September 15th, 2009
The Last Day
Today is the last day at my corporate gig. I've been here since my now-3-year-old son was in utero. I've worked here longer than I've ever worked anywhere.
This is strange. I'm not running out of here kicking my heels like I thought I would be. Instead, I'm digging my heals in and hoping this is one of the slower days of my life. It will be too unsettling to wake up tomorrow morning and have no workplace to report to.
Everyone wants me to be happy. This is what I wanted. But it's all too weird for me to be "happy" just yet.
I keep telling myself that I'm worried about the money, but with my surprise 401k liquidation, and the many thousands I just received in new financial aid, truthfully we could float for 6 full months without panicking. And I'll only get more next semester, and I do have cake money coming in — so we're really not that bad off. Ultimately I don't think the lack of money is what's really freaking me out.
I think I may have to face the fact that perhaps I like coming to work. Maybe I even like coming here. I don't like it enough to change my mind and undo all of this, but I do want to recognize that this isn't going to be the easiest transition for me. This place – this job – is part of my identity.
I've worked in an office for 13 years. And now, all the sudden, I won't be anymore. At least not for awhile. And don't ask me "So, what will you do with yourself?" because there is PLENTY to do (like taking care of kids, running my cake business, and keeping up my 4.0 GPA with an 18-hr class load.)
I won't be bored, that's for sure. I'm just not totally mentally prepared for my life to change this drastically. But I guess I better get prepared, because it's already Noon, and the second half of the day will probably go by quicker than the first.
And in a very, very strange twist of events, my boss from an old company wandered into the office today. I haven't seen him in 5 years. I say "what in the world are YOU doing here?" – and he replies that he's the new manager. I would have been working directly with him again. I always liked him too. What a weird-o coincidence.
Now I'm off to my "farewell" lunch with my soon-to-be-Ex boss.
*deep breath*
September 8th, 2009
Now This is a Choice I will Own
I got all bent out of shape some time back when my favorite uncensored mommy blogger suggested that people should suck it up and “own” whatever situation they are in. Easy to say when you’re half-white, decidedly middle-class, and don’t have to leave your kids in someone else’s care 50 hours a week while you shuffle off to a job you absolutely despise, cursing the whole way, and plotting the ways in which you will make your husband pay for doing this to you.
But, I get her point. She wants people to be happy. And it's not her fault. She just happened to post that at a time where I was especially miserable with my circumstances, and wasn't gonna listen to anybody tell me I needed to "own" any part of it. I was in no mood. I don’t agree that people need to shut the fuck up when they aren’t not happy, and I don’t believe that being happy is as simple as some middle class whilte folks make it sound. But hey, I really do want to own my choice – so long as I actually have a choice. I could bore you all with a philosophical theory on the origin of ownership and how it is not possible to own that which you have not purposely either cultivated or bartered for, but c’mon, you guys don’t come here for a dissertation on Locke, so let’s just do this the navel-gazing TFB way instead…
I think people are essentially responsible for themselves. Sure I do. I was raised in a conservative household. You know, the kind of people that grow up poor as hell, but still vote Republican because they think that other people want to take away all the money they don’t have. Yeah, those maddening people. The Joe 6-Pack people. But for all their mislead political alignment, I am bred with a “pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps” mentality, and that is essentially a pretty positive, Protestant, hard-working approach to life. Thus, I work my tail off, and I take responsibility for the things I am responsible for.
But add marriage, kids, and global economic crises to the picture, and I think the waters become a bit muddied. People are not islands, and sometimes the choices of others contradict what you may have chosen for yourself. It’s not always as easy as walking away from their choice, especially when you are contractually or genetically bound to these people and responsible for their well-being.
So, for a very long time, I suffered through doing what I had to do instead of what I wanted to do. I focused on work and fit school in where I could, instead of focusing on school and finishing my law degree. I ached for leaving my kids, but I slaved over a breastpump all the hours of the days so I could do right by them even when I couldn’t be physically present.
But now, I get to make a choice. It is not an easy choice; that is certain. It’s not like a Coke bottle filled with gold coins fell out of the sky and landed in my bank account so I could just walk out of my job without a single backward glance. There is a lot of uncertainty, and a lot of second-guessing myself. But, there came a point in life where my corporate employment was no longer worth the opportunity cost of the other things I was sacrificing in my life. It’s very hard to come from poverty and not place an intense amount of value on money and stability. However, I am trying to focus on all the good this change will bring, and not feel suffocated by the $1500 deficit we’ll be facing each month: a deficit that I will have to find a way to make up with cake orders and school loans (and the money I’m pulling out of my 401k, and the loans we’ve already taken from the mother-in-law to help us get out of that condo debt, etc. etc.)
Even though we will not be comfortable financially, and I have no idea whether I’m cut out for being a work-at-home-mother , this is still easier than what I was doing. This choice I made. This choice I labored over and worked for. This choice wasn’t made by someone else without my permission. This one is mine. And I will be happy to own it.
Look out world… here I come.
August 18th, 2009
On Surviving Sexual Assault…
When I was 20 years old, I suffered an attack. It was not the typical scenario one normally thinks of when they envision rape. It was not the kind of sexual attack that happens in dark allies at the hands of a hooded, knife-wielding assailant. No, my attack occurred over lunch time, in a brightly lit stair well, at the hands of my well-dressed Supervisor whose only weapon was his size – and his authority over my employment.
Until now, less than 10 people are aware such an incident occurred in my life: those people being the attacker, those who filed the paperwork regarding the incident, and later, my husband.
So the story goes: I’m working as a temp for a prominent employment agency who assigns me for some admin assistant duties in the catering department at a large hotel chain. The position has potential to become permanent, so I work hard and take on various special projects in an effort to prove to the managers that I’m worth keeping around. I’m friendly with all the catering managers, and eager to make coffee, or send faxes; whatever they need me to do. I have no education at the time, but I make up for my lack of credentials by picking things up quickly and going the extra mile. They think I'm whip-smart. This makes me feel special.
When one of the catering managers begins assigning me more tasks, and praising my work, I think I'm starting to see some success. When he asks to take me to lunch a week later to discuss my future with the company, I assume this is the lunch where they offer me a permanent position with the hotel. It does not occur to me that this lunch is anything other than strictly professional: firstly because he has a fiancé and talks incessantly about his wedding planning, and secondly, I suppose, because I am 20 and incredibly gullible. I have no reason not to trust him.
At lunch, he talks about several projects he wants to put me on to see what I can handle. Then he tells me he wants to take me on a tour of the catering facilities so I can get a sense for where I’ll be working. Once we are back at the hotel, he takes me to the floor with all the special banquet rooms. When he discovers maintenance men working in the hallway, he says we should take the stair well to get to the next floor and avoid getting in their way.
What comes next makes me feel stupid. I don’t see it coming, and for that I feel responsible.
He opens the door to the stairwell, yanks me inside, shoves me down onto the stairs, and climbs on top of me. There is a tongue in my throat, and hands ripping at my clothes.
For a moment, I am stunned. I probably don’t even fight back right away because I can’t get my head around what’s happening. I am 5’6”, 120 lbs. He is 6’ 4”, 220. It takes me roughly 30-35 seconds to push him off me. Maybe less. I don’t know really. Time stands still.
I run back to the catering department, and head straight into the vice-president's office where I say I’m not feeling well and ask to go home. He tells me there’s no more work left for me, so I don’t need to come back anymore unless the agency calls me again. Fine. Great. I never have to see Him again.
I call my roommate from the lobby for a ride home, take a shower, and crawl into bed for a day or two. I don’t tell anyone, or plan to tell anyone, for 7 days – that’s when the temp agency calls.
The temp agency tells me they have more work for me at the hotel. I tell them I don’t want to go back to the hotel, but I’ll take anything else they have. I can hear in the recruiter’s voice that they don’t appreciate me turning down the job, and this isn’t reflecting on me very well. The recruiter ends the call, and I am afraid they won’t give me on any more assignments.
Fearing my job, I call the recruiter back and tell them I need to come in the office to explain why I cannot go back to the hotel. I am sick the whole train ride down to the agency. When I arrive, I first explain the situation to one head recruiter, who puts me in a conference room with two other recruiters and has me retell the story while they tape record the conversation. All three of us cry, then sit in silence.
The agency feels terrible for putting me in the situation. I just want to forget about it as quickly as possible. Over the next few days, they notify the hotel, lots and lots of paperwork is filled out, and ultimately He is escorted off the hotel property by security guards (so I am told later by a Temp friend who is still working at the hotel.)
Within 14 days, the agency has a permanent position for me with a salary higher than any I have seen up until that time. They are being especially nice. I want to move on with my life, so I take the position and put the incident out of my mind. In retrospect, I am sure they are desperate to avoid a lawsuit.
Before this incident occurred, I could never understand why a woman wouldn’t report a rape or an attack. I would see characters on TV shows or in movies refusing treatment and refusing to file police reports after an assault, and I’d yell at the TV “What is wrong with you??? Tell the police!!!”
But, when it happened to me, I initially told no one. And now I understand WHY a woman would do that. Being violated is a humiliating feeling. And telling the tale is just as humiliating. Women blame themselves. And society blames women. Even when we know we didn’t invite it, and we know this was not our fault, we think no one will believe us, or they won’t do anything about it anyway. We don’t want to keep reliving it through a never-ending legal battle. We don’t want our lives put under a microscope by jaded detectives, or by lawyers trying to make a case for their client. We've all seen "The Accused" and we don't want to be Jodie Foster. It seems so much easier to try to put it out of our mind and pretend it never happened.
But it did happen. And it keeps happening in my head. Not all the time, but enough. And maybe I would feel better if I had filed the police report against him 11 years ago. An attacker is an attacker, and you are not their last victim. If I were ever to find out that He did this to another subordinate, I would feel responsible for that too.
That is why I filed a police report against my stalker. That is why I’m putting on my brave face and handing over the emails and IP addresses and screenshots to the detectives. That is why I am in contact with Integra and Comcast about this person’s account. That is why I’ve told my HR department about this person posing as a co-worker of mine – and why the authorities have traced their IP address to Oregon even though my office is in Chicago. That is why I will not plug my ears and pretend this will all go away.
This is not easy, and it is not convenient, and it will drag this ordeal out. But I refuse to be a victim. Again.
June 30th, 2009
Blogging for the Sake of Blogging
I try not to blog unless I really have something to talk about. For a very long time, all it took was an article on cesareans or breastfeeding to get me in the mood to write. These days, while those things are still hugely important to me, I seriously have bigger fish to fry, and I’m kind of tired of complaining about my current life situation here (there, and everywhere.) So, I haven’t been writing much of anything. I was hoping something awesomely fun would come along and I’d have something really positive to share, but I’m kinda coming up empty handed at the moment.
I also think that Twitter has impaired my ability to write more than 140 characters at a time. Or maybe I figure that anything that needs to be said has already been said on Twitter, so why rehash it in a blog?
Either way, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I have to talk about my life for a little while. I pay $9 a month for this blog to be my arena for catharsis, so I oughtta use it.
I’ve been feeling especially stressed out lately. Actually, I’m feeling kind of strung out. I vibrate with anxiety all day long. I don’t sleep. Concentration is almost impossible. The slightest lip out of another adult makes me want to punch them in the esophagus. Of course, as usual, the only thing in the world that makes me really happy are my children. No matter how shitty I feel, just one glimpse of them lights up my heart. I’d rather hear them screaming at each other than sit in my quiet office under the weight of unfinished projects. And when I’m working at home on my cakes, I’m so much happier than I am sitting in an office, because at least at home, I can peak in on my little ones anytime I want to.
During the day, I self-medicate with espresso. Somehow a $4 coffee I can’t afford takes the edge off ever so slightly. It seems strange that a stimulant would do that, but I suppose it has the same effect smoking does – makes you feel a little better momentarily while simultaneously raising your blood pressure. I guess that’s why I used to love smoking so much. It was my “chill-out” tool. I detest smoking now, so these days I just drink twice the coffee.
We’re going to the Riviera Maya in 3.5 weeks, and I have never needed a vacation so badly in my life. I fantasize every day about the 7 days in paradise that will (hopefully) help me forget about my life-at-a-crossroads situation temporarily. John and I have both been working two jobs to help pay for this trip, and it's well deserved.
I know that life won’t always be like this, but sometimes when you’re in the thick of things, it all seems so heavy and hopeless. There are just too many more years of school/work left before I get where I want to be, and I’ve never, ever been the kind of person that can just be content with where I’m at. That’s not how I’m wired. If I was content, then I’d never bother to do the extremely hard work it takes to change my destiny from the Poor-White-Trailer-trash I grew up, to the Make-a-Difference-in-the-World attorney I long to become. I can’t be content when there’s more work to be done. I was born into poverty, but I will not die in it. I will not. So I press on, reaching for the brass ring, and never settling for less than what I know I can become. My kids deserve better than what I had, and I have to give it to them.
Of course there’s a part of me that thinks a little Zoloft couldn’t hurt the situation. But then there’s this largely Type-A part of me that thinks medication is the easy way out, and I shouldn’t have to be medicated to put up with my life.* I also have my own personal issues with any sort of support of the big pharm companies (and the medical profession in general) so I just can’t go there. Add that to the problems that Julesy had with his weight gain when I was taking the Zoloft, and it puts me off the whole idea of ingesting chemicals, especially while breastfeeding. There just has to be a better way. I don’t know what that way is yet, but it has to be there somewhere. People didn’t always have Zoloft to save them from life’s little hurdles.
So, I’m chugging along. But I’m not doing my best. I’m too distracted, to anxious, and too irritable to be operating at 100% capacity.
But I really, really promise, when I come back from Mexico, I will have at least one really happy post. A little bit of sand in my toes and I’ll be good-as-new, at least for a couple of days. Mama needs a "Reset" button in the form of a Mexican cocktail.
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*Seriously, I’m talking about myself, and so before you write some long comment on how offended you are that I don’t dig prescription meds, just don’t. Save yourself the trouble because I am not in the mood for anybody’s shit this week and I will delete that comment before you have a chance to refresh your screen. I am not talking about your choice to be medicated, I’m talking about mine, so don’t internalize this.
April 10th, 2009
Motherhood, Career, and Feelings of Worthlessness
Settle in for a self-indulgent pity party in honor of Yours Truly. Today, I feel like junk, and somebody needs to hear about it.
I am lost. And depressed. And resentful. And tired.
Starting in August, I will be paying 2/3 of my salary to someone else to take care of my kids while I continue to shuffle off to a job I hate. I make just a few dollars too much to give up my income all together, and believe me, I have really tried to find a way. For the last 7 months, my MIL has been watching the boys for a relatively small sum. But that favor ends this fall. I've known this deadline was coming since last summer, so since then I've been trying to devise a plan to get out of this job and do something that would not only allow me to be home more with the kids, but would also allow me to take more classes so I can get done with my degree faster and get on with what I really want to do with my life.
What do I really want to do with my life, one might ask? I want to be a lawyer. Most specifically, I want to work in women's health and gender issues, and advocate for breastfeeding and VBAC education, legislation, and awareness. But I have at least 3 years of my undergrad left (at this pace, 12 hrs a semester) and THEN another 3 years of law school. However, it might be many, many years more of law school if I still have to work a full time job then. And I just don't think I can keep up this pace. Working full time, going to school full time, and being a mother is incredibly stressful, and I just don't think I can keep going in this gear for another 6 or more years.
So, for the last several months I've tried to develop some of my other skills into a small home-based business that could sustain my family while I finish school. I have a talent for cake decorating, so I've been running a small part-time business doing wedding and birthday cakes out of my house. However, I cannot afford the money it would take for me to LEGALLY expand this business and make it viable. I'm flying under the radar now, but if the county health inspector found out I was making and selling cakes out of my kitchen, I'd get fined and the operation would be shut down. This is the reason I can't quit my day job and take this thing full time. I can't afford the licensing costs.
My other small business plan was to take my talent for public speaking and process implementation, along with my breastfeeding advocacy, and turn it into a consulting service that would help employers become more work/pump friendly. I did this for my own company, and my brilliant friend suggested I turn it into my work. I thought it was a great idea, seeing as how it would compliment my future law endeavors quite nicely, and started looking into getting my CLE certification so I could be an accredited professional. Then I stumbled on a few other businesses that already offer these services, who have far more resources and credentials than I have, and I realized I would have no competitive edge. This has been done, and by women far more talented than I. I am not needed here.
So today I have no idea what I'm going to do in August. I suppose I'll keep paying most of my salary to somebody else to raise my kids, while I spend 10 hours a day loathing my job, and the other 8-10 hours a day studying, sitting in class, baking cakes for money, and hardly seeing my children until one day, my body decides it's had enough, and I have an aneurysm at 37 the way my over-worked aunt did.
And today, I feel worthless. I feel that all the talents I thought I had only look like talents until they're placed up against a woman who's truly made something of herself. Then, I just look like a silly little girl with a hair-brained scheme and no real-world worth.
Excuse me. I have to go make a cake now. The End.
