aliment

It’s not that I don’t have anything to write about. I just don’t know where to start.

I have waxed vitriolic about my job a couple of times before in this space, but each time has left me feeling inarticulate and just as frustrated as before. I suppose that it wouldn’t matter if I wrote 10 words or 10 000, I couldn’t adequately or accurately express what goes on at work or how I feel about it. Perhaps this is simply what happens when a small group of people spend a lot of time together and boundaries are overstepped.

But these are the things I do know:

1. I have skills beyond what my job description and managers recognise and allow me to do. My goal in life was never to be a personal assistant, receptionist, or administration officer.

2. I feel under-appreciated for the other tasks outside my job description that I perform on a regular basis.

3. I could receive more than $10K per year additional remuneration (plus salary packaging and flex-time) in another job, even at an entry level.

4. I have irreconcilable personality differences with one manager - and both, sometimes - that make me miserable every single day I am at work. I spend approximately 80% of my waking hours barely managing to suppress my rage and unhappiness before collapsing into bed, exhausted, at the end of the day.

I need a new resume. And enough guts to quit. Soon.

I really, really need a new job.

The one who was smitten with his car.

The one who smoked heavily and wouldn’t kiss me because I liked to chew musk lifesavers and he couldn’t stand the taste.

The one who changed.

The one who invited me back to his flat while his girlfriend was in Europe.

The one who sent me purple and yellow flowers for Valentine’s Day, which I later threw in the bin.

The one who controlled through withholding and silence. I have had to learn not to care.

The one who made sure I was always losing.

The one who told me he feared he’d never find another girl like me. And then got married 9 months later.

The only one that matters.

1. Purple pansies
2. Afternoon storms with slanted, gusty rain
3. Eating crackers in the dark and listening to the Whitlams
4. A stack of unread books on the bedside table
5. Fresh bedsheets with a crease still down the middle from folding
6. Butter
7. Bonds singlets
8. Milky Earl Grey tea
9. Happy goldfish
10. Unstoppable belly laughter

I have started to write this entry about 7 times now. Nothing seems to fit right. But I have some words in my head.

My boss emailed me a few weeks ago when I was too ill to make it into work. It’s hard to believe right at this moment that I was so despondent at the time I could barely eat. For all of April I subsisted mainly on cups of tea and sleeping tablets.

My boss wrote:

Life can certainly throw many things all at once. It has been my experience, however, that when this happens there is usually something amazing, more and better than you could have ever possibly imagined just around the corner.

Sometimes the depth that you may fall is far exceeded by the heights you reach when you start the climb back up.”

And I thought, when I read it at the time, what a load of tree hugging hippie crap.

… But you know what? I’m sitting here at work in my tricky dead-end-ish sort of job, and my size 8 clothes are hanging loose on my frame again. My face has broken out and I am desperately tired. But I believe those words.

I can’t wait to climb this hill.

“…but suddenly there it is
right in front of you
bright and vivid
quietly waiting
just as you imagined it would be.”

And what about the second greatest thing you will ever learn?

How to love and not be loved in return.

  Every day my heart cracks a little more. Your nonchalance. The indifference. I didn’t mean to fall.

[a good enough disguise, until I get some sleep…]

I feel an almost ferocious need to sleep at the moment. The last two weeks have been hard. I haven’t been able to eat. I haven’t been able to concentrate. I have barely been able to think about anything except how much my heart hurts.Yesterday was the first day in more than ten where I didn’t feel the immediate compulsion to vomit upon waking. I got up and had a shower and I neither felt I was going to pass out nor throw up. It was great.

But still, the desire for sleep… I’m inexplicably tired, yes. But it’s more emotional escapism and less physical fatigue. If I’m out cold, swimming in a syrupy sea of post-work exhaustion or benzodiazepine stupor, it’s so  much nicer, so much easier than being conscious and alone.

It sounds screwed up and it probably is, but I’m not looking for pity or concern. I have nobody to talk to about this, so I write. I deal with stress in a completely dysfunctional way. I guess I simply don’t deal with stress. I lose the ability to function - to get up, to eat and drink, to smile and talk, to rest healthily. I can do deadlines and busyness, I can do other people’s problems, I can do financial strain and job and house hunting. What I can’t do is gut-wrenching rejection.

I don’t know when I’m going to feel better. I’m OK when I stop thinking. So I sleep.