Into the void...
“That night she sat for hours, too numb even to drink, teaching herself to breathe in a vacuum. For this, oh God, was the void. There was nobody who could help her. Nobody in the world. They were all on something, mad, possible enemies, dead.”
-Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
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2002-05-09
3:36 a.m.
Three weeks from today, Rob and I will be on our way to Boston with our lives packed in a 25-foot truck. I used to wonder why people seemed to always settle so easily in the place where they were raised, but now it is more than clear to me that people stay where they are because it is such an incredible pain in the ass to move. Moving is one of the single most stressful adventures one can possibly encounter in life.
So much has happened lately, and I have been so neglectful of my journal that I want to smack myself upside the head. Rather than do that, though, I think I will be a bit more productive and simply begin writing.
I have recently begun work on my latest book. This particular book is going to take a long time to complete, but it is by far the most ambitious task I have ever set for myself. It is going to require a ton of research and devotion to the task, but I believe I can do it and I believe the final product will have been well worth the effort. I have set for myself the task of writing the next Great American Novel.
To hell with The Great Gatsby; it’s an amazing book, but I can do better.
This new project of mine has been quite the lifesaver lately because I have been undergoing an awful lot of stress. I know I haven’t quite come out to say it directly yet, but I have lately been dealing with the discovery that the job I had in Boston last summer -- the job that I had loved for two years, the job that told me I could return after a leave of absence of nine months in Georgia -- distinctly screwed me over by telling me they no longer wanted me back.
I don’t believe I can describe to you the gravity of the devastation I felt upon learning this.
Not only had my boss told me he would love to take me back after my journey to Georgia for the school year, but in fact it had been his idea in the first place to call my leaving a “leave of absence.” Had he not told me from the beginning that I could easily return to my job, I may have reconsidered coming to Georgia at all. The assurance that my job would remain open for me was one of the major factors in my decision to move to Georgia.
Silly me for taking people at their word.
Of course my boss decided that the replacement I found for him specifically so he wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of hiring someone else turned out to be a better fit for the position than I was. That was supposed to look good for me, but instead, I’m now stuck without a job. All of this, of course, has nothing to do with the fact that my replacement (a mid-western drama queen with a brain the size of a peanut) specifically told me that I could trust her not to screw me over in the end.
And yet I find myself disgustingly screwed.
From the start, there was a small part of me that kept saying, “Get it all in writing,” but I stifled the voice, telling it that not everyone was out to get me. “You can trust these people,” ran through my mind continuously. “Your bad experiences with people in the past have been largely unusual and are unlikely to happen again.”
Why am I always wrong?
Upon discovering that I was no longer able to take my job back, I had about a two week period of sleeplessness. I endured fantastically disturbing nightmares when I ever DID fall asleep, and I spent the majority of my time trying desperately to regain my composure. Every time the slightest thing went wrong, I was barely able to restrain my tears, and I nearly collapsed several times at work because I was so emotionally devastated that I couldn’t handle ANYTHING.
I have also found myself largely incapable of eating since I found out the bad news. My stomach is constantly twisting itself into knots, and food looks to me like it is going to turn against me like everyone in the world always does. Why does bad news always surprise me? One would think I’d be so used to it by now that it would barely affect me, but yet I wonder what I could possibly have done wrong to warrant such a negative turn of events.
Then I realize the sad truth: few people in the world have a conscience like I. People care entirely for themselves, and when it comes to the way they influence someone’s life, they don’t care if it’s in a positive or negative way.
It’s not personal; it’s business.
Before I left for college after graduating from high school, my dad insisted that I read Dale Carnegie’s How to Make Friends and Influence People. Under the impression that reading the book would make me the most popular person on campus once I arrived at school, I hungrily attacked the book and took to making certain that I followed the advice of Mr. Carnegie.
In the book, a very simple idea is presented that seems to me now like an obvious truth of existence. Carnegie suggested that one encounters many people along the path of life, and it is up to us to determine whether we would like to affect people in a positive or negative way. He gave an example of a person whose day could be marvelously brightened by a quick smile from a stranger, and my life was forever altered. I wanted to be sure to smile at people and be certain that they took with them an impression of me that improved their view of life and lightened the load on their shoulders on that particular day.
This was quite an undertaking for someone who so rarely smiles through the underlying depression. However, I learned that no matter how much I am hurt by life and no matter how much destiny fucks with me, I can always smile and be sure to make someone else’s life a little bit easier. Sometimes, the depression in my brain makes it physically painful to smile at someone, but I do it because I want to make the world a better place for everyone else. I want to affect people in a positive way regardless of how difficult it is for me.
I believe that life is unrealistically painful. I believe that human life and the existence of a consciousness is a horrible crime against nature. I believe that to be human is to be in pain. Thus, I made it my goal in life to ease other people’s pain, no matter the cost to me.
This task is quite literally killing me.
It is not at all easy to smile at customers who come into the clothing store where I work. It is not at all easy to be perky and lively in order to make their shopping experience more beneficial. It is not at all easy to suppress the pain that wants to constantly bubble over into the exterior portion of my life, but I do it in order to save other people any undue anguish.
People tell me I have a beautiful smile. People tell me I have beautifully cheerful eyes. People tell me I have an innocence about me that should never be forsaken. People tell me that I am the most helpful person they’ve encountered in life in a long, long time. On the inside, though, the pain is nearly unbearable. The tears are held back for the sake of others, and the fury is suppressed in order to ease the injustice which oppresses all human beings. My rage eats away at my soul and causes insistent rumblings of thunderous thumping in the chambers of my heart.
And yet I smile.
I do whatever I can possibly do for anyone who requests my help. I drop what I am doing to comfort someone who requires immediate attention. I spend my time replying to people whose lives are plagued with constant reminders of their mortality. And the other side of the spectrum continues to press onward in search of a reward for their selfish desires. They take one more step up the ladder of success, attempting to convince themselves that the squish beneath their shoes was not the utter devastation of someone less well prepared to deal with the occurrences of life.
Nevermind that they step on our heads; if they achieve their goal, the end will have justified the means.
For some reason that I couldn’t immediately comprehend, my first reaction upon hearing that the three people involved in my returning to my previous job had simultaneously decided to fuck me over was to start screaming about my anxiety disorder and my depression. This is extremely unusual. I hate to bring up my disorders in the course of my daily endeavors. It seemed relevant this time, however, and I wasn’t quite sure why. It has since occurred to me, though, that I brought up my disorders thinking people would feel bad enough for me to hand me back my old job.
I suppose I had forgotten that people have no respect for mental disorders.
I would hate for my disorders to have any impact on my professional life, but the simple fact of the matter is that they do. People don’t understand that anxiety and depression affect my life so greatly that I can sometimes barely remember my own name. Once I find a job I can do without too much difficulty, it seems like a monumental achievement. I can’t do just anything. My condition requires that I do something which allows me the time to lick my wounds and further my attempt to recover.
What do I do now? What do I do now that the three people who assured me of the same job nine months ago have determined to ruin my life? I don’t know. But you can be certain it’s a damn good thing I have Rob. Without him, a blow of this magnitude would have been far too much for me to handle, and I would likely be dead now. Why can’t more people try to have a positive impact on people they encounter? I am reminded of the situation with Psychobitch two years ago.
The horror continues.
