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#241 - the long, sad story
12/10/01 @ 7:41 pm

My worst depression since the fiasco with R. It had been building to this conclusion since I increased my hours a few months ago to help cover CK's tasks. Three events in about 2 week's time brought it all to a head.

First, the fight with CK. It wasn't even a real fight. She didn't talk to me for 3 days. It's more complicated than that, since we work together. Monday she was nasty to me all day. I thought she was just pissed that I didn't complete some task Friday night. I was caught up doing something for our boss, her brother, that kept me late, so I went home without finishing this other task. But she didn't talk to me about it. Didn't talk to my manager(s) about it, so I didn't know what to think. Tuesday, I decided to break the ice and nearly every email between us I included a joke. I think I wrote about that in an entry, about rabid tigers eating our co-worker. She seemed to find that amusing, so I thought whatever it was, I had imagined it, or it hadn't had anything to do with me anyway. But Wednesday she was nasty again. Finally, late in the day, I decided I'd had enough of this, and I'd talk to her about it.

She was alone in her area, so I asked her quietly, was she mad at me. She said yes. I think I asked her why. She said, very angrily, "I think you are inconsiderate of my feelings" and something else that I don't remember. She completely stunned me, because the whole reason I was putting myself through so much stress was to take some away from her. I tried to calm myself, to think of how to answer, so I moved over to a chair to talk with her. But suddenly behind me there was a voice, a male co-worker, asking CK to do something for him. For some reason, right then I broke down. Tears started flowing down my face, so I carefully, silently sat in the chair, my back facing the room. I sat like that for five minutes, because he wouldn't leave. My face was a mess by that time, snot and tears everywhere. The moment I could no longer hear his footsteps as he left the area, I bolted from where I was, and told CK that I was sorry to cry in front of her, that she hadn't caused my tears (I was convinced it was just stress), and that I would be back when I could stop making a fool of myself. I went to the bathroom, took a few minutes to wipe up my face & calm down, but in that short amount of time she had left for home. I was demolished. I grabbed my coat & purse, put on sunglasses even though it was dark outside, and fled the building, nearly knocking down a customer in the process. I sat in my car sobbing uncontrollably for almost 15 minutes.

That evening was horrible. I couldn't figure out what had happened. Why was she so mad at me? Why did she think I was inconsiderate? And why on earth couldn't I get a grip on myself??? After a few hours, I sat down & composed a long letter explaining how me not completing that task on Friday had had nothing to do with wanting to purposely add to her workload (that was implied in the rest of what she had said, despite me not remembering the wording now). I explained that it was her own brother, our boss, who demanded that I complete a different task before leaving that night. A task that should have taken 15 minutes and left me time to go back to what I was doing, but instead took me an hour and a half, at which point I was really tired & starving, so I decided to do it in the morning. And CK, the girl who constantly mouths off that she doesn't care about anything not getting done if it's not her task, I didn't want her to think that I left it there for her to do on Monday morning. So when I left Friday, I promised myself I would come in early Monday so she wouldn't even see that it hadn't been done, let alone worry about it. Except come Monday morning, who remembers shit like that? I came in at the normal time, about 3 hours after her start time, and she had been forced to complete the task in my place. How was I to know there would be an emergency need for it???

So, at the end of this explanation, I apologized. Even though it wasn't done to personally hurt her, and I should have to face my managers for not completing tasks, not her. And what was worse was the way I apologized. In this entry I mention that sometimes I get so emotional, I feel like I'm a bad person and I need to apologize for everything, even when it's not my fault. I was seriously doing my worst at this. I described it to my shrink as "abasing" myself in front of her. Completely, totally embarrassingly grovelling for her to forgive me. I emailed it to her the next morning. She didn't say anything about it that day, Thursday. Around 1pm she sent an email to everyone that she was going home for the day. Great. But, at 5pm she was back in the office to meet with management. And after that meeting, she came to see me. And said she was sorry for taking everything out on me. I was so relieved, there were tears in my eyes, and she hugged me.

The next week, I believe, was Thanksgiving. Or this could have been the week after Thanksgiving, I'm not sure. All these stresses came back to back though. Thanksgiving was horrible, sitting in the car, trying to figure out why my "fight or flight" instincts wanted me to jump from the car rather than go back to our home town & see my family. I had stressed, seriously, sick-to-my-stomach stressed, about it the day before. I couldn't decide if I should go or not. I was really pissed that my mom had told me that this year the Aunt who always hosts these functions would be out of town, so she was just hosting us kids at her place. But the DAY BEFORE Thanksgiving, she tells me she can't afford it, & we're going over to another Aunt's house. An Aunt that I don't particularly like, whose children I pretty much loathe, and whose home I don't even know the location of! But I decided that I should go because a) my gramma would be there, b) my favorite uncle would be there, and c) my father rarely attends my mother's family's functions. Had I known he was going to be there, I would have decided finally not to go.

On top of this was guilt. Guilt that I had a rotten family. Because Sweetie's mom was out of town, visiting her ill father, so his Dad was home alone, and it would just be him, us, and Sweetie's brother, since their sister & her husband couldn't come. And I wished to everything you can wish to that I could just say, "Why don't you come over to my mom's? She'd love to have you!" And when I was a girl, there was a time I would have said that. I *did* say it, often. My friends called her "Mom". My best friend lived with me for 6 months Senior year. Sweetie practically lived there too.

But now I'm embarrassed. Embarrassed that anyone I care about would see the way my family is, the way they treat each other, and think less of me. I was almost in tears, this running through my head over & over as we drove from my Aunt's to his parents' house. So I finally said it as we pulled up into their driveway. And he said he understood. And that was that. We went out for the 2nd meal of the day, as usual, except this time at a restaurant, where boy conversation abounded. Imagine that, boys talking football on Thanksgiving!

It was about a week later that I met up with the climax of this sob story. The villian will now be played by Sweetie, cast in a very dark light by my subconscious of clingy, dark, disturbed feelings. So does that mean the villian was really me? Probably.

Things were supposed to be getting better. I had just gotten word that they had hired someone to take over purchasing & receiving, and within days I would be back to just bookkeeping again! Plus, CK would be done with it after teaching the new person, so she would be in a better mood too. Except, despite this, things between us still didn't feel right. I was VERY aware that Christmas was about a month away, and I would have 10 glorious days away from the office. I wanted very badly to go somewhere out of our city, but I wouldn't care that much if that wasn't possible. Just if I was away for long enough to put this stress away from me. And have lots of non-stressful time with my Sweetie.

And Sweetie opened a chat with me to tell me he was going to be really busy for the next 6 weeks for a new projects. He did not come home & talk to me to give me lots of details & calm me & touch me. He opened a chat and just blurted out one sentence. Then it became me asking paranoid questions & him giving short replies. I was furious. I had seen what these types of projects meant, and they meant cancelling preplanned anniversary trips and not getting holidays off. We had been planning to have this time off together for over 2 months, probably 3 months. And he laid this on me without any warning, just pop, there it is!

He came home later. We went out to eat and barely said anything to each other. Finally, that night, I lost it. Crying and crying. Frantic that I was going to lose my mind if I didn't get away from all this shit very soon, and that my one shining hope was being stolen away from me: my vacation time with my Sweetie.

He convinced me that he *would* be able to have those 10 days off. That we would have Christmas with his parents, that we would go up with the family to the cabin & visit our nieces. It would only be before that and after that that he would be busy. He promised. We talked about that this would be good, since it would be a large lump some of cash on top of his salary. Finally, a cushion for the future if anything went bad again.

But the rest of the weekend, I was miserable. Shallow. Like I had been... I don't know, hollowed out, like I was an empty husk. I felt no hope. I couldn't escape the miserableness, despite spending most of my time trying to figure out what it was that was causing me to feel this way. Because I couldn't figure it out. This continued through Monday. Last Monday, in fact.

But then, last Monday as I was playing Christmas songs, Feliz Navidad came on. by... Jose Feliciano I believe. I'd never really heard it before I bought this CD, but Sweetie & I like to sing it together because, well, it's damn repetitive. But it's so fun. About 3/4 of the way through the song, someone shouts out something like "A-ha!", and at that moment, I could just see this house band, playing for friends and family, with such joy. I instantly grinned, alone in my office without a window. And I started feeling better. Much better. The clincher was seeing my therapist that night.

I told her it was either the sound of the familiar elevator or the fish in the tank watching you as you wait your turn, but something about going to her office turns me into Pavlov's dog, so I always enter her office in a good mood. It's quite amazing, really!

So we talked. About how I couldn't figure out why I completely freaked out about Sweetie's proposal (after I calmed down, I heard the part about him not having to take the job if I didn't want him to). I felt so strange that Sunday, still so emotional over such a small thing. Thinking I was losing him, feeling like he had betrayed me, when I wasn't losing him & he hadn't betrayed me.

Shrink lady really is awesome sometimes. I have abandonment issues, and they come up often, and she pointed out that all these things happened within a few week's time, it wasn't a surprise to her that I would be emotional, since I was still coming down off of the other stresses that were happening.

We talked about my family, how Thanksgiving had been so hard, but I got through it. Then we talked about CK. Talked about how I don't think I can ever be her friend again, and I'm avoiding her at work, dreading running into her, despite the fact that she apologized & she's all smiles with me now. It's not usually this hard for me to forgive someone. I feel very resentful towards her. And the reason why is this. I abased myself in front of her, and I shouldn't have, because I did nothing wrong to her. She overreacted and took something personal that had nothing to do with her. I feel that if she was really my friend, she would have seen how ridiculous it was for me to be apologizing, for me to be begging forgiveness, & she would have told me that I shouldn't apologize because it wasn't my fault. She should have seen how much hurt she caused me, how miserable she made me, how many tears I cried, and she should have been miserable for causing such pain in me. Not come to me in my office the way she did, with an odd smile on her face as she apologized and watched my tears and hugged me, like she had won something and now she could patronize me by her light apology and her touch. I don't know. It was weird. It felt sincere, but... More like when little girls pull each other's hair & then kiss & make up when their parents tell them to. It didn't seem serious enough for the kind of emotional wound she had given me.

Because I had done so much to take stress away from her, and she said I was "inconsiderate of her feelings." I can never trust her again, because she didn't trust our friendship enough to know that I would never purposely hurt her. So we'll never be friends again. But I'm trying to stop avoiding her at work.

So that's the long, sad story. I tried very hard just not to think about things for the longest time. I read 5 books in a matter of weeks, desperate to be anywhere but here.

But now I am here, and the holidays are upon us, and I'm having fun Christmas shopping and being with Sweetie, so life is pretty good. Kisses.

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