Today the Sads

I’ve written a lot of that which delights me. Today I am accosted by sadness, by all the projects undone or not started, by the way my foot hurts from being stepped on in the dance.

Obtaining a job online – it’s like computer dating – the chances of finding tall dark n handsome offset by the stupids: list every job you ever had, dates & times, titles, locations & reasons for leaving. Well, my job history is pretty long. I might could tell you my first job was as a dishwasher was with Fitzgerald’s Drugstore in Wildwood & I left in September 1962 for high school. Best of luck getting a reference.

They want too much information & not enough of the right stuff, like I enjoy working. I am good at it. I get stuff done. I’m good with people. I’m a problem-solver.

Unity is the second job I voluntarily quit in my life & I have worked since getting my “papers” & my social security number at 16. But today I feel as though I will never be worthy to work again. It’s like love, I’ll never be worthy again. Just to show you how twisted I am, work was my choice over love my whole life.

Today is a loss day. I’m walking the dripping woods with a hobgoblin on my shoulder whispering what a loser I turned out to be.

I hear that work is now a “hurricane” since I left. I get cryptic texts about “what is/where is/how do I” on my phone. I see the place upended like the butt end of the Titanic going down in all those old movies. The band members have already slid into the sea. One friend cries as she tells me I need to be there. Except I don’t anymore.

I cannot work with a narcissist extraordinaire who makes accusation her #1 motivator & who insists on privacy while discussing my errors with peeps at lunch. She had a month to possibly rectify the situation, but chose instead to bring in a contractor (at twice my hourly rate) for 25 hours per week. She did this five days before my departure & told me to teach her everything she needed to know. That’s how little the “boss” – a card-carrying Unity Minister – thought of my work.

There’s a little girl inside boo-hooing & snotty-nosed. She’s getting loose. Time to get the plunger & stuff her back. Or time to let her out & heal? My choice.

My self-image has always been tied up with my work ethic. It didn’t matter if I’d forgotten to bleach my moustache if I got the report done on time. Or if I had an unnoticed stain on my blouse if I showed up & answered every question anyone asked me with a solid solution. I chose my work over my daughter, over my husbands & relationships.

I’m worn out with stuffing things back. I have found it comes out in other ways.

This time alone, not working, is to heal. It is time to allow the sadness of “failure” to out itself. Time now to root out fault-finding, to leave things behind, to understand that no one’s future, let alone mine, is assured or geared to success as all the markers have changed. The life I lived is no longer available for review or notation. Only the feelings remain – like all the self-help books say. “How does that make you feel?”

No snack food will help here, no rubbing my eyes, no self-examination which seems to turn up scars when I cannot recall the wounds that left them.

Today I stick my hand out from the pile of rubble. The other one is holding onto that child.