Got an e-mail from a job search site listing careers that pay more than $140,000 a year.
I opened the message but didn’t click. I figured fuck, nobody values what most consider to be my best skill.
Ask any of my brothers in arms (and tears) — if you want to earn anything above a living wage, prepare to be shamed.
How dare you think your skill set, even if you are at the top of your game, is on par with “real” work.
I don’t need to be rich. But I don’t need to be slut-shamed because I enjoy the occasional company of men. I don’t deserve to be fat-shamed because I have a sedentary job and utter exhaustion outside of it. I deplore being female-shamed because I think I work harder and have just as big a nutsack as the boys’ club. Bigger, even, in some cases.
So how dare I feel like I don’t deserve that salary.
My friend A. posed a question today that haunts me. What am I afraid of?
I said peaking.
This can’t be as good as it gets. It has to get better before it gets worse.
And I don’t want it to get worse. I don’t know why it has to. But that’s my fear.
My fear isn’t that I don’t earn that particular figure. It’s that I’ve gone as far as I can.
I deserve 10 times that figure. And that I just stopped and dismissed the possibility means something is very wrong.
And I don’t know how to fix it.