Empath: aka the ties that bind

I probably stole this from somewhere but as it concerns pessimists and optimists, pessimists truly appreciate good fortune because they understand its rarity and value. They don't expect good things to come of everything they do, not because they don't want good things but because they realize the world isn't Candyland.

I'm stressed because my old boss can't find a place to live and his family is miserable and cramped and uncertain. I don't know what in me wants everyone to land softly, to feel no pain, to have someone make their lives easier. Maybe I am putting into the world what I hope to get back. Maybe that's just one of my needs, to be needed, to care for something, to facilitate. I just want everything to work out and I kind of want to be a hero if I'm unflatteringly honest. I want to be someone's hero. I want them to admire and respect me, to see me as capable. That is my fuel. The assist is my calling card, acknowledgement is my reward. I need a place to live too but I would honestly rather spend my time looking for a home for my old boss' family.

I've thought about this before, this need of mine, examining it as evidence of lack of self worth or something else sad and dark. I'm not ruling it out but I don't think it is that deep. I think I just don't care about most things. But I care about some people and if I care about you, I care about everything. If I think I can help you, I really want to help. It makes me feel good to think about you having one less thing to worry about. But there's also something about my boss that makes him different. He's ridiculously disorganized. I'm not sure if he thrives on chaos or like a shark must keep moving or he'll die but I have a hard time even imagining him sitting down without doing something else at the same time. And his attention to detail on something like finding a home-he just doesn't organize himself in the same way I would. I found working with him that it was better if I handled the details. He just didn't think most of them were important. And he is frankly smart enough to usually pull out of the face plant his oversight causes. But over time it becomes a drag on progress, a death by a thousand cuts situation. Though I didn't realize when I started writing this, I hate watching people suffer at their own hand. I hate watching Ashley piss away her time. I hate seeing anyone make their lives harder. Life is hard, why not make it easier where it can be?

I've been dabbling a little in string theory (note: most pretentious and ridiculous sentence ever written). I understand none of it and actually looked it up purely for mocking someone else who claimed to dabble in it. But I like the concept, to the extent I understand it and have started using it in a literary way to describe that which tethers us to one another. The theory was developed to mathematically explain gravity which doesn't behave mathematically like any of the other elements/forces from the standard model of particle physics (string theorists, physics majors, anyone else, jump in here if I'm already way off). String theory seeks to address this and provide the math to explain everything. Not sure why I had to explain that but it's done now and I don't feel like hitting backspace.

What I like about string theory is the strings. Instead of electrons and atoms bouncing all over the place, there is some unifying force holding it all together, connecting it all. Beyond the very complicated math and theory, it sounds very hippie, very metaphysical, and I can see how a pizza delivery guy can claim to dabble in it. When I have a really bad day and find out a close friend was hurting as well, I feel like our difficulty resonates on the strings that tie us to one another. Maybe string theory will one day explain how a mood can color a room. Maybe bad moods have a gravity that overwhelms the short powerful wavelengths of happiness. Maybe I like learning new words and concepts just enough to use them in sentences that only make sense to people who know even less than me about string theory, and maybe not even them.

Stupid stubborn

My sister is stupid stubborn. She got it from my mother who is also stupid stubborn. My brother and I were talking, me trying to get notes from him from when he was in full prick mode with the family. Asking for money, blowing up my phone and writing me every three hours then becoming a ghost once he got the money, not even calling to acknowledge receipt, that kind of bullshit. I was trying to figure out why it wouldn't occur to Ashley to try to remedy or even apologize for again spilling crap on my rug and nearly ruining my vacuum cleaner by vacuuming up wet salt. Instead she hasn't spoken to me at all in the last week. Who does that? Just refuses to talk or acknowledge their wrong. Just gets up and moves about their business, using my shit, living in my home, with 'fuck you' rolling off their body in waves. No, fuck YOU. That's fucking insane and I suggest you investigate if they make a pill for that because you need to take it.

What bothers me about both of them is this victimhood they carry around as it concerns my father. You really can not help what baggage you arrive into adulthood with. You don't have the coping skills or perspective to deal with your rearing until you are out of it and can survey the damage. And everyone has something. Everyone. Since I have some authority on the subject of growing up in our house, I feel I have a valid opinion on the matter. I recall bitterly talking about some of the things my father had done and how it had fucked me up to my best friend while we were in college. While talking I had an epiphany. I could hear myself talking for the nth time about how I was fucked up because of someone else and it sounded really bad to me. It sounded like an excuse. It sounded like an explanation for why I was never going to move from that spot in my life. I didn't like it. I don't recall if I said it or thought it but I do know I made a decision that I wasn't going to give him that kind of power over me, he wasn't going to be my excuse for everything I couldn't achieve or any happiness that eluded me in life. I spent so much time growing up wishing he was someone else, would act differently, be less abrasive or unconcerned about my delicate feelings and self esteem. But you can't make people over to be what you want or need and insisting on that as a condition for your happiness or well being is a recipe for an unhappy life.

Nowadays I don't have a greater champion than my father. He thinks I hang the moon. He trusts my opinion. He consults me. That man is my friend and I love him so so much. He is flawed. I am flawed. That is our lot, us mortals, to be flawed. Time has burnished his standing with me and tarnished my mothers--that is another consequence of age and perspective. I see in my mother the personality traits that are the millstones around the necks of my siblings. I understand why my father felt alone and complained he had no help. I understand why I did the family finances when he was away. My brother, sounding conflicted and slightly choked up observed the other night that everything good about us, drive, ambition, intellect, it all came from our father. The part of us that digs in or gets overwhellmed when the flood waters are rising, that's our mother. She's the person who forces you to rescue her, fighting you every step of the way and then cries with resentment because she never asked you to rescue her. I guess that's the yin and yang of our family dynamic. People who can't watch a person drown and people who will stare you dead in your face as the water rises resenting the higher ground you climbed for and thinking somehow climbing is easier for you. I guess I could turn away and not watch the water rise around them but I love them so I watch and let them refuse help until I feel I have to dive in. It's not unique, our codependency and the results aren't unique either.

A silver lining

Where does one start? I think enough people I know are in a particularly slow moving shit storm weather pattern that I think that it qualifies as a trend. As much as I find the phenomenom lamentable, I find it very curious. Is it metaphysical, yin and yang, a tremor in the cosmic matter that keeps us tethered to the earth and one another or simply misery seeking company; me, you, and everyone we know are miserable because we seek miserable people to commiserate with?

But I had a good day today. I got a pedicure, ate lunch outside, and met a strange guy named Larry who mispronounced the word gauge in the most ironic sentence I've ever heard. He also described the Japanese first as NOT homogenous and then when I corrected him conceded given their lack of diversity, he should have used the word monolithic. So Oswald Bates is real y'all. I totally met him today.

Then I napped in the sun, took my dog for a long walk, and continued not speaking to my sister. Good times.

I am lonely or bored--they kind of both feel the same. I'm waiting for something to happen. For someone to notice me so I matter. I've become semi-attached to Facebook, not posting but looking at everyone's super fun lives or super witty status' or terrible inane updates that still get comments and likes (which pisses me off on some level). I've been trying to figure out the critical mass of 'friends' you must have on Facebook to ensure you never post a status that is completely ignored by all (which happens to yours truly quite often). To be fair, 2/3 of my Facebook friends are people I haven't seen since 1992 and have no plans to see.

I've looked at my posts over the last year and especially over the last month or so and I am frustrated with the quality. This has always been a bit of an online diary/diatribe but lately it's just been poo. Ohhh, I have an unhealthy relationship with my boss/work, oooh, I'll never have a boyfriend or husband, oooh, Ashley is irritating again, ooh I'm melancholy. I'm just off. I have no space for this. I am constrained in my own space both here and in this apartment. I'm wondering about stupid unproductive things; will anyone ever make me feel that way again, what time should I leave tomorrow, what should I wear, should I drive or take the train, which car should I take...

Very irritated with myself right now.

Still haven't found what I'm looking for

Who has really? If you even know what you're looking for, you're probably ahead. That's all I really had to say about it. I was just sitting here decompressing after a long drive back home from our Father's Day visit, browsing the interweb and daydreaming. The former (browsing) led me to a few so/so tribute posts on the theme of Father's Day and instead of following suit with my own schmaltzy take, I decided I just must write anything at all. Even if was about nothing, it would probably be better than the stuff I just read.

Yes, I had some haterade earlier, why do you ask?

Still crying: Seriously, transitions suck

Today I'm just going to let myself be sad. I had told my boss I would be putting on the big girl pants today after letting myself be miserable last night but maybe an entire 24 hours is a more acceptable grieving period. I don't want to go to work (really, when do I ever) and see his empty crumb-strewn desk. I woke up this morning and for a few minutes I was fine and then I was really sad again and crying. So I'm just going to give in today and let myself cry, do laps in my sorrow and anxiety now that my chief counsel and best friend in Philly is gone. I might also buy some espadrilles I've had my eye on and if I don't give myself another terrible crying headache I might even work out this evening.

I am pleased I got to him as much as he got to me, that I wasn't alone in my delight to work with him and in how much I looked forward to sharing stories with him. He was a handful and leaned on me for far more than he asked of anyone else but that was both a point of frustration and of pride. He trusted me. Winning the trust of a wary man is an achievement and privilege. I'm sad for a lot of reasons right now but grieving really because I've never worked with anyone twice so this was probably it for us. We will intersect professionally for sure, tangentially or directly. But you can never go back, this was what it was. Talk of trying to serve together again is an expression of our deep respect and admiration for one another, not something that is likely to happen. We did try to have me follow him to his next post but it didn't work out. I'm disappointed I don't get to work with him but I do think what lies ahead for me will be an interesting professional detour and will serve us both if we beat the odds and are fortunate enough to serve together again.

Can't wait to get out of here.

Reciprocity

You like me! You really, really like me!

This week has been tough and today especially was tough. My head hurts and my nose is raw from all the crying I did. Last day for the boss and I woke up this morning thinking ugh, I can't to this. I'm miserable already. Tomorrow I will get up and think, ugh, I can't do this. This is too much. He's not going to burst through the door, we're not going to make each other laugh and he's not going to drive me crazy with random questions and random emergencies. I wished we had hung out more, had more than work between us because I feared I adored him more than he adored me. That he liked that I really enjoyed working for him but he wasn't all torn up about it. But he was and while I hated to know we were similarly miserable about not being able to work together, a part of me was relieved not to be the only one having a tough day. We hugged, we wrote each other goodbye e-mails at work, wrote another good bye email tonight and hope we can reconstitute the team again someday. Just a year ago, I was disappointed to have to continue working here because I felt it was time to move on. I remember asking my boss if he thought our boss would support me leaving sooner and his answer was simply no. I would have never guessed I would be sitting here a year and half later, dehydrated from crying over his departure. What a guy. I'm super fortunate. Last year I complained that God was blocking my shots but I now appreciate that I needed to stay at least for this. Totally worth it. What. a. guy.