Caterwauling

“Welcome to the inner workings of my mind
So dark and foul I can’t disguise
Can’t disguise
Nights like this
I become afraid
Of the darkness in my heart.”

— Ms Mr, “Hurricane”

My handsome California friend (you know, the one who sent me wine from Napa that got stolen at this dump I live in) posted on Facebook Friday. And it got me to thinking.

I was killing myself to end my day early because, on the second workday of the year, I was already burned out.

He worked a 14-hour day where he wrote a book chapter and did a whole bunch of other stuff that had him PUMPED.

He’s quite the Renaissance man, too. Plays guitar and sings, has horses and a gorgeous dog and cat, loves his wines and basically loves the shit out of his wife and life.

And it occurred to me that even though I work and try hard, I don’t have that, “OMG I LOVE MY LIFE” feeling at the end of every day. Or any day with the exception of my recent and altogether too short vacation.

I want to feel that way. That’s not a resolution for the new year. That’s a resolution for NOW.

My anxiety is killing me. Quitting early only leaves me feeling incredibly nervous — either that I’ll be replaced with cheaper, less-sassy labor or that I’ll have to work 80 hours next week to make up for it.

I’m never really sure which is worse. But I’d also like to NOT find out.

Like the old Garbage song, “I’m only happy when it rains,” apparently I’m only relaxed when I’ve given every ounce of energy to everyone else. I just wonder how I can give what I can, still keep my job and give some more to me so that I am better-equipped to keep going and serving and doing and producing and, maybe this year, dreaming up big ideas too.

Any suggestions from the peanut gallery?

You know, there’s a certain peace you can derive from when a relationship ends, when you accept that, “Sometimes, relationships just end.”

Then you hang out with someone who has the details on WHY it ended and what ended it, and that rips open the nicely healed scar with a jackhammer and pries it apart with a rusty crowbar.

I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I KNEW he thought I was after a damn ring. JESUS H. PEOPLE I AM NEVER AFTER A DAMN RING.

I wanted his heart. I would have been OK with more. Hell, I started dreaming that maybe I could have the normal life after all with him. So FUCK ME for maybe giving off a vibe that I was considering NOT GOING ANYWHERE for a while because he seemed like a keeper.

So, fine, it ended. He pushed me away. I didn’t let him at first. I fought. Oh how I fought. And I gave up.

And now I hear, “I knew there was a You before there was a YOU. Do you understand that? I heard about everything wonderful you did … how you never gave up … and how he appreciated how you loved him and fought for him because he’s no easy man to love.”

The hell, man?

I might have given up too soon, to hear the tale told from the impartial third party. I felt like I hung in there longer than I should have. At the point I was hurting MYSELF over and over and over again, I had to let go.

My friend says to me, there’s still a chance if I want it. Of friendship or otherwise.

I would be OK reviving the friendship. I wanted that more than anything on this earth. Even when everything else was supposedly gone.

And I see how people who can’t take a hint wear on my nerves. Whoever told them that girls mean yes when they say no, needs to be cannibalized.

I said I took all the hints. Why does this make me a bad person?

It doesn’t, but I need to stop taking them. And going back to the way I was and helping to bring this person back.

Apparently only I can do it.

My superhero costume is at the cleaner’s. My capacity to care for anyone beyond myself is sorely limited. And even that’s as half-assed as I can possibly half-ass it.

Trust me, I’m not husband-hunting. And certainly not among my current and immediate past circle.

But if someone needs me, well damn it, count me in.

I don’t know where I’ll find the capacity, but where this one was concerned, I could always find it without batting an eye.

Because I don’t get my fill during the day, Evil Landlady 3 (yep, 2 got fired and the new hydra head reared itself) is responsible for me NOT getting the only Christmas present shipped to me this year.

My handsome California friend sent me a gift on Christmas Eve. Mom has been in that rental office every day before and since to get it, only to be told I received NOTHING.

UPS tracking reveals the new bitch signed for it on Christmas Eve. And Goddess is out one expensive bottle of wine.

I am giving my 60 days’ notice today. I give up. I seriously cannot take their stupidity and lies anymore.

Now to figure out how to get rid of all the other disappointments in my life …

All I wanted on my first day back to work yesterday was to leave at 6 p.m.

Since I started at 6 a.m., I figured this wasn’t too lofty a goal.

So at 8 p.m. when I arrived home to find Mom was waiting to have dinner with me because she thought I’d be home at 6, I sort of short-circuited.

And by “sort of short-circuited,” I mean “searching the want ads.”

I love my field. I love what I do. I love most of the people. But damn it all to hell, I am not certain that compensates for everything else anymore.

I smiled all year as people ignored me and I learned their jobs. I “licked dick” begging people for things I desperately needed and never got. I danced circles around people outside of my editorial/marketing expertise and fixed HTML and FTP and other issues hours before they even read my SOS e-mails.

Last night, great example. We needed to change 2013 in an HTML template to 2014. After I broke the UTF-8 encoding on one of the templates, I called everyone for help. 3 out of the 4 experts have less expertise than me. The fourth and ultimate expert is on vacation, so I tried another department.

So I make the other guy stay late and he helps me make the fix, but then the fix broke the usability function for the non-adept in HTML layout. And as I didn’t want to do the layout myself (because, it was past 6 and that would take me till 8), we reverted back to the wrong date so I could leave at 7.

This after I fixed an FTP issue that occurred at 4:31 p.m. because, really. The building alights at 4:29 p.m., as (my imaginary) folklore has it.

Now, you say, Goddess, you could have stayed the extra hour. And yes, I could have and normally would have. But to what end, really? Yes I want the date right but no, frankly I’m tired.

My smile has been stretched to the absolute limit. I don’t know how much longer I can hold it.

That’s why I’ve created my 6 p.m. rule. I have to feel like I have some control, some freedom, some respect for myself.

I read somewhere that kids’ job is to play. They don’t need to “relax” like the rest of us do. When they have “free” time they play some more … they play till they go to bed … they play till they’re dead.

When’s the last time any of us played?

Let me rephrase, when’s the last time any of us played whilst frolicking through NYC, NJ and PA and didn’t come back home and get slammed with a crapalanche and immediately regret having a taste of playtime that they’ll never see again at this rate?

I had five days off, and yes three of them were either weekend days or nationally recognized holidays. But still. I have to put out a newsletter at 8:30 a.m. and I have no clue how that’s going to happen.

So, yeah, not ready to go back to the “grind” when A) I never really left it and B) it’s resuming with a crisis.

My health problem didn’t solve itself. Nor did pumping myself full of drugs for a week. So, I start off the new year with the same stupid health issues and the same TIME issues that got in the way of them in the first place.

This year, however, I’m prioritizing me. And Mom too. We deserve it. If we’re going to see 2015, this has to be the “year of no.” In other words, saying it as much as I hear it, if not more.

I have to resume a discussion about making one of my people happy financially. And damn it, if it’s at my own expense (and I think — no, I KNOW — that will be the case), well, I have decisions to make.

I went to visit a friend whose husband is a firefighter. Who has days off and vacations and even has dead days at work where they’re sitting around decompressing and getting ready for the next big event.

They don’t burn themselves out (pun not intentional, but appropriate). They don’t guilt themselves that they didn’t work fast enough for put in enough hours or time or save enough people. They do their best and they take care of themselves and they stay on the squad for decades at a time because they CAN and because they WANT TO.

And I laugh that I work twice as many hours as him and my job isn’t exactly vital to humanity, you know? I take this shit so seriously and so does he, but when it comes down to it, the world doesn’t need my damn fairy dust that I crank out. The world does need what he does.

Maybe that’s why I work so hard. Well, the “keeping a job the world doesn’t need” is part of it. The “spending insane amounts of money to compensate for everything else that’s missing” is another part.

I was telling him about what a joke my condo is. He said he’d never want to be a firefighter in Florida. At least up north, most houses are built sturdily and there’s a chance of saving them. In Florida, he said, everything’s so flimsy that the firefighters basically just wait for the structure to burn down before putting it out. No challenge in that, he said.

And my building is the tallest piece of shit around. It would collapse in a heartbeat. And if I didn’t already feel like I needed to run for the hills, well, talking to him sealed the deal.

So, I’m not ready to go back into my hamster wheel. But I guess if I need to move and afford things, I guess what I want isn’t up for debate. Hand me a new barf bag and let the motion sickness begin again.

Only this time, remind me to make a doctor’s appointment or else, I mean it, I ain’t gonna make it out of this one intact, let alone alive …