The Brave Face Cracks, then Crumbles

I've beem wearing a brave face these past couple of weeks, since finding myself in this need-work-now bind, and I've been doing everything I can to stay positive, but today it was finally just too much. I've spent much of the last 3+ hours in tears, or at least fighting them off. That I had company and was out in the world was just adding to the fucking humiliation of feeling this weak, this scared.

I still feel weak, scared, and, hell, terrified. I still have tears tumbling down my cheeks, and there's nothing I can do to make them go away.

I'd kill for a bit of dope right now, or a good bottle of wine. Something to numb this pain/fear/horror and make it all dissipate.

The last time I felt this scared, this complete lack of control over my existence, was when I was making $9 an hour, working retail, living at home, and discovered my mother was dying.

I haven't been able to remember how horribly black and daunting all that terror was until now. Today, I feel it. Today, I'm drowning in it. Today, I just couldn't pretend any more.

When I got home Thursday night, I was so tired, so frustrated, so nearly at the end of my rope, that I felt like I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Today, I feel a little worse. I'm keeping it together, not because I can, not because there's room to do so, but merely because I have no choice.

If there is anything I know about myself, it's how strong I am. The shit I've been through, y'know, it's like forging steel; the more you put it into fire, the stronger it becomes. I've met the smelter more than I ever cared to, and I always walk away a stronger person.

But there are moments when you break. Moments I break. Moments my shards need to get melted down, and something needs to be fashioned anew. I'm there, now. I'm so fucking sick of the life I've been leading.

You see, when you're going through shit, it's easier to take the "soft" road. Work the job you're barely tolerating, because less is expected of you, and challenges come few and far between. Do what it takes to get by, but don't push yourself. After all, you have a storm to weather, right? But in that complacent reduction of self, that desperate attempt to dial things down in order to cope, we lose something of who we are.

Me, I'm a talented, creative, driven person who spent the last decade of her life not pursuing the harder path because to not go there meant not failing. I've gradually been pushing myself closer and closer to pursuing real dreams, doing real things, and this was the year it was going to begin to materialize. And maybe it has. Maybe that groundwork has been laid. Maybe I'm on that verge.

But today, tonight, I feel like I'm swimming against the tide, but the tide isn't what it seems -- it's the flush of a toilet, and one false move, and everything I've built for myself in the past decade goes right down the drain.

I'm fucking terrified. No one I know can help me. No one has money. No one has a job to throw my way. And frankly, I don't want it. But a time may come in the next few weeks that I have to go and swallow that pride and beg, go on welfare, whatever the fuck it takes.

Ironically, Monday might also be the day my future changes. I have three job interviews, and two scheduled calls to discuss promising positions, so that's five jobs I could land, not including the three I interviewed for last week. At any other time in my life, I'd be fucking over the moon, not only having the number of interviews lined up that I do, but the fucking CALIBRE of interviews, man!

Three of the five are all places I have consciously thought of as being desireable workplaces in the last five years. THREE of them! And I have interviews for them all! Fucking amazing!

But, tonight, I sit here in the realization that I absolutely need a job. I have no credit, thanks to my decision to cut up my card and pay off my debt -- then I was laid off, and without a job, you can't get credit. Oops. Yeah. Don't I wish I hadn't made that choice, huh? Fuck, man. That'd be five grand of ass-saving money now. Never, ever again do I make my credit go away. Never. Just the debt.

I sit here dreading the reality of this home I absolutely love possibly being something I may have to lose. I sit here knowing my mother died bankrupt, and that it is, without a doubt, the biggest fear I possess. I've included photos of my place. Clearly, my home means a tremendous amount to me.

I just hate this fear. I'm giving into it tonight, letting myself be as scared as I can be, so I can just get this out of my system. I dunno if it's possible to get it out of my system, realistically, but I have to try. The plan tomorrow is to ride my bike until I'm dead on my feet. Just wipe myself out, crawl into bed, and sleep it off, and wake up, and conquer the world on Monday.

If there's anything I'm capable of, it's pretending. 'Cos it ain't pretending if it's just on hold, you know? I really AM a brilliant, creative, driven person. Right now, it's just not in me. If I get a job, all that ego comes rushing back, and soon, I'll be every bit of the dynamo I would have said I was.

In fact, if I pull this shit off and get any of these jobs I want (and, god willing, I get to CHOOSE from them, even, like happened the last time I took a new job), then I'll be an unfuckingstoppable force of nature. I will have had my back to the wall, in an insane situation, and will have attained an ideal job with only two weeks to have searched for it.

I'm hoping that will be the case. Deep down inside, I know that if that's the case, then I finally will have proven to myself that I'm the person I've always hoped I'd be: Strong, resourceful, able to act when I have to, and able to take what I want. I feel like that person's within me, but that I've never really challenged her.

(Now, I say that after having dealt with: my mother's death, two very serious vehicle accidents, three blown knees, an over-fondness for alcohol and drugs, and a weight gain of 50 pounds [now gone] and all in the last six years.)

This is one of those situations where, if I can get through this (and I probably will... I'm just feeling down, and rightfully so), I will finally, without doubt, know exactly what the fuck I'm made of.

I want nothing more than to prove myself to myself. Fuck everyone. Fuck you, fuck them, fuck him, fuck 'em all. I just want to prove this to myself. It's time. I need to know. Am I all that? Judging by how I've performed so far, I am. Now I need the job. Monday, I hope to get the job. Be me, the best of me, that's all I have to do. Here's hoping.

These pics are of my pad. My kitchen's a postage-stamp sized one with cedar plywood cupboards and apple-lime green on the walls. My pad rocks. I want to keep my pad. Where the rocking chair is now resides a big fuckin' cow-pattern beanbag chair, which I'm about to sink into and watch Rocky. (I was walking to my scooter after my evening and heard Rocky's theme playing in an apartment. I was hoping it was a sign: "Girl, you SHALL overcome," y'know?) And I shall eat chocolate, since I have no other vices to succumb to tonight. If ever there was a wrong time to have a dearth of vices. Sigh.

Weirdly, just checked my cellphone for messages, and I have yet another request for a Monday interview. Crazy shit. It's probably just a matter of days before I'm employed now, but nonetheless, these emotions sort of linger. I suspect some of these feelings have been a long time coming. It is what it is, man. Getting a job will be unfuckingreal. I will never be so happy to work again as I will the day I get the, "Can you start Monday?" call. Never. There's some serious desire here, baby.