You know what’s awkward?
Crying in front of your boss. This is especially true when said boss also happens to be a dude. A dud-boss, if you will. I don’t know about you, but crying in front of anyone is pretty high on my list of most awkward things ever, but crying in front of a dude-boss makes for a particularly special kind of torture.
And what, I ask, is more awkward than crying in front of your dude-boss when you already hate crying in front of anyone in the first place? Crying in front of said dude-boss for the reasons I did today.
When it comes to the nadirs of life, there are two things I’m big on: 1) Fixing problems instead of riding them out (which sucks when the only thing that can fix a problem is to ride it out. Patience: Not a virtue I possess), and 2) Pretending things don’t bother me nearly as much as they do (which, if not stymied in some sort of healthy fashion can lead to, among other things, crying in front of people like my dude-boss). I like to think that this blog will be a good creative outlet for the latter but in the grand scheme of life I really just need to work on my fight-or-flight reactions to problems.
Life has been handing me lemons faster than I can make lemonade lately. Some of these problems are petty, some of them are serious. None of them are the end of the world and I KNOW that everything will work itself out in the end. But let’s be real here – who the fuck actually finds that little piece zen useful when they’re in the midst of personal angst? C’MON.
But anyway.
I think it was just too much at once and not enough venting. I was like a bottle of champagne bursting my cork (I love how inappropriate that sounds), minus the bubbly good times. I hate feeling helpless and feeling like I have no one to turn to, but that was where I was at. I just didn’t expect dude-boss to be the one who would get to hear my (literal) sob story.
I had a lot on my mind when dude-boss pulled me aside to tell me that he was disappointed in me for opting out of some office social event.
And that was it. I just started to cry. I started to cry like a fucking child and told HIM what was bothering me. I didn’t tell him all of it, but I told him more than I had told anyone else up until that point. And, how pathetic is that? How pathetic is it that I didn’t feel like I could tell anyone about this stuff, only to tell my dude-boss instead? Uhg.
I told him about my recession-ravaged parents and how my mom, who has worked so hard for so long, finally broke down and had to ask my brother and I for money just to get her and my dad through until the next payday because they had nothing left. I told him about how I just had to decimate my savings account in order to pay off some debt just so I could start getting ahead. As good as it feels to be rid of the burden, I am devastated at being right back to where I started after so much hard work. I would have to be totally helpless at the worst possible time.
I told him about the guilt I felt about wanting, needing, so desperately to move out on my own, both for my own sanity and to relieve some of the burden from my parents. But I can’t even afford a deposit on some shitty apartment now, and fuck if it doesn’t sting to know that I was so close to not even have to go that route in the first place.
I didn’t tell him about my ungrateful youngest brother and the horrible, hateful things he wrote to my mom, damning her and our family for not helping him more when they can’t even help themselves. I also didn’t tell him about my boyfriend, who had told me he wanted to move in together and got my hopes up and everything only to decide that he wasn’t financially ready for it. Two weeks later he told me that he was moving into a new, more expensive apartment and the beginning of next month. He told me this as if we had never talked about moving in together, as if I should be excited for him. I didn’t tell dude-boss these things, but I did tell him how horrible it feels to feel betrayed by people I thought I could rely on.
He told me I need to get some perspective. I told him I’m sick of getting fucking perspective. I get it – there are people in Nashville who have lost their homes to rampant floods, the ocean is being poisoned thanks to a bunch of greedy dipshit bastards and in the grand scheme of things, my problems aren’t that bad. But right now, they’re bad enough.
And then he told me to stop.
“You can’t help anyone if you can’t help yourself,” he said. “A starving man feeds no one.”
Have you ever noticed how, sometimes, you just need someone else to tell you what you’ve already been thinking before you can believe it? I’ve felt so unbelievably guilty about wanting (needing) to move out when my family is going through such a rough time. I felt like that would be fleeing when the real answer to the problem would be to fight.
Except that this is one fight that I’m just not cut out for. He is so, SO right about that. I just needed to hear it to be able to accept it.
Once I finished building a sculpture of snot-tissue on his conference table, he hugged me and made me go home. For all the shame and guilt I felt for having bawled my eyes out like that to someone like him, I also felt a lot better for the first time in a long time.
Tags: angst, growing up, money, moving out, recession, work
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