 24 hours jam packed with seeing some of my favorite people.  Friday night I met up with an old friend, to whom all my other friends from D.C. refer to as "my kryptonite".  This is a man I find both irresistible and vaguely terrifying. I get strangely coquettish and tongue-tied and I do this really charming thing were every time when he asks me a simple a question I forget any word I've ever heard in my entire life, and stutter for a while, which probably means his friends refer to me as "that retarded girl". Then Saturday morning, I met up with my old roommate Emily, to tell her all about seeing my kryptonite the evening before, which is exactly what happened almost every weekend two years ago.  She's naive, wholesome, and beautiful to my obnoxious, cynical, and inappropriate and every time I see her I think, "this is what I want to be when I grow up."   She does really adorable things like ask policemen for directions, whereas I got chased down by an angry Samoan parking attendant for neglecting to pay him (I thought it was free on weekends!)

My lovely sister and brother-in-law were also in D.C. visiting a friend of theirs from the Peace Corps, and we met up finally on Saturday afternoon.  Nothing makes me happier than seeing my sister with her friends.   They're all hilarious and I never would have guessed there were others like my sister in existence, but when I was invited upstairs to find Jeanie's friend Kyle in a towel, and I started to apologize for the intrusion, he just waved and Jeanie told me, "We're all very accepting of nudity here, Annie."   So there are more like her.   And what can I saw about James? I used to really not want to like him (because basically I was the adult equivalent of the child who screams to their new stepdad, 'I hate you, everything was fine before you married my mom!') I now adore him with cult-like devotion because he does things like carry me around piggy back so I won't step in dog poop.   

I am excited to (hopefully) be leaving Dayton soon, but I'm more excited at the prospect of being a mere hour from D.C., able to pop in anytime and see my friends, relive my glory days, and just generally be single and in my twenties.  I think my weekend in Oz may have made this ulcer die down a little.

Chihuahua

I'm pretty sure I am working on an ulcer.   This entire week (and it's only Wednesday) I have been fighting back a feeling in the pit of my stomach that feels like what  happens right after you reach the bottom of the first hill on a roller coaster. I am constantly a deadly cocktail of "nervous" and "terrified".   I have not been sleeping.  I have been eating.   Neither of these are good news.

So why am I the human equivalent of a wet Chihuahua right now?  A couple things.   One of them; my propensity to do things which I know are bad for me.   For example, last night I went out with my coworkers and ordered 10 (they only come in 10, 20, or 50) chicken wings from Frickers.  I promised myself I would eat 5 and take the rest home, but instead I plowed through 9 and would have eaten the 10th but I needed to leave something on my plate to keep me from a level of self-loathing hitherto only see by self-flagellaters during the Middle Ages.  

And I don't mean to limit my symbolic self-flagellation merely to my eating habits.   I also continue to, just as I always have, hang out with people and put myself in situations, that cause an unhealthy occurrence of connecting synapses within my brain.  And lately, it's been even more than usual.   I make up my mind, logically weigh pros and cons, and then I end up doing exactly what I had decided was the stupidest possible option.

  I had an ex-boyfriend (ironically, one of these people who was unhealthy for me) who always used to say, "Judge things by their fruit."  Which I think is actually a good way to cut to the quick of an issue.   Do I feel better or worse when I hang out with this person?  Does this make me happy?  There is no room for justification or excuses in this approach, it's a yes or no question.

For instance, I had a crush on this guy a little bit back, like I doodle his name into my notebook kind of crush.  I thought he might have had a crush on me, but really, he never reciprocated and allotted me only borrowed scraps of his time.  Instead of thinking, "Ok, this isn't going anywhere, and it makes me feel like shit to know I'm so low on his list of priorities,"  I redoubled my efforts, hoping that sometime soon, he would come to his senses and realize I was the cat's pajamas.  Guess what?  That never happened.   Occasionally, I will get together with him, even now, and I lie to myself and say, "I just want to catch up," or "I want to show him how accomplished and okay I am without him," but the real reason (somewhat to my shame) is that I still am hoping he will come to his senses.  Guess how that's working out?  And instead, I feel lame and stupid and pathetic, not accomplished or okay. 

It always puzzles me how other people seem to have their shit together, and I am such a sensitive, crumbly, dysfunctional mess.   And people think I'm intimidating?   Not so much lately.

First Impressions

I had a book about astrology when I was little.  It had a chapter on each sun sign, and under my sign, Virgo, it said, "First impressions are important to a Virgo."  This is extremely true, I wrote a blog about my first impression deal breakers, and there were thirty of them.  With the help of my deal breakers and my strong ability to read people, I can tell within the first minutes whether or not I am going to like someone.  I have never been wrong.  Every time I get a bad vibe from someone, and I try to talk myself out of it under the guise of being a more tolerant person, after much time and effort my first impression is proven right.  Always.  

I understand, however, that not everyone can suss out character instantly, and that first impressions sometimes are incorrect.  So, I am hyper aware of the first impression I make, which results in me lying facedown on my bedroom floor in frustration (also in my underwear) before a first date because I have absolutely nothing to wear.  And why sometimes my college roommate walked in to find four of my outfits strewn out on the floor, because I had to try them all on and then I made myself so late I didn't have time to put them away.   But a first impression isn't only about what you wear, and honestly, I have no idea  how well I do at making a good one.   I think I come off as kind of a bitch--hopefully a well dressed bitch, but a bitch nonetheless.

Shocker alert: I am actually kind of self-concious and shy.  And because of that, sometimes when I meet people, I try to arrange my face in a neutral, reserved expression.   Unfortunately, while this is a coping mechanism and it makes me feel more in control, it also makes me look like I'm angry or maybe like I have a stick up my ass.   I can't tell you how many times I've heard, "When I first met you I thought you were a bitch. But you're totally not!"  Hmm, thanks?  One time a guy came up to me at a bar, with the pickup line, "Hey, my friend bet that you're a bitch, but I said you were probably friendly,"  I responded with, "Nope, your friend was right."

Another funny first impression story: My sister's friend, Jeny, is the nicest girl in the world.   She's a special ed teacher and petite and blonde and maybe 100 lbs soaking wet.   Adorable.   When a mutual friend of Jeanie's met Jeny, he said, "I don't trust that little one."   Jeanie told Jeny about it, thinking it was hilarious and poor Jeny was racking her brain to figure out what she could have said or done.  Possible theory?  Jeny looks like that guys's fiance, who is a little bossy and overbearing.  Which makes it even funnier.

Just today, a friend of mine, sent me an email including what his friend (whom I've met once!) had said about me.   When I met him this FridayI was really nice and friendly to him I thought, and I was in a goofy, friendly (read: intoxicated) mood, so I wasn't nervous and doing that thing where I arrange my face.   So imagine my shock when I found out this is what he said about me:

  "I found her slightly menacing.  Like she had too much power.  It was really interesting.  So...good luck"

Jeanie and James

I've written a lot of blogs featuring tidbits about my something funny my mom said/did and I also like to feature some of the calm, collected advice my father, (true to his role as the only sane, non-ball of hormones member of the family) has bestowed to me.  But I seldom write about my sister.   I have one.   I know she has been featured in a couple blogs before, for instance Sister Bonding.  But the truth is, sadly, I don't talk to my sister very much in my day-to-day anymore, which is why she doesn't pop up as much as my mom (who I call, email, or text multiple times a day) or my dad (with whom I have marathon phone conversations).  But the truth also is, my sister is one of my favorite people.

Most people who meet my sister comment that they've never met anyone like her before.  She is an odd bird, a strange duck, and someone who truly marches to the beat of her own drummer.  Which is also the title of a song she made up about Henry David Thoreau in fifth grade for a school project.  She used to lead me on countless fantastic adventures; from playing "tightrope" on top of the monkey bars as a little kid, to playing "body parts" at the bar as an adult (it's totally fun, I'll explain it to you if you want).  

If I wrote a personal ad for my sister it would read:
Have you ever found yourself driven by the need to run around your house naked and flail around, disgusting your whole family?   Do you take great pains to play soothing music for your plants because you believe it makes them 'happy' but you break into hives at the thought of making dinner reservations?   Are you loud and outgoing, the life of the party, but actually hate being the center of attention?  If so, I am your dream girl!  You and I should go to an obscure ethnic food eatery which will probably give us both dysentery, and discuss moral relativism and how even trees have souls!

Needless to say, I was concerned about the dirty, smelly hippie weirdo Jeanie would bring home for keeps.   I love love lover her--but she's my sister, so I can overlook a lot of her nonsense and idiosyncrasies whereas in another non-related human these very same qualities would drive me to the brink of insanity (or at least constipation) in the act of trying not to say something bitingly sarcastic to her paramour which would be interpreted as aggressive which would lead to Jeanie being mad at me and my mom asking why I couldn't just be a lady.  Again, I will repeat, I was concerned.  Especially since Jeanie did not date very much in high school or college, so I had very little concept of what she found to be attractive in a member of the opposite sex.  A nudist, maybe?   A drug dealer?   Or worse...gulp...someone who voted for Ralph Nader?!

But thankfully, while her current adult relationship is with a man whom one would not consider to be, conventional, it is with a fantastic gentlemen who fits pretty seamlessly into the family. Which is good news--because she married this one.

Without going into too much detail out of respect for my sister and brother-in-law (yay, I have one now!) who are both intensely private, I want to share a little of their relationship.   They met in Morocco while they were both in the Peace Corps, and in typical Jeanie fashion, interacted further when Jeanie stole food from James's plate citing "friendship" as an excuse.  James, understandably annoyed with food-theft from someone he considered more of an acquaintance than a friend, called her on it, and so obviously, to repair the damage, there was nothing left to do but to actually become friends.  Well, friendship turned to more, and last year they married in a private spiritual ceremony, just the two of them, without any family.  This caused my mother's head to fucking explode, especially having never actually met James. Fast forward a year later; vacations and holidays spent together as a family, and everyone is on board with their arrangement and spiritual marriage--but being conventional folks to Jeanie and James's non-conventional, my family was thrilled to bits to hear that the two of them decided to make it legal.  In the United States.  Like, they can get credit at a mattress store or visit each other in the hospital kind of legal.  And better yet, the fab four were all there, plus his mom and sis, to experience the joy together.  In an Italian restaurant by simply signing a piece of paper.  You know, like you do.  :-)

I wish you both a blessed and happy marriage, Jeanie and James.  And this time, I was very happy to actually be able to be there to experience it's legal consummation (oh wait, maybe that is something else.  No I wasn't there for that--I meant like, legal documents).