Demand More (Emotional Baggage Monday)

I'm just feeling so overwhelmed right now with so much on my mind that I can't even make myself sit down to write it all out. As it is, right now I'm lying in my bed on the crackberry, just trying to siphon off some of the excess so I can go to sleep (please excuse the typos and random unfocusedness of it all...this is real time, stream of consciousness, loved ones).

I tried to sit down and write about finally starting my new job, but it was flowing out like cold oatmeal...just kinda lumpy and sticky and gross (yes, words can be sticky). I will just say that Day 1 did NOT go well. I cried. In FRONT of my new boss. It was so bad that the managing partner called me Sunday afternoon to make sure I was coming back on Monday.

(Sidenote: Why am I like really irrationally pissed off right now? I don't like it.)

I felt like I'd been dropped head first into shark infested waters and realized that although I'd come from the big town pool, they'd only let me splash around in the shallow end. I was effing terrified. And when my boss pointed out to me that I looked shell shocked, I lost it. Dammitdammitdammit.

More details about that later (maybe). I've used the analogy before about feeling like a zoo raised animal when it comes to dating....well, its the same thing in my professional life. And I'm sad and hurt and angered about it. I've come to realize now more than ever truly how much of a token hire I was at my old job....there to "check the box" as my new boss says. They took my talents and squandered them, and took my self confidence in the process to make me feel just the way they treated me....like I was lucky that they gave me this mirage of an opportunity and that I there must have been something wrong with ME as to why, even though my credentials were much stronger, my peers were getting the better experiences and work. I was a cheeta on a treadmill...look how fast that cheeta trots!

So what does this have to do with adventures in divorce? Everything. The same way I felt about my old job is the same way I felt about my relationship. He made me feel stupid, and like I was lucky that he "stepped up" to do the bare minimum to meet my needs. Between my job and my Ex, I felt very small and marginalized....unworthy of being able to step up and ask for what I wanted, and what I needed.

(Ok, back from taking out the stupid dog. *snuggles back into nice comfy bed*)

But now things, they are a-changing. I'm starting to fully appreciate that yes, I deserve more, and yes, I'm justified in expecting more. But old habit die hard, and change for the better is still change. And change is hard. On the surface I do believe what people keep telling me....that I've got "It". But deep down at the core, when I'm lying alone in the dark, coming down off my slight tipsiness from the 2 beers I had with my boss in the office, I don't feel like that. I feel overwhelmed. And scared. Scared that I won't live up to the hype....even though I know it's not hype because all this is earned the hard way.

I'll just be glad when I can shed some of this self-doubt and fear and anxiety and truly be able to embrace myself and all I have to offer to the world. And to myself. Over the past year and a half I asked God to put me where I am supposed to be. Now it's my job to take that and make the most of it.

Namaste, loved ones. Goodnight.

Emotional Baggage Sundays, Part Deux

It seems like every Sunday (or at least every other Sunday) after a long weekend filled with good friends, good music, and yes, good drinks, I find myself sitting alone feeling melancholy about a number of things that I end up brooding over all afternoon, and then I end up posting some arcane bit of poetry or song lyrics or PostSecret postcard. So what's bothering me today? Might as well get it out:

1. Oddly enough (or not so oddly, considering how I create my iTunes playlists) this song that is currently playing as I write this pretty much sums up what's been on my mind most of the day: The One That Got Away by Pink. It's one of those weird issues because it's not something that's an active part of my life, but more like background static...... it's really one of those situations where I've accepted reality and let go. For the most part anyway. Its also something hard to explain (or not explain and just avoid) to someone you're dating that yes, there was a person in your life that was very important, and they're not anymore, and that makes you sad sometimes, but that honestly it is a non-issue because the odds of that relationship working out are less than nil. It's not taking anything away from the person currently in your life, but it's just reality. It happens. Everyone has that one that got away, but they move on. Right? I hope so.

2. I was throwing away junk mail and came across a mailer for a seminar on LLCs, LLPs, etc. I look at the names of the panelists and see (a) the moderator is the senior associate who made my life HELL the first year I started working at The Firm, gave me the shittiest assignments and the leftover bullshit, and was generally condescending and treated me like I didn't graduate from law school cum laude, and then (b) one of the panelists is a guy who started at The Firm the same time I did, and I remembered how they used to talk about how shitty of a writer he was when we first started, but they liked him and took him under their wings and gave him the good work and MENTORED him..... meanwhile I'm there given the shitty leftovers, the "simple quick little projects" that amounted to a bunch of bullshit. I literally started crying. Looking at my resume, you'd think that I would have been their fucking superstar. I feel like a failure sometimes because I feel like I should be at a much different place in my career, and it all comes down to the opportunities those fuckers didn't let me have at The Firm. And it was because they underestimated me, treated me like I was stupid, wouldn't give me the work so I could get the experience. It's the story of every black associate's life at The Firm.... we all tell the same tale. And that just made me angry all over again today, and made me question what the hell I'm doing in the legal profession in the first place.

(this playlist has got to go..... it's making me way too sad. "My Drive Thru".... that's a better song)

3. The fact that I still allow The Ex's words to get to me, gets to me. Yesterday the discussion involved him telling me that I need to quit "giving it away for free" and find some guy that can help me out financially right now. WTF?? I had to remind him that he doesn't have shit to offer to the woman he's dating that's almost, but not quite, old enough to be his momma, and that he needs to give her that same speech because if his theory holds true, her old ass should know better. Let me backtrack.... he doesn't have shit to offer her but companionship, which is all I'm looking for out of a guy, too. He's such an illogical fucktard, and it makes me mad that I can't just ignore that shyt and not let it, admittedly, hurt me. The insults he hurls at me are just really unnecessary. I hate being undercover sensitive sometimes.

4. Seems like nobody has any time for me. Yesterday I went to the movies alone (and saw the worst movie ever...... The Love Guru..... if I'd paid more than $1.25 for that shyt I'd still be mad right now), then ate dinner alone, then took myself to Front Page alone (but I always see people there I know and like), and then took myself home, again, alone. And this isn't anyone's fault, people have lives and are busy and whatnot. But damn.... next person who says that I probably have guys trying to get with me all the time is gonna get punched in the face, because NOBODY had any time for me this weekend. Well except for Roomie.... we had a good time hanging out Friday. Other than that, seems like everyone is too busy.

(dammittoallhell what is up with all my damn playlists pissing all over my emotions?? The current culprit: You Know What by N*E*R*D)

5. Being broke. Nuff said. Thanks to my girl and the random drunk white guy at Front Page last night for getting my Grateful Deads..... otherwise I would have been sitting there stone sober watching The Best of Soul Train on the bar TVs, which would have been a lot less fun because they were on some serious '80s ish last night. Comedy.

6. All those other things that I just can't talk about for one reason or another. But trust me, those are the ones bothering me the most.

Seeing the head naked of its skull

Being divorced and having joint custody of children gives a girl a lot of alone time to think and reflect and contemplate and soul search. Over the past year, I've realized just how much of an impact, paticularly negative impact, that The Ex had on my confidence and self esteem. Finally being able to step back from the situation and compare pre- and post-relationship has allowed me to see this.

I am in the process of reading the book "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston, which is regarded as a classic and great work of African-American literature. (I'm only half way through it, but can already say it was a great $6 find at Half-Price Books.) There's a part where the main character, Janie Starks, realizes that her husband Jody's constant criticisms of her are merely a cover up for his own short-comings (in this particular instance, growing older). "If he thought to deceive her, he was wrong. For the first time she could see a man's head naked of its skull. Saw the cunning thoughts race in and out through the caves and promontories of his mind long before they darted out the tunnel of his mouth." That passage struck a chord with me, and as I was reading it I saw myself as Janie and my Ex as Jody.

As outwardly supportive as my Ex was of me and my accomplishments, and as much as he said he didn't mind that I had more education and income than he did, there was always that part of him that tried to tear me down. Questioning my judgment, my sanity, my intellect, making me feel smaller, bringing me down a few notches from where he perceived me to be. Always trying to tell me what I was doing wrong in my job and my career and acting like he knew all the answers to navigating my profession, when in reality people IN the profession have trouble navigating it. The first time I really realized that this had been something constant throughout our relationship was when I was having lunch with my "study buddy" from law school, and she said "Yea, I remember you coming into the study room one day talking about how he was always treating you like you were stupid" but that I'd said it in kind of an off-hand way, just small talk before we got into studying. That was 6 years ago when that conversation occurred in that study room, and I didn't remember it at all. I now realize that it was just one of those things that I subconsciously accepted as true..... I was just book smart and that's it. But in hindsight I realize that the seemingly small and minor comments that he made to me were designed to make him feel needed..... like I'd be lost without him, when in reality it was the other way around. I began to see his head naked of his skull. Yes, his words said he didn't care that his wife was more professionally accomplished, but his actions and behaviors said otherwise, and such insecurity manifested itself in other ways.

Even though I now consciously recognize when my Ex is trying to bring me down, old habits die hard and things he says still get to me. Now it comes in the form of him questioning my parenting skills, my attention to my children, my career choices, my personal and dating life (or what he thinks he knows of it, which is nothing but the rumors he's dumb enough to allow messy and malicious people to bring to him). It's never overt, and is usually cloaked in an "I'm just trying to help you out" fascade. But he knows how to push my buttons, knows which words will cut the deepest and sting the longest. And they still hurt. That's always been his modus operandi..... his response to his own hurt is to deliberately hurt others worse. Just like Jody in the book. The ones who know and love us the best are the ones capable of hurting us the most.

Every day I grow stronger, though.... I'm learning to trust myself more, listen to myself, respect the validity of my thoughts and feelings that have been marginalized and minimized for so many years. It's a process and a journey that's far from complete, but I'm getting there.