“If this is the dynamic you’re used to, no wonder you can’t interact with people in a normal, healthy way.”
QB’s response to this week’s crisis (my family putting down our 15 year old dog and informing me via email) is pretty spot on. I’m way over my tears budget for this year, so I’m not even going to write about the emotional agony of losing a four-legged friend. Almost everyone goes through it eventually, but this has happened to me three times in the past 4 years and there’s not much I haven’t already said.
Anyway, this response got me thinking (almost always a dangerous thing). But it’s true. Normal interactions elude me even when I’m pretending really hard to be normal myself. It’s not really flattering to think that your own personality is “wrong” and getting in the way of your own life, but for a long time it has been.
I’m shy, secretive, defensive, self-destructive, easily intimidated, stubborn, and proud to a fault. And it’s ruining my life, which honestly has never needed my help being shitty, anyway.
Latest example: I’m terrified of my boss. I have no idea what she wants from me, am convinced she thinks I’m an idiot, get very flustered in front of her, and avoid contact or asking for help because of these reasons. I will go to any lengths to get by her. Which is ludicrous: ostensibly she is here to teach me (and provide a recommendation, should the need arise). But I can’t get over it. Today is my mid-internship evaluation and I’m half-convinced I will either be sent home in shame or reprimanded for all these things I do that I know are stupid and wrong (even as I continue to do them), but cannot seem to help.
Did I used to be better, or was the universe just asking less of me?
Pedaling back to TN tonight as fast as Space Ghost will carry me to drown my anxieties and depression in a sea of cupcakes and trashy tv.
Third week down. If it's not opening boxes to uncover a circa 1920s mouse nest, it's shooting things with a laser x-ray to determine their arsenic content. Well, watching someone else shoot the laser while shielding my eyes. Ain't no way they'd trust me with that.
Messed up in several different capacities this week, but it's looking like I can get by with feigning enthusiasm about things like relative humidity and the acidity of tissue paper and taking up all the conversation time with those issues. Just keep talking. At one point, my boss said, "Do they offer counseling at your school?"
ALB: *nervous, bitter laughter*
Boss: "I mean career counseling."
ALB: *embarrassed silence*
So there's that.Salvaging my sanity with a weekend at QB's full of chicken and chocolate.I had a frightening moment of self-awareness when I found myself wearing a dress and heels to Wal-mart, though in my defense, I thought we were going to Cracker Barrel later (still does not excuse it). Also RuPaul's Drag Race, which, if you haven't seen it, is one of the funniest damn things on the planet. Alyssa: "I call it 'Alyssa's Secret'." RuPaul: "And what is Alyssa's secret?"Alyssa: "Uh... I'm a man."
For further info, this here:
I cannot imagine the horrors to come at work next week, because I'm too busy imagining the horrors to come if I don't leave soon. If the 4 or 5 hour drive isn't traumatic enough, I also am unable to identify the house in the dark, so I end up trolling along this street for half an hour while exhausted and depressed and looking like a criminal.
Fit in so good the hope is that you cannot see me later
You don't know me, I am an introvert, an excavator
I'm ducking out for now, a face in dodgy elevators
Creep up and suddenly I found myself an innovator
I can say I hope it will be worth what I give up
If I can stand up mean for the things that I believe
Week two down, six to go. Anxiety levels continue to fluctuate, based on how many things I manage to mess up at work and how many hours have passed since I've heard the reassuring voice of a friend telling me I will neither die alone in museum storage nor in my current basement dwelling.
If this is my first experience in a real world job scenario, I can only say that it has thrown things into horrifying perspective. I feel like my brain speaks a different language than everyone else (or maybe I just can't process information that is not snark), and my ever more invasive social phobia ensures that I'm too busy trying to escape imaginary judgment to really keep track of where I put those files/box/priceless museum object. What the hell am I doing here? How am I supposed to supervise the photography intern, who got here two weeks before me and is a legit photographer to boot? Why did I ever think it was a good idea to pursue a field that is famous for its high competition and laughable wages? I've had a terrifying glimpse into my future, and it bears a depressing resemblance to my present.
The only good story from this week is from when the other intern and I were helping with an installation in the main exhibit hall. My unnamed-for-legal-reasons place of employment functions as the state museum, so the main attraction is an exhibit about the state's history from prehistory to today. The prehistory bit naturally has panels and artifacts dealing with Native Americans, but for some reason they also saw a need for some weird mannequins and animals that I sincerely hope were never alive. The animals are our focus here, because they move. Yes. Animatronic animals in an exhibit about the state's inhabitants after the Ice Age. Is this really necessary? Debatable. Is it necessary that they also be motion sensitive, so they only spring to life when you walk by? I think not! Even better, most of them are hidden so you just get a glimpse from your periph. This was clearly set up with the express intent of scaring people.
Anyway, other intern girl and I were helping set up some cases in the hall. We were walking through the exhibit on our way to set up and label guns/hats/beaver pelts/whatever the hell else they wanted to put in there when we passed the Native American section. Intern girl sees the hidden raccoon on the wall move (and to be fair, he does seem to be waving a bone, which is objectively frightening) and does a legit Oscar-worthy scream of horror. I had been trying really hard all week to be friendly and make an alliance with her, but when this happens I abandon all pretenses of politeness and laugh so hard I was afraid of wetting myself.
ALB: Are *laugh* you *snort* okay? *wiping away tears*
IG: Yeah. I have a fear of like wax figures. This is awful.
ALB: Well, these aren't wax, or people. Are you afraid of taxidermy, too? Or just things that move?
IG: *no reply, as she has seen the dog in the corner tilt its head and has succumbed to wide-eyed shock*
It was just too much for her. She closed her eyes, stuck out her arm, and made me lead her through the rest of the exhibit like a cartoon blind man til we got passed everything that moved. What. The. What.
I came home this weekend to postpone the suicide by puzzle piece that will inevitably claim me up north before the summer's up. I grabbed the kitchen trash bag as I left, intending to ditch it when I stopped at the gas station. Events overcame me, as they so often do, and I ended up driving four hours with a Wal-mart bag full of loose spaghetti in the backseat. Not to mention the half loaf of French bread, which I purchased last week just in case I suddenly became eight people who were capable of demolishing such a hefty piece of baked goods before the mold set in.
My life is like this, and I don't know how much longer I can handle it.
Everybody I met seemed to be a rank stranger No mother nor dad, not a friend did I see They knew not my name and I knew not their faces I found they were all rank strangers to me
One week of internship down, seven to go. So far it's strange people, strange town, and basement living part deux. Someone remind me again why I do these things. It's not as if you can cure loneliness and depression with immersion therapy. The first few days were filled with pokerfacing at work and tears and Santogold after hours, but things seem to have stabilized somewhat. I started on a giant 3D puzzle to help ward off ennui but the sight of all my bowls now filled with hundreds of foam puzzle pieces seemed like an apt metaphor for my life and may induce further depression. We'll see. Et tu, Rothenburg?
Work is about as exciting as one can expect from a collections management position ("How can I best describe this box of moldy blankets? Does the difference between 'twill' and 'plain weave' really matter so much when I'm worried about finding mummified mice in the folds?"). This I can deal with, if only for the marginal pay and learning of Photoshop and PastPerfect wizardry. But the people. The people. Check your snark at the door because this is a humor and color-free zone. This became immediately apparent before I could embarrass myself or offend anyone, TG, but it is strange and numbing to have to consciously deaden your personality forty hours a week. Is this normal? Have I been spoiled by my last job, which was almost completely filled with alternate versions of myself whom I could speak with about mellification, Macklemore, and our mutual dream of suing bosses for harassment with no fear of judgment and an assurance of immediate understanding? Seems so.
Let's just sum up the week with a few key points:
On the drive up, I passed a giant SUV with tinted windows and a "Skinhead Army" bumper sticker. This is a step below even the usual CSA crap. I have no words, other than... where does one even purchase Nazi car decals?
The people at work never laugh. At anything. Except maybe me, behind my back. See next point.
I stepped in a termite trap the first day and got seriously stuck. There was a witness. After wrenching it off, I figured just walking it off down the hall would decrease the stickiness. Oh no. It was like I'd just crawled out of a bog, or suddenly developed elephantitis of the right foot. Walking it off was not an option. Unfortunately, neither was washing it off since the glue seemed to be waterproof. Finally gave up and plastered over the sticky spot with some paper towel. Went about day feeling like a fool.
The entire floor in museum storage where I work is made of a loose metal grill situation you can see completely through to the floor some twenty feet below. I'm not afraid of heights, but I am afraid of situations where I am high up and can see down to just how little I am supported (see also: deep water). Bonus: anyone walking below can see up my dress.
Speaking of dresses (which I brought almost exclusively for work clothes, 'cause ain't nobody got time to be matching separates), all of mine seem to be made for an entirely different grade of woman and thus gap open at the top and show everyone my underwear. To remedy this, I put my college degree to work and came up with the extremely smart and mature solution of taping my dresses closed. Texted EF about the sitch. She replied with, "No judgment -- I've used staples before." Oh my God we are all pretending here.
My boss is a straight-laced Canadian from PEI with red hair. I made an Anne of Green Gables joke. No one laughed.
Had to come home this weekend to retrieve Social Security card, with the secondary goal of salvaging what's left of my sanity. This last one was pretty much a disappointment, as the constant bickering about money, calories, and moving furniture that seems to be the soundtrack of life in this house is driving me closer to the edge. It's a four hour drive plus a time change, so I'll have to leave in a few hours to get home in time to get some sleep. Is this all there is to life? It's like that lost week I had in April, though as QB pointed out, now I have neither cats, cable, nor whiskey. Sometimes rock bottom has a trapdoor.
