7/14/03

I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep getting up every morning and coming in to a place where I’m talked down to, hated and shoved around. I can’t do it.

This job is the reason I have lost myself. I’m slipping back into that depressed, anxious, little girl that just wants to be happy. God forbid I am ever happy. God forbid I am able to wake up in the morning, go to work and come home with a smile on my face.

I don’t fit in here. I can’t excel in this type of place, a place where I’m expected to kiss ass and take abuse. I cannot for one second, make myself believe that I deserve to be treated like an ignorant nobody. I can’t make myself believe this because it’s not true. I am a human being for crying out loud just like everyone else in this world. The executive on the twelfth floor, me – the lowly technical writer, the kitchen staff, the maintenance staff, and the bum on the street corner outside, we’re all human beings and we all deserve to be treated as such. There are some people in this place that would prefer to think of me as a machine. I am not a human that makes mistakes and has a life and feelings, I am but a machine and when that machine fails it is broken and needs to be fixed. Inside these ugly pink walls I am not a human.

The moments of job satisfaction I have are short lived. They’re usually quickly replaced by a reminder that I’ve made a tiny error somewhere and have failed in my task at becoming the perfect machine.

Those moments where I have a good day I find myself coming back. Then as quickly as I’ve found my happiness again it’s torn away from me and replaced by frustration and feelings of complete and utter hopelessness. If I cannot become the perfect, flawless machine I cannot excel at this job.

I cannot excel at this job. I am not, and will never be a perfect machine.

The most frustrating thing for me is the feeling of being trapped. The economy is in the shitter and therefore jobs are few and far between. What good would another job be anyway though? What am I qualified to do? Not very fucking much. The thing that makes me the craziest is that my husband works in the same place I do, he’s about 30k a year underpaid. I make less than 30k a year. If my husband was paid what he’s worth I could probably actually take out some student loans and go to college!!! This place is holding both of us back in more ways than one. As it stands we need my income and there’s no way I can go to college and work full time. My body would shut down from the stress.

I feel sometimes, like I really fucked up somewhere. Then again, I don’t know. I feel like I got ripped off mostly. My dad and step-mom refused to pay for college if I got married and moved to CT. This though, was something I could not turn down. After four years of marriage I am glad I didn’t ditch marrying my hubby so I could go to college, really glad. I feel like my dad should have been more respectful of my decisions. He said he wanted me to go to college really bad, he wanted me to have the opportunities he never had, at least that’s what he said. The part of me that still loves my dad wants to believe he really felt that way. The part of me that thinks and knows and understands my father on an intellectual level knows my father is deceitful and selfish. My father refused to pay my way to college because he wanted me to stay in Oklahoma. He wanted me to go to Tulsa University and live at home. He didn’t even want to me to go to one of the State Colleges, they were too far away. If he really wanted me to have the opportunity to make something of myself he would have paid my college tuition no matter where I lived. It’s not like I could have taken the money and used it for something else. I’m not that kind of person and he knows it. Maybe I’m wrong but I doubt it. It’s already slipped once that they thought I’d just be divorced and home in a year anyway. No one had any faith in me.

No one ever has had any faith in me or my choices even though I’ve proved time and time again that I am intelligent, that I DO know what I’m talking about and what I’m doing. I’ve never, in my life done anything I wasn’t sure about. I’m not very impulsive although I may seem it. Everything I do has been thought out, and thoroughly.

I know I’m young and I know I still have time to get what I want out of life but I’m not known for my patience. When I see things standing in my way that shouldn’t be there it really bothers me. My dad should have at least helped me get into college. My husband shouldn’t be so underpaid and I shouldn’t be treated like I’m some superhuman at work.

I feel in a way like my father has punished me for making a decision that has turned out to be a good decision. He took away my chance at getting into a good career early because I wanted to get married. He showed me he had no faith in me by bragging about how I’d find out my mistake and move home within a year. He always told me he’d make sure I got into college no matter what. Where’d that promise go when I decided to make a decision for myself? Right down the shitter, of course. It’s apparently horribly wrong to grow up and be your own person, make your own choices and leave home. I always thought that was just part of growing up.

Keep the faith, my boss told me today. I’m trying but faith isn’t something I have a lot of anymore.