|
I'm just a student in the game that they taught me. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
A few of my friends in real life have heard me say this before and my fiance has heard me bang this drum nearly to shreds but I keep thinking that my relationship with my work is a lot like a relationship* that has soured.
To expand upon this metaphor:
At the beginning it was coy and sweet, at turns exciting and breath-taking. I worked in a bookstore, finally- the "closest" to my dream that any other job had offered. In the company's defense, I am not sure why I thought this job helped me to be closer to being a writer. All my jobs have kept me with a home, food, the physical necessities needed to ensure I could write...but this gave me something emotional, something mental I felt I needed. It is nothing I can describe now because I can only logically remember feeling this way about the store...but at the beginning was that rosy glow of new love.
The new love deepened into something stronger, deeper. I felt a true connection with the place- the more we shared with one another the closer we got, the more layers peeled back to reveal more of the actual spirits residing behind our facades. It was nice. It was...cleansing and honest, two things I crave desperately. I remember walking through the store alone, just breathing in the smell of it and running my hands over the spines of the books, touching the shelves...every touch helped the fire burn brighter. I felt my dream, my passion, fueled with each shift, brought ever closer by my day to day "work".
I am not sure exactly when the cracks started to occur. At first I was not even sure it was the store making me feel off-kilter and unbalanced, I just knew I was feeling wrong about something, increasingly more and more sure that something crucial was not exactly right. Almost like coming home or going into your room and knowing that something has been moved. Maybe just an inch...but something had been tipped, twisted, turned and it made me feel as if something bad had passed over the store.
But surely it had just passed, right? I mean, it surely could not have landed, gripped its talons into my sweet store and began to tear at the underbelly of something near and dear to me.
Right?
I can not place the exact moment anymore that I felt something worsen between us. All I knew is that for close to two years I told anyone who would listen "I WORK IN A BOOKSTORE!"; I would text it around, keeping it a secret from some simply because I have noticed this annoying and dismaying habit that with some people as soon as you share good news they try to puncture your happy, to pop the balloon of joy you have, no matter how small it may be. Or they shrug it off, a thing I have learned that sends me from Fine to Majorly Pissed about as fast as one can blink. I don't bother sharing much with people so when I do and I get a brush-off...well, then. Screw you, too- vigorously and repeatedly.
But I would happily tell anyone who asked that I really did not work- I spent hours at a time in a great place and they happened to pay me to be there; how great is that?
But suddenly my feet dragged as I walked in. I started leaving home later and later, not in a rush to get there anymore. I found myself not smiling as much. Not bantering my happy news around as much, or at least with a lot less frenzy. I still mused about it, but suddenly that was all it was: a musing, not a pleased exclamation. Suddenly but slowly I was no longer so sure where we stood with one another- all I knew was that I was suddenly staring more and more at the store, trying to figure out its motives. Trying to pinpoint the source of unease.
Then came the self-doubt. Was the store turning from me because of something I was doing or not doing? Was I not doing enough to keep it happy? I mean, I was trying my best but even I could recognize the shine of new love, could recognize that perhaps in my greedy-happy-cloud that perhaps I had taken my beloved store for granted. Was I somehow pushing the store away? Was I going too fast? I had my eyes on management- perhaps even asking for my own store. And if I am going to be perfectly honest, I even had my eyes secretly on the store I would want to request to become the GM for...Was I making my own store feel unloved?
Slowly my thoughts turned to things I could no longer ignore- the kind of annoying things that in the first blush of a new relationship you can not even imagine will bother you as much as it one day does. The small, insignificant things that you think is cute at first- hell, the things that now piss you off might have originally been the very things that attracted you in the first place- but that now begins to grate on your nerves. I begin to harbor the traitorous thoughts that perhaps the unease I felt was not all mine to accept as blame...that maybe the store was doing some stuff on purpose, just to make me mad. Well, it was working. It was working far too well, because there came a day when my patience, not being my strongest suit even on a good day, was just about pushed to breaking.
And I started to see my love for what it really was. I started to see past my own rose-colored vision. Rather, I guess you could say the rose color started to fade away. I started seeing the store for what it was, all the ugly things I had originally either looked over, glossed over or- worse, to have to admit this- purposefully turned a blind-eye to.
When the bloom really fell off the rose and when the bitterness really exploded was when I realized just how hoodwinked I had allowed myself to be- me! Of all people! Stupid enough to fall for this *brown word* all over again! The anger was quick, the rage so great I remember being afraid of the sudden onslaught of negativity and unsure of what the hell I was going to do. I was operating constantly under the threat of losing my temper, which would mean losing my job, would equal losing my home. My home. Before Asai all I had ever wanted was a safe home for me and the kitty I knew I would one day have (Candle) and to be able to write. Now I had my home and my kitty and somehow I was afraid this damnable mess I had gotten myself into would take those things away. So I was stuck in a sandwich of majorly screwed and constant agitation: should I continue on, stick it out and see if it could get better? At what point was it just being unable to leave an abusive relationship? At what point was I letting it get the best of me...but wasn't sticking around for more s**t pretty much just letting the store win?
Suddenly I was in an emotionally clenched state of lusting over revenge. I wanted to see my former beloved fall flat on its face. I wanted to see it crash and burn, I wanted to see it broken down and made to admit it had made a horrible mistake. I wanted it to be sorry, so sorry it would be permanently scarred from the realization of just how much damage it had caused to its one most fervent supporter. Didn't the store realize that at the very beginning people were warning me, telling me it was no good and to not love it, believe in it or stock anything in it other then books? My faith, they told me, was sorely misplaced. They said if I put in any stock into the store's promises then I would regret it. The store would only burn me. It was a true narcissist- it wanted everyone to believe how great it was, see how charming it was...but at heart it had no heart. It just wanted what it wanted regardless of how much it hurt others.
Could the store not see how I was the only one who had believed in it- had seen some goodness in it when no one else could and had wanted nothing more then to see it happy and thriving?
So we find the two of us in the stage we are currently in- that being the stage where I just want to slap it in the face and divorce it, to sue for custody for the damn kids we don't have simply so the store can not have them. I want to be petty and take back everything I gave it, maybe set it on fire on the lawn just to rub it in the store's face that I really did not want it but was gonna be damned before I let it keep it.
I want to get a better job and bring it around to the old store. Show the old store how happy I am, how I can do better. I want to laugh as I walk away, my eyes glittering with the joy of having a better, more fulfilling job...y'know, one with a bigger...paycheck.
But am I bitter? Not anymore. I moved past bitter sometime ago. I went from raging hot anger to deep and frigid resentment and then to something that feels suspiciously like apathy...but I can not tell for sure if that is what it really is because, you know, I can not really feel much for the place at this point.
I do know that in the end one of us will be left standing. Only one of us can stand and walk away from this. Only one of us can walk away knowing they did the best they could for a cause that was lost at the very beginning; hey, at least I tried, right?
Besides, I have had other jobs. This one might have been good but it won't be the best. I have survived far, far worse.
I won't let something so silly and trivial as this get to me.
After all, at the end of the day I am not the one that let the best thing it had just...slip away, be it through carelessness or just plain thoughtlessness. I won't be the one to have to admit, if only to myself, how badly I screwed up a very, very good thing, how I bled a perfect relationship and all the potential it had away to absolutely nothing.
At least one of us will be able to sleep well, knowing they did not hurt the one person that loved it the most, the deepest, and for what reason?
In the end, absolutely nothing.
*Or, as Dane Cook would call this particular form of fellowship, a relationshit.
 RadiantFlare · Mon Aug 08, 2011 @ 07:28am · 0 Comments |
|
|
|
|
|
