Caterwauling

I was going through some old paperwork, as I had notes on constructive confrontation that I wanted to share with a colleague who has her hands full.

Anyway, I found something I’d written (as I take copious notes) that threw me for a fucking loop. I mean, we all know I am apt to say fairly bizarre shit from time to time, but I don’t capture it for posterity unless it’ll help or amuse me.

I don’t have it handy, as I threw it across the room, but under a section in a workbook under “what I learned today,” I’d written that “I understand how my unwillingness to conform to very specific rules and expectations and the fact that I like to question why things are done the way they are can be very frustrating to my supervisor, and I must change my behavior.”

Read that again. Did I believe that? Did I honestly put pen to paper to program myself that way?

Jesus Christ.

Seriously.

This was from early 2002. When I was supervising the CEO’s crack-addict niece and doing all her work because she was hired as a grantwriter and psycho loudmouth bitch couldn’t even write a declarative sentence. Constructive confrontation? I could write a BOOK on it. Especially when the CEO would tell me to discipline her, only for her to go back to her auntie and be told “I will make sure Goddess doesn’t bother you again.”

C U Next Tuesday, bitches.

When have I been absolutely unwilling to do ANYTHING? I think I get the most props for my joy at dropping everything to lead and/or pitch in for special projects and circumstances. Well, “props” might be stretching it — but still, the hell?

Those people had me so on-edge and feeling so ashamed of everything about myself that I had no identity left when they got done with me. It was hard to leave — it was hard to leave the salary, the brief amount of financial comfort I’d finally (and never again) achieved, the vast array of men to date there. 😉 Although truth be told, all any of us were doing was trying to find a measure of comfort, of not being demoted/suspended/written up/excoriated, in each other.

This discovery, of being so demeaned as to give up my strap-on so quickly, rocked me pretty hard. I became the girl who, after several doomed relationships, realizes that she’s the common denominator and therefore she’s damaged goods.

I had a long soul-searching session about this. Was it me? Was I that horrible? Why do I always need to vent, to rant, to process? Why do I always question — why do I always want to make things better? Why am I so sensitive to, and so scarred by, injustice? Why do I always think the answer is to show how tough and resilient I am? Why do I punish myself when everyone else has inflicting those wounds pretty much covered?

As I was trying to explain to someone today, how is anyone ever going to learn to take care of him or herself when everyone else is making it abundantly clear that unless they live to serve, they should have no other purpose?

It’s hard to hear opportunity knocking, over the sound of your own heart breaking.

I was blasting my new Evanescence CD on the way home tonight (last night, this morning, whatever), particularly “Lose Control.” And wow, did I actually wake up from my coma:

“Just once in my life,
I think it’d be nice,
Just to lose control, just once,
With all the pretty flowers in the dust.”

Wouldn’t that be fun, to just take something and smash it to bits, just because you feel like it? To inquire whether people are insane and to tell them exactly what their (in)action requires/required from you? To express every blessed emotion the second you’re having it, in the way you deem most appropriate?

I knew people like that. Well, more accurately, I was unwillingly thrust into the position of hostage negotiator/cleanup crew/person who talks to the police/dumbass who pulls them off the ledge. It’s a theme in my life, really. I don’t nurture me. Everyone and everything else demands it of me to do it for them. And if anyone would wise up and realize that if they didn’t expect it, then I’d be more than willing to do it because I cared, wouldn’t that rock?

But what I’ve found is that I can pull a thousand people off the ledge and not a goddamned one of them is going to do it for me because they don’t think I’m capable of jumping. They expect I can take everything dished out, and I can. But I’m finding out that even I have limits, and they’re dangerously close.

I hate those fuckers for making me feel like I had to write such garbage, that I owed it to them to straighten up and fly right when I was a model fucking citizen. I hate owing people. I hate hate HATE feeling like I owe somebody or something any more than I feel like giving them because I GUARANTEE that I will be going above and beyond, absolutely unasked.

You know what I fear? I fear finding something/someone really, truly deserving of all I have and want to give, and I’ll have nothing left of me. I fear losing that control — I don’t want to end up like so many people I’ve known and wounding those who could have loved/helped me most. I don’t want my arms to be too tired to reach out and grab onto something worth holding because I’m beholden to the beast that would let me go if only I had the energy to run.

This is Goddess without alcohol, drugs or sleep. Hopefully I’ll meet my demons head-on and slay those bitches in my dreams. Because they’ll keep taking and taking my energy otherwise if I keep letting them. If I could put my foot down and leave that insane asylum workplace I wrote about earlier, hell, I escaped Satan’s handmaiden. I’m sure I can conquer a demon or two without much effort in comparison!

Weakness makes me doubt myself. Loss of control indicates weakness. I am strongest in crisis. But I’d like to try operating in a non-crisis mode someday. Then again, how will I adapt to it if I don’t ever get an opportunity to try?

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 14th, 2006 at 1:22 AM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.