Written on 06/05/18 and never posted...just read and it seems really good!
Since returning from Taos I have continued my tradition of making drama out of nothing...the giddy few days after the return, the loss of something yummy/nervewracking, the emergence of something new and different and the obsession with this Bon Iver song that I can't stop listening to.
I am sitting here in my bedroom right now just sick over something that has or hasn't happened at work. I'm in this tedious and boring warehouse that I am able to make fun by seeing it as a way to get a workout every day. Two of us (the 56 year olds) work all day steadily and get heaps of work done. The two 27 year olds go on two hour lunches and giggle and laugh all day about inappropriate videos and crap they are watching on Facebook, while I am hurting myself wrapping pallets, panting, busy as F8ck. I can't blame this scenario on anyone as I have seen me do this many times: be a martyr at work while others are laughing and having fun. There is usually a breaking point where I blow up at the boss and shout at them for not making the others work...and while they agree that I am doing the bulk of the work, they are so rankled by my outbursts that I get a lower review than the slow moving and barely working ones with the lighthearted personalities. Boy what would that be like: to be lighthearted! I have no fracking idea! I take everything so seriously and treat the job like it is the most valuable thing in the world to me (sometimes it is the only really compelling thing I have going on in my life). Mixed in with this weird dynamic is some ear shattering classic rock that blares all day and a two-hour talk show in the morning that makes me very uncomfortable. I'm usually not overly PC about guy talk in warehouses but something is different here and I can't quite put my finger on it. So four weeks into trying everything I can not to hear this radio show that is insulting to women, I go to work prepared to give notice and find that the speaker has blown out and the sound is only from the computer and I think hallelujah! Later in the morning I feeling home free when the two young guys come over near me and are laughing about a video they are watching on their phone and turn the volume up really loud and I just lose it - but only internally, because this type of discomfort, of the toxic work environment variety is brand new to me and for some reason I am too afraid to say anything to the boss, who is very cool and a good person. I go outside at lunch, heart pounding and strident and call the person in HR who placed me at this assignment and just let loose...I tell him I need a different job and what were they thinking putting a woman in here. He tells me to finish out the day and he'll deal with it. Over the lunch hour I start to feel like a big ninny, like a puss, like I can't deal with my own shit, so I call him back and tell him I'll say something and he doesn't need to do anything unless I get back with him. I got back to work and find the afternoon going by easily and don't feel the need to say anything but all of of a sudden the guys look kicked down. The mood changes and everyone is silent and the warehouse is silent. Did they get a call and ass chewing from HR? They must have because everyone's acting very cowed and shamed. And of course, I feel even worse - I feel terrible that they feel terrible. But isn't that how women are programmed and taught to feel? I know I was. I was told that in no way can the man in the house be bothered at all and you must adjust every aspect of your personality to fit into what could be possibly acceptable to him. And guess what it was never acceptable...no matter how polite and sweet and obedient I was it was never going to be good enough. So I drag this miserable programmed self with me into every work environment I've ever been in...either the bullied or the bullyer...never having known how to be a team player, never having learned how to be on a team. God that's hard to write and it really sucks. It's not always black and white like that as there are many times when I'm just the happy superstar at work or just so content that I'm not really worried about anyone else. But sometimes this old sad self shows up and I don't know how to deal with her. I can quit. I can move. I can go on a trip. All these things help but they don't cure. I have spent 24 hours feeling really horrible about how I handled this. Why didn't I have the courage just to talk to the boss. Why did I go over his head so that they had to be reprimanded and are now walking on eggshells around me. When am I going to give myself permission to exit this incredibly old and painful story; and more key: what am I getting out of it. What am I trying to prove and to whom? I'm just filled with very uncomfortable shame about at the whole thing, where I should feel no shame. I did the right thing. It is okay for them to be uncomfortable and not just me. I don't need this job at all...I'm just doing it for "fun" and things got completely out of hand with my psychically. After the perfectly respectful and loving mother-womb bliss I feel in Taos to come back and be slammed into a work environment filled with loud toxic rantings that are based in degrading women. To be around people who make themselves feel better by making fun of others. I need to give myself more time to be put back together after Taos.
All of these feelings of shame and unworthiness and isolation that come up around this stuff are really hard for me to deal with. The good news is I didn't drink over it. In my 20's I would have gone straight to a bar and gotten blotto drunk and gone to work hungover the next day so that the shame would have been deserved. In twelve days I will have 25 years of sobriety. There is not enough blogosphere to describe what all I've been through in this quarter of a decade, but for the best of it start at the beginning of this blog, where my cup runneth over with the kind of goodies I had been waiting for. It is so easy for me to see why people relapse. To have to try and ride out some of the stuff programmed into us is almost unbearable - and so much of it takes a lifetime to undo. This so insignificant little temp job at this dopey little warehouse had to power to tap into my blackest little spot, and fortunately, I have the tools to be able to deal with it. I always hoped that all this stuff would just go away but it seems to cycle around every once in a while. I only like feeling on top of the world and bursting with badass-ery, so when I'm knocked off that high horse I crumple like an abandoned child - the blackest of the black, the dark dark hole of self loathing that 10 years of Hindu meditation did not ameliorate.
But I did the right thing. It was on the same day as the metoo hashtag, and I was just sick remembering the awful harrassment that I gagged myself over because "he is almost retired" and "it would kill his wife.." that hillbilly horseshit that I listened to and let guide my decision to not report my attacker. Fuck that guy. I wish I would have punched him. But I'm a "freezer" - and cannot bite back. I can feel uncomfortable for a few days if it means these guys have been read the riot act...and maybe it's good that they feel a little shame too. I did it for the sisterhood.
The worst part of all of that is that I feel very alone in it - like I don't have anyone who has my back or is on my side. That is an ancient story too, and if I question it and examine it more closely I see that is actually isn't that true. I talked to so many people, so many women, and now bonding with the ultimate comforter - words flowing from fingers. It got me by when I was 8 years old and has not let me down in going on 50 years.
To be able to see that the shame is from not feeling like I did it perfectly...that I don't have to always be brave, and that sometimes brave was just a bravado face hanging flimsily on a foetal terror. So dramatic. Not on purpose. Just the way I am.
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