Caterwauling

A friend of mine just let me know that a mutual friend has some jealousy issues when it comes to me. And it made me laugh my head off because, really. If I laid out on the line everything that’s going on here at Chez Caterwauling, a lesser person would lodge a bullet into his or her frontal lobe. (Personally, I’d rather lodge one in someone else’s, but only if I get to choose the recipient!)

And I asked, um, does that person know how hard things are for me lately? That sure, there’s glory to envy, but it comes with more than its fair share of pain, frustration and strife? That, if I think about it, the person who is looking wistfully from the outside in actually has more of what I’d consider to be my ever-elusive fairytale?

The prospect of someone wanting to grow up to be me is certainly intriguing, although it’s slightly laughable at this point in time. Because I would rather have that person’s life. In a heartbeat. Give me a “Freaky Friday” switcheroo situation and I’ll be good to go.

Don’t get me wrong — maybe I’m mistakenly thinking the grass is greener elsewhere as just an impulsive response. I’m down with that. That’s clearly what has started this discussion, no?

But to quote yet another friend, *waving a hand from top to bottom,* “All this doesn’t just come together, you know.”

I don’t sit around debating all that’s wrong with my life or that’s wrong with me, for that matter, because it’s depressing. When I start to think about all the stuff that should bother me, well, it DOES bother me. So I don’t acknowledge it. I’m a happy person on the surface and I’m pretty well-adjusted beneath it, too.

If I would sit down and chart things that are going right versus life’s little shitstorms, believe me, the teeter-totter would break under the weight of all the steaming hot poo. So I don’t approach things that way.

But it’s funny to actually have someone — if not outright begrudge — then at least envy me for one or two things that I’ve busted my ass to earn, well, have at it. But if you had them, too, you’d get the additional Santa sacks of shit that I have to carry as well.

And that’s why I never want to trade places with anyone else. Nobody’s got it good right now. Everyone’s frustrated and on the edge in my world. Personally, I’m seriously beginning to take issue with the fact that I can’t drink on the job or at least expense my wine purchases 🙂 But I also have enough sense to look at my previous life and know that while I might have worked fewer hours (except those two overnights a month. I don’t miss those), I actually like who I’m working for and that counts for more than you can imagine.

Of course, as I was getting screwed over at Ross (think Marshall’s or TJ Maxx meets the immigration office), I was thinking damn, I work too hard to have to shop at shitty places like this. My life is no longer my own and I’m wondering where the days went when my decisions only impacted me.

But I also remember being a scared rabbit, so afraid that saying or doing the wrong thing would be the death of me. It was a not-so-brief period when I started my new job, after exiting my last one with as much grace as I could muster amid the unfairness of it all. Hell, now I probably couldn’t get fired if I tried. 😉 (See “asking for alcohol expense account,” above.)

I guess I’m struggling, as do many people my age, with determining what’s really important. You hear these too-surreal-to-be-true (but oh, they are) stories about someone being diagnosed with something heinous or someone escaping a terrible ordeal with nothing but their life or their child — the one they tried so many years for and love more than life itself — having some sort of issues that love alone cannot fix, and man, you feel petty and stupid in comparison for revolving your whole existence around work, around finding a significant other and/or around rebelling against the very convention/tradition that you secretly crave.

So, you can envy me all you want to, but when it comes down to who’s living the life they want and who’s living the one they’ve wandered into, totally bewildered by the labrynth that never seems to unwind itself, then apparently the grass really is greener over here. And in the meantime, I will dream of what it’s like to play hooky “just because” and not feel this constant disappointment that I haven’t done enough in a day, as I stare over into other people’s yards. …

This entry was posted on Monday, July 30th, 2007 at 9:19 PM 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.