Category Archives: adventures in retail

The temp­ta­tion to be That Chick who just posts sta­tuses on Face­book that are YouTube links to the Sound­track of her Really Sad, Tragic Life is really strong these days, but I’m 37 and I like to hope I’m a lit­tle too old for that stuff, even if I do kvetch too much and need to trim my friends list of a few ex-boyfriends and high school peo­ple who seem to have con­tacted me sim­ply because they have noticed that “Mar­ried” is not an active part of my pro­file– and also peo­ple who really no longer active parts of my life– for what­ever rea­son.  I have a hard time let­ting go, though– I am noth­ing if not roman­tic and sen­ti­men­tal, ide­al­iz­ing my rela­tion­ships with and expec­ta­tions of peo­ple and hop­ing for bet­ter out­comes even as I pre­tend at being prag­matic and then being dis­ap­pointed and bit­ter and keep­ing it all to myself only to explode– or implode depend­ing on the mood of the week/day/minute.

(Except, yeah.  I’m just going to do it.  Most of the links here are my self-pity sound­track.  Feel free to ignore them unless you’re look­ing for emo-dump songs.)

Still, though– I try to keep those posts to a min­i­mum (for me and my blath­er­ing fin­gers) and I remem­ber I have a blog.  So, I start to write a post.  It then devolves into some­thing I hate– or more specif­i­cally, some­one I hate, by which I mean me, and then I just let the thing linger in my hard drive while I stare at it and mull and just let the thoughts spi­ral– then go down­stairs and bake some­thing for work.

I fig­ure it’s active, even as I know it’s full-on sub­li­ma­tion, thank you.  My com­pul­sion to feed peo­ple, because I can’t just say “Thanks for putting up with my shit, for telling me to smile and telling me that I look pretty today, for telling me to breathe when I look stressed, for under­stand­ing implic­itly and explic­itly that I am hor­ri­bly, hor­ri­bly depressed about some­thing that was my own damned deci­sion.”  It’s a bed I’ve got to lie in and I’m thank­ful they don’t push me about it, tell me horrible-funny sto­ries about their divorces, go drink­ing and danc­ing with me, and are as much mis­fits as me in their own spe­cial ways and so– bak­ing– yeah.  I can do that, some­times, and when I can’t, there’s always clemen­tines or the Gluten-Free and Vegan baked goods aisle at the Whole Foods at the start of the plaza.  (Peo­ple really like clemen­tines, I have found.)  I may not eat the baked offer­ings myself– sweet things taste pretty dis­gust­ing after half a cookie unless it’s the store’s red vel­vet cheese­cake, so bad for me but I eat it, regard­less– but I can at least bake for some­body else and they can say mmm and aah and I can feel loved, at least for a bit.

The fact is, I feel like crap.  I feel phys­i­cally crappy, exhausted from work because it’s phys­i­cally tir­ing, arthritic because of the change in sea­sons and the lack of fat padding/weight loss (as well as because I’m being really self-sabotaging and not tak­ing all my sup­ple­ments and anti-inflammatories, nor am I eat­ing right and avoid­ing all the gluten I should, even though my wheat intol­er­ance really does seem to be blos­som­ing into full-blown Celiac, com­plete with nau­sea after a wheat-containing meal)– and just when the store rebuild seems like it’s done our DM has one more idea (and there’s more to be done after Christ­mas) and of course, I’m rel­a­tively new at my job, so I screw things up.

I hate, hate, hate that I’m not doing things right.  Hate it.  Hate me.  Hate every­one, really.  I can­not describe the depths of loathing and nau­sea and anx­i­ety dreams I have about a store that is at the same time my hap­pi­est place.  I’m used to being the Smartest Girl in the Room.  We’re too busy (like, 10–20% over planned busi­ness and under­staffed most days busy) for my co-managers to explain things to me and I feel stu­pid and use­less and I get resent­ful and we don’t always have the best groups of per­son­al­i­ties work­ing together even as I really do like all my co-managers– but … a thou­sand times but.  Everyone’s human, everyone’s stressed, I’ve got extra issues on my plate that I bring  in with me, and I’m hair-triggered to want to curl into a ball and just … slit my wrists or take all my med­ica­tion at night because I set up an end­cap the wrong way or some­one moved my cheese mis­sion table to a dif­fer­ent part of the store.

I feel badly that I will occa­sion­ally go off and work on a project and pout in my way and bitch about whoever’s “earned” my wrath du jour, but that doesn’t stop me from doing it in the moment, from need­ing to do it– teary-eyed, usu­ally still pretty pro­duc­tive, inclined to be brusque and slam things, and as my co-worker said in effect yes­ter­day, “I can always tell when you’re upset, you stomp really loud.”  I demurred in my way, made some crack about being Stampy the Ele­phant rein­car­nate (doesn’t it all come back to the Simp­sons, that or Monty Python?) but– that didn’t stop him from mak­ing jazz hands and try­ing to get me to smile on the way out, he who’s even more of a grump than I am.  That there’s a Frank Sina­tra CD on con­stant replay in the store that’s full of songs my hus­band used to sing to me and at some point, the singing, it stopped and I never asked why until later, too late– well.  It hasn’t helped.  (What? Me?  Make teary-eyed retreats to Receiv­ing every time “Fly Me to the Moon” or “Come Fly With Me” comes on to break down some boxes or hurl some­thing into the dump­ster out back?  I don’t know what you’re talk­ing about.)

I know that I’m really fool­ing no one.  Every­one, from the co-workers I don’t get along with to the ones I go drink­ing and danc­ing with, all know exactly how messy and grace­less my heart is.  They’re just kind enough to play along because every­one there, they’ve got some kind of story, you just don’t always know what it is.  The store is full of peo­ple who get up and come into work and are on sec­ond careers or on “I never fin­ished col­lege” or “I’m tak­ing a break from X” kind of tra­jec­to­ries (career pauses? ask me about being a lawyer, really!)– we don’t ask, we let each other tell.  I try to give thanks and praise for jobs well done (or hell, even com­pleted, it’s one more thing off my list) if I can stop long enough to take a breath (and sadly, my friend who used to tell me to breathe got pro­moted out of the store and now I’m feel­ing dole­ful because I have to remem­ber that, too.)  We try not to be too hard on peo­ple who show up five min­utes late and some­times flake on their shifts so long as they per­form when they’re here and they’re try­ing, god­damnit.  Some­times I feel like we’re the last Isle of Mis­fit Toys and if we can’t be kind to each other among the inter-familial snarling and snip­ing brought on by dumb cus­tomers and Just Too Much Work, then there isn’t any safe place.  I have other friends, out­side of work, who have also been won­der­ful– real rocks, but I don’t see them every day.  I need to remind myself to reach out more but damnit, every effort’s hard, like slog­ging through cement.  (And yeah, every teardrop’s a water­fall, too.)

I know I’m depressed.  I upped my meds so the passive-to-active like a turbo-charged race­car sui­ci­dal­ity would regress a bit but… that done, I still feel lots of sad­ness, regret, self-loathing, doubt.  All of that shit.  Anger– at me, my hus­band, every stu­pid cus­tomer who can’t write the name of a book down or keep their tod­dlers from hurl­ing toys or just watch where they’re going, much less stop offer­ing to hold my food while I’m on break so I can go fetch them a book rather than wait the two min­utes it’ll take for some­one to help at cus­tomer ser­vice.  It’s the usual short tem­per  (exac­er­bated on occa­sion with a lit­tle manic-depressive rage, but hey, I’ve got pills I carry for that) of some­one who’s ter­ri­bly lonely when it’s her own doing and she doesn’t feel like mak­ing her bed any­more.  (Or of doing much any­more, frankly.  My ther­a­pist asked me what expec­ta­tions I had of my meds, of other peo­ple, of hopes for the future… I had to answer– “Not much.”  Still, I do try to get out, make plans, try not to go to bed before 9, and some­times, I even have fun.  I under­stand the con­cept of Fak­ing It Until You Make It, Smile Like You Mean It, all that Oprah-esque shit that still holds some water.)

I was talk­ing to my hus­band the other night after a party I decided I would try to go to– I lasted ten min­utes, right until some­one asked me how/where he was, and then I had a panic attack as I answered that he and I were no longer together.  I always tell peo­ple that we both had changed and weren’t able to find a way to rec­on­cile those changes– when I called him like the stu­pid hys­ter­i­cal melo­dra­matic Movie Cliche that I am prone to being these days (in the car, on the drive home, no less) and asked him how he han­dled those ques­tions, he said he usu­ally took the blame.

It made me feel awful, even more awful than I usu­ally feel, because as much as there are days when, if we ran into each other on the street (and I felt even more awful when he said he’d seen me dri­ving and I hadn’t seen him, as wrapped up in get­ting to where I was going as I had been), I’d throw hard objects right at his head because I am so fuck­ing lonely and exhausted right now and just want some­one to give me that ridicu­lous, unob­tain­able Uncon­di­tional Love (oh, and on-demand cud­dling and footrubs and an adorable cat and lots of back­rubs and sex and a sack of unmarked thou­sands while we’re at it) and be psy­chic and know all the things that I am still inca­pable of artic­u­lat­ing (this writ­ing, it’s eas­ier than the talk­ing, almost always, except when I can’t even write, but still, even then)… the fact is, I really do believe what I said, which is that we both changed and that we couldn’t make it work out once we started really talk­ing– some­thing that took us too long to do, for rea­sons so com­pli­cated that the Gor­dian Knot’s a cake­walk, even with­out that pansy sword shit.

I don’t want to just be ok (though that would be nice).

I want to feel silly, stu­pid, ridicu­lous goofy love and not have to have the bit­ter­sweet worry and won­der I know now by heart.  I don’t want to won­der if we’re going to stay together until we die.  I want to let myself have roman­tic faith in my part­ner, learn what that might mean.  I don’t want to look at or unpack the sen­ti­men­tal things I almost ran­domly chose when I moved (and I’m still moon­ing over the things I miss but that I left behind for my hus­band, since I was too choked up at the time to ask what he might want, since I was afraid that the answer was All or Noth­ing, nor did I want to be That Evil Bitch who took every­thing), nor do I want to feel this dumb and maudlin and swoony for­ever.  I have to look away from the pic­tures my Dad has of us up in the halls because I’m not ready to ask him to take them down, even when this was my choice– I would still rather be alone than pre­tend that everything’s alright.  I’m scared as hell– I may never fig­ure it all emo­tion­ally out, may never get my finan­cial feet under me ever again, may be a retail wage slave for­ever.  I feel hope­less and hap­less and stu­pid most of the time, and I know no one said it would be easy, but I didn’t know it was going to be open-heart surgery with­out anes­the­sia every day, either.

I look in the mir­ror (when I look in the mir­ror at all because I don’t like to, because I don’t know what I see there, mor­pho­log­i­cally, emo­tion­ally, all of that shit) and I never know the answer to “What are you doing?”  I don’t know when I will know.

I know fully well I am flawed.  Bro­ken, even, maybe beyond repair for the sake of being with any­one, much less my hus­band.  We thrashed through to a point where it became clear that the things that I think that I need are things that he just can’t do, not and be who he needs to be.  That isn’t an issue of fault, whether he believes it or not, even if it is an issue of both of our flaws and not being able to make them mesh any more.

I know I am frag­ile, prone to hair-triggered reac­tions, that I can’t take crit­i­cism at all because of the way my Dad rarely had a nice thing to say when I was a kid, that I can’t accept peo­ple tak­ing or offer­ing to care of me because my mother’s nar­cis­sism made all her care­tak­ing attempts about her and there­fore inher­ently use­less and sus­pect, that I avoid con­fronta­tion and would rather cut off a limb than get into a fight with some­one I love because of the way my par­ents fought (unless I’m in a real or imag­ined posi­tion of power and then, ooh, watch out for my mighty pow­ers of condescension).

I know that my need to try to be per­fect and my need to make things per­fect and to avoid being seen as the flawed, occa­sion­ally really crazy and often lacking-insight-into-my-feelings per­son that I really am con­tributed to the way my mar­riage fell apart– I know that I take on too much over and over until I just crash, my respon­si­bil­ity and nur­tur­ing kinks crash­ing right into my resent­ment over hav­ing to “always” be the one to take care of myself and every­one else.  I want some­one to just psy­chi­cally know the things that I need– I don’t want to ask, because my emo­tional his­tory “tells” me that even if I asked (and under­stated the need for help, more than likely, because years of not get­ting help has trained me to only ask for a lit­tle help and do the rest on my own…) I wouldn’t likely get a response.

But the fact is– still remains– that I really don’t feel like it’s his fault.  It’s ours.  Just like our mar­riage was ours.  (And yes, he knows about this blog.  He might read this, though there are times in the past where he treated this blog and ear­lier ver­sions as “pri­vate” to me, one of many dif­fer­ences in our under­stand­ing of one another that we couldn’t resolve.)  There were a mil­lion things I could have done dif­fer­ently if I had been wiser, braver, bolder, known myself bet­ter at a younger, saner, something-er point in our marriage.

But we don’t get do-overs or sling­shots around the sun or Tardises, do we?  Just regrets about fights, con­fronta­tions, fuck-yous, fuller-soul search­ing I could’ve, should’ve done at some ear­lier point before I thrashed my way through to a real­iza­tion that I didn’t feel like me any more, just some fake, plas­tic, worn-out ver­sion of a sim­u­lacrum wife that had to get out or she’d lose what­ever ves­tige of her­self was left and try to either find some old joy or make some new ver­sion– and in the mean­time, try­ing to work it through with my hus­band once he agreed there was some­thing to work on and half the time feel­ing enraged for his reactions/inactions dur­ing the process and half the time feel­ing like I was the vil­lain and putting him through tor­ture. He said as much– ther­apy wasn’t his thing, the talk­ing cure was like bam­boo under his nails, and I regret like hell that it took me so long to fig­ure out how unhappy I was and that I couldn’t make it any cleaner than it was, though who knows if it’s ever pos­si­ble to be clean about these kind of things?  Any­one who had a heart would turn around and break it, it turns out, even as I’ve got him deep in the heart of me and any attempt to move on would be a dis­as­ter even if that was some­thing I wanted right now.  I don’t know what I want any­more.  I only know what didn’t work any­more, and that we couldn’t agree on any­thing else.

It was all I could/can still some­times think about, cry about, rage about– and my urge to con­fess to every­one all the time was some­thing I squashed except to a few friends because how tedious, really, how fuck­ing pathetic.  I also hate/d being the recip­i­ent of the looks of pity, frankly, pre­ferred the looks of inter­est from peo­ple who only saw my whit­tling waist­line (they didn’t know I wasn’t eat­ing because I wasn’t tak­ing care of myself and my mood sta­bi­liz­ers make me anorexic, yet at the same time was so relieved when some friends expressed con­cern and asked if I was okay) and the hair­cut I halfway got because my hus­band said not to get it and fuck him, I’d cut my hair if I wanted and I’d enjoy the Gaze I would get at work and soak up the compliments/flirting and dress up for my co-workers until it became uncom­fort­able and I felt awk­ward because– yeah.  I don’t know what to do with this body because nobody’s done any­thing with it in so long, includ­ing myself.  I hate it– me– more than a lot.

I left when I did in large part because I wanted to go before I started to feel some­thing like hate for my hus­band.  I wanted to leave while I still felt love– com­pas­sion– only occa­sional anger– for him and all of our prob­lems.  So far, I’ve been lucky that that’s been the case.  Whether it makes a dif­fer­ence to any­body but me– to his fam­ily, to the adorable nephew I no longer see– well.  It’s my prob­lem, really, but hey.  Most of them are.

So for now, every day– I’ll take my meds.  Comb my hair.  Eat my break­fast.  Go off to work.  Know this is chang­ing me.  And hope that it will save me.  I would take back hurts to my hus­band and his fam­ily that I’ve caused by acci­dent or on pur­pose because I do love my hus­band– miss him– still care.  It’s so easy to remem­ber how we started as very good– really, best friends– and how we’ve laughed over the years, but as for the rest– I’ve got to learn to stop beat­ing my dead emo­tional horses, even as they feel like wild ones that want to stam­pede me or make me swim until I can’t see land.  And maybe, just maybe, one of these days, I’ll get it all fig­ured out.