Portland: Month Eleven and Some
I tend to internalize until I implode. I keep things down, and then it gets really noisy in my head, and it's been really noisy in my head.
I thought that I'd write something really pithy... that if you put me in a cassock I'd be indistinguishable from a monk, minus the good highlights and the lady parts, but I am regrettably chaste and regrettably frugal, possibly unshaven at the moment and have gone radio silent. Ah, but then there is that whole crisis of faith thing, it turns out that my self-flagellation is all done in my self-imposed silence, the welts that rise are visible to no one. Except the halo of desperation that trails after me like an unwelcome red balloon, people reflexively flinch from that shit, and who can blame them.
Eleven months and four seasons later, the underbellies of trees have begun to twitch autumn ward, I remain unemployable. I am pulverized. Beaten. My mojo is in tattered deficit. One recruiter approached me with a position in a shed in some lonely place where I'd be responsible for weighing trash trucks, she seemed embarrassed, I was embarrassed. What I was thinking: WHAT THE FUCK? I WENT TO COLLEGE FOR THIS? REALLY? REALLY?? I declined. Then another recruiter sent me to the far out burbs today, lovely people, I don't really want to make a 36 mile round trip commute for data entry, for a wage I made nine years ago, am I being fickle? Am I being unreasonable in this economy, in this notoriously down wage state of Oregon? Am I being too snobby to believe that I merit a job that will keep me engaged that my tap into my underused critical thinking resources, because I can't think anymore, it's too goddamned noisy in my head, and I am too beleaguered to give a good god damn anymore.
There is still a slim chance for the dream job.
rant - I can't take it anymore. The interviewing and the waiting and the recruiters who intentionally disappear, I feel like a worthless withering weathered turd. I could run, I'd have a good 72 hours or more before anyone realized I had gone, I've been thinking about that, but where would I go, then there is the whole hair dryer inadvertently dropped into the bathtub, but that might inconvenience my neighbors, let alone my family, tempting, but when you're dead you're just dead, there is just too much beauty to miss out on. But really, what the hell am I doing here? You know, well I know it's bad, when I walked out of the vegan joint on the corner (delicious, actually) and melted to the sidewalk in tears, and did the unthinkable, I called my mom. I never do that, but that's a complicated conversation for another day.
I keep reminding myself that no one ever said it was gonna be easy, but the last eleven months have been a baptism in sometimes semi-scalding water and sometimes a tepid flame and sometimes exponential loneliness and some moments of unfettered grace and the sweet flightiness of honest joy. I swing savagely from pendulums end to pendulums end without any reasonable middle.
It's also hard being the, being the proverbial fifth wheel. I don't know anyone who is single, I don't really know anyone who isn't pregnant or going to bare fruit herewith. I thought by the eleventh month I'd have at the very least employment dialled, and then I'd get a puppy and then I'd think about thinking about boyfriend perusing. What I got is puffy eyes from all the weeping I've been doing tonight. That's a different set of baggage entirely, it's related, but a separate diatribe.
I am looking for comments, or I am fishing for words of encouragement.
I didn't really address the whole crisis of faith thing, I'll leave it with this, I've been talking to Someone ever since I was a little kid, when you spend a lot of time, when you spend most of your time alone, you talk to someone, I've been addressing my own personal pantheon avidly for some months and for years and years beyond that, you could call it pleading, but it's really it's specialized begging. Someone is not hearing my pleas, must be busy with all of the horror that' s being perpetrated in Someone's name, and all those who are hungry while I sip my wine, and all of those who are in pain as I draw my bath, and all of those who will go cold when I ask my parents for a loan to fill my oil tank, I am thinking of you as I count my blessings daily. To get all Hillary Clinton channeling Harriet Tubman, we go, when the dogs are barking, when the lights are coming, we write ourselves out of it, short of that we run, towards promise, we sit through the bleak sunsets with the promise, the sweet, sweet promise of the gilded morrow, I could hold my breath until I turn six shades of blue, but how do I know that tomorrow wont yield the most glorious of glorious days?
This is the forever curse of the pragmatic optimist. Short of that, writing out helps, keeps the legions in my own personal peanut gallery semi-cogent, at least for a moment. I pray for peace, and for compassion, I pray for my family and for my friends, near and far, I pray for our collective good health and for the vibrancy of the whole slough of kids, I pray for love, in the hopes that it will keep us well, in the hope that it might find me too, short of that I pray that naked pictures of Michael Phelps might show up on the internet, because I am harboring a purely scientific desire to see the proportions of that man... Seriously, he's a 23 year old goof ball.
I tend to internalize until I implode. I keep things down, and then it gets really noisy in my head, and it's been really noisy in my head.
I thought that I'd write something really pithy... that if you put me in a cassock I'd be indistinguishable from a monk, minus the good highlights and the lady parts, but I am regrettably chaste and regrettably frugal, possibly unshaven at the moment and have gone radio silent. Ah, but then there is that whole crisis of faith thing, it turns out that my self-flagellation is all done in my self-imposed silence, the welts that rise are visible to no one. Except the halo of desperation that trails after me like an unwelcome red balloon, people reflexively flinch from that shit, and who can blame them.
Eleven months and four seasons later, the underbellies of trees have begun to twitch autumn ward, I remain unemployable. I am pulverized. Beaten. My mojo is in tattered deficit. One recruiter approached me with a position in a shed in some lonely place where I'd be responsible for weighing trash trucks, she seemed embarrassed, I was embarrassed. What I was thinking: WHAT THE FUCK? I WENT TO COLLEGE FOR THIS? REALLY? REALLY?? I declined. Then another recruiter sent me to the far out burbs today, lovely people, I don't really want to make a 36 mile round trip commute for data entry, for a wage I made nine years ago, am I being fickle? Am I being unreasonable in this economy, in this notoriously down wage state of Oregon? Am I being too snobby to believe that I merit a job that will keep me engaged that my tap into my underused critical thinking resources, because I can't think anymore, it's too goddamned noisy in my head, and I am too beleaguered to give a good god damn anymore.
There is still a slim chance for the dream job.
rant - I can't take it anymore. The interviewing and the waiting and the recruiters who intentionally disappear, I feel like a worthless withering weathered turd. I could run, I'd have a good 72 hours or more before anyone realized I had gone, I've been thinking about that, but where would I go, then there is the whole hair dryer inadvertently dropped into the bathtub, but that might inconvenience my neighbors, let alone my family, tempting, but when you're dead you're just dead, there is just too much beauty to miss out on. But really, what the hell am I doing here? You know, well I know it's bad, when I walked out of the vegan joint on the corner (delicious, actually) and melted to the sidewalk in tears, and did the unthinkable, I called my mom. I never do that, but that's a complicated conversation for another day.
I keep reminding myself that no one ever said it was gonna be easy, but the last eleven months have been a baptism in sometimes semi-scalding water and sometimes a tepid flame and sometimes exponential loneliness and some moments of unfettered grace and the sweet flightiness of honest joy. I swing savagely from pendulums end to pendulums end without any reasonable middle.
It's also hard being the, being the proverbial fifth wheel. I don't know anyone who is single, I don't really know anyone who isn't pregnant or going to bare fruit herewith. I thought by the eleventh month I'd have at the very least employment dialled, and then I'd get a puppy and then I'd think about thinking about boyfriend perusing. What I got is puffy eyes from all the weeping I've been doing tonight. That's a different set of baggage entirely, it's related, but a separate diatribe.
I am looking for comments, or I am fishing for words of encouragement.
I didn't really address the whole crisis of faith thing, I'll leave it with this, I've been talking to Someone ever since I was a little kid, when you spend a lot of time, when you spend most of your time alone, you talk to someone, I've been addressing my own personal pantheon avidly for some months and for years and years beyond that, you could call it pleading, but it's really it's specialized begging. Someone is not hearing my pleas, must be busy with all of the horror that' s being perpetrated in Someone's name, and all those who are hungry while I sip my wine, and all of those who are in pain as I draw my bath, and all of those who will go cold when I ask my parents for a loan to fill my oil tank, I am thinking of you as I count my blessings daily. To get all Hillary Clinton channeling Harriet Tubman, we go, when the dogs are barking, when the lights are coming, we write ourselves out of it, short of that we run, towards promise, we sit through the bleak sunsets with the promise, the sweet, sweet promise of the gilded morrow, I could hold my breath until I turn six shades of blue, but how do I know that tomorrow wont yield the most glorious of glorious days?
This is the forever curse of the pragmatic optimist. Short of that, writing out helps, keeps the legions in my own personal peanut gallery semi-cogent, at least for a moment. I pray for peace, and for compassion, I pray for my family and for my friends, near and far, I pray for our collective good health and for the vibrancy of the whole slough of kids, I pray for love, in the hopes that it will keep us well, in the hope that it might find me too, short of that I pray that naked pictures of Michael Phelps might show up on the internet, because I am harboring a purely scientific desire to see the proportions of that man... Seriously, he's a 23 year old goof ball.
posted by emma at
11:05 PM
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