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Torture & Triumph

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Torture & Triumph
journal, 08/29/97



I’ve go so many questions right now, and I have no way to answer tham all. I have to be somewhat honest with people, but if I do I could hurt their feelings and burn bridges. I need to keep connections if I’m going to do the things I plan to do over the next year, but I don’t know how long I can lie to people in order to do it.

I’m just not interested in Dave any more. I need to keep a tie with him, though, if I’m going to have a free lpace to stay in Scotland for a month. But that’s next summer, next June. It seems that he wants too much from me. He wants a relationship, and I just can’t give that to him anymore. I tried for too long, and there was nothing there in the first place. But how do you say that to a man who tells you he loves you?

Working with him makes things all the more difficult. Why can’t he just get another job? The worst part is, I genuinely think he’s not good at his job. Other people compliment him, but I thnk his work is cluttered and disorganized. He’s a painter, not a graphic designer. But then when people compliment him, it makes me wonder if its just me - am I being too hard on him? Do I not want him to succeed because it means on some level I have failed, since we work at the same job? It’s both, I guess. I know I need to be the best at everything, and I know he’s not as good as he thinks he is.

He just came up to me and told me that if things are bothering me, I can talk to him. That I shouldn’t feel that I can’t talk to him because I don’t want to bother him with my problems. Would he feel the same way if he knew he was the problem? That I don’t love him, that I’ve never loved him? Now he thinks I’m keeping my problems bottled up inside of me for his benefit, so spare him from having to hear about my problems, when he just wants to help me. If I told him the truth I’m positive he wouldn’t feel the same way.

I want to try to remain his friend. We’ve been through a lot and I want to feel like I can talk to him and confide in him. But he wants more from me, and that complicates things. We get along when we’re just being human beings, but then he’ll try to make a move on me and I’ll feel so uncomfortable. But I’m afraid that if I sever any notion of a relationship with us, I’ll have no place to stay next year, that he’ll change his mind and not want to spend time with me in Europe.

And part of the reason why I’m quitting my job and travelling around the country, then Europe, is because he invited me to stay with his family for a month. If I had to pay for an apartment her in Chicago and also pay for my lodgings in Europe, all without a job, I’d never be able to make it. I need him to solidify this. I need to know that he won’t back out on me, that I won’t quit my job and then he’ll take back his offer. He could potentially destroy all of my plans.

And I feel like he is going to try to benefit from my leaving, that he’s going to try to take over some of my job, and I don’t want him to benefit from my leaving, because he has been telling me all along that I’m not happy here, that I should go, and if he then tries to just take over my job I’ll know he was saying all these things just so I could leave and he could get a promotion. And I refuse to let him destroy me like that, have me lose my job so he can take it.

I’m exasperated. He sends out resumes every week, but he isn’t getting a job, at least not yet, and I don’t know if he wants to leave here or not.

It almost makes me want to stay here, just so he can’t have the satisfaction of getting my job, especially when he doesn’t deserve it.

***

I hate having pride in my work at this place. It is hard when you know you’re good at something and everyone tells you you’re good and yet no one will let you make decisions. I’m the highest-ranking designer at this company and people outside my department overrule decisions of mine arbitrarily - and regularly. They destroy any consistency or style something may have. And then I have to answer for it, since I’m the head of design. But I’m really not. I’m a slave to the whims of people who don’t know anything about my work. It makes me want to leave so badly.

And then I feel like I’m in some sort of contest with Dave, that I can’t leave, because that means he will have won and he will have my job. And he will have to deal with all the crap I have had to, and he will do a very poor job of it, and a worse product will be created.

But I guess it won’t be mine, so I shouldn’t care.

I just hate seeing things that are good get destroyed. It’s one of the hardest things for me to witness.

There are two types of people: people who think of work as an extension of themselves, people who are productive, and continually strive to improve, to move forward, and there are people who think of work as some sort of evil necessity to help them exist because no one will give them money for some reason. So they go through work making a greater effort to not work and act like they are working, they stay in the same job, the gossip, and they make life difficult for productive people.

One of the greatest benefits of Capitalism is that when the most productive people are allowed to work and to excel and to own and fully reap the benefits of their labor, then the standard of living is raised for all. Consider how well off homeless people are in this country as opposed to other countries, for instance. There is such a wealth of goods and services that it trickles down and improves the lives of all. When new technology is created, the ole technology becomes cheaper, and more affordable to the lower classes. Well, my point from all that is that yes, that’s one of the greatest things about Capitalism, but I must admit that there are times when on an entirely selfish level it bothers me that people who choose not to create, not to work hard, not to really contribute to society, still get the benefits from intelligent people’s work.

***

I have a headache that just does not want to go away. It is so strong, and it is all over my brain. It’s like there is so little moisture separating my brain from my skull that I’m really afraid to move my head around, for fear that the scraping will not only hurt but eventually damage parts of my brain I may actually need. I need to drink some water.

***

I feel like I’m making such a large decision in my life now. When I left college, I knew I was only going to be going to school for four years, this was the logical conclusion to my schooling, but it was a great change to go back home, as an adult, and start to look for a job. Once you’re working, though, you make your own schedlules. You can stay at the same job for thirty years, you can marry and quit your job and take care of a family, you can get another job. And the thing is, I had no idea how long I was going to be at this job. I thought I’d be here for at least six years’ that’s when my 401(k) becomes fully vested and I will have made the optimal amount of money in it, then I’d be ready to go, I’d have a few other investments, I could quit my job right about when I was probably ready to get married and possibly move to another city. But here I am, quitting a year and a half ahead of my plan, planning to spend a third of my savings on travelling instead of working for the next year.

It’s strange. I’ve always been so insistent that I be financially secure. I’ve always planned everything. I’ve always done the most logical thing. Is this logical? I figure that I’m young and I have a savings and I hate my job, this is as good a time as any. If I get married and/or start another job, I might not have this opportunity in my youth again. Right now, other than my job, there’s really nothing holding me back. So this is my chance.

But it’s not like me. It’s not like me to throw away a job that makes me great money. I have perks here. I can work on other projects here. The equipment is excellent. But I’m treated like a second-class citizen here. I have four to six people who answer to me design-wise, but I can’t tell them what to do when someone from another department is overriding my decisions all the time. I can hardly be an effective leader when no one allows me to lead.

I’ve mentally just gotten tired of fighting this place. So I’m here for another two months, I’ll try to save all of my money, and then I move on.

And recoup for a year.

I don’t know what I’m looking for in Europe. I want to be alone, really. I want to see different sights. I want to see different sights through my own eyes, with my perceptions, with my perspectives. I want to be able to react to the world.

Does that make sense?

I want to know I can do this. That I can.

And as I said, this is a very risky thing for me to do, this is not something that is in my nature. To reject my stability. How safe is it to travel on the other side of the world by myself? Oh, I know I keep thinking of all of the bad things that can happen, but I need to be prepared for all of them.

The first thing I’m worried about is that all of these people that said the’d get me a place to stay or go for a month with me are goingto back out at the last minute, after I’ve quit my job and bought the ticket. Like Dave. Irene said she was interested in an extended stay in Germany with her sister. Urgh. Who knows, no one can give me a definitive answer about anything. I just have no idea if I’m making the right choices or not.

***

Vance is leaving work. Today is his last day. I’ve worked with him for over three years, more like four, I think. He got another job in Los Angeles, and the market is better there in education for his wife. His brother is also out there, married with a new baby, so Vance will be able to spend more time with his brother. And the weather is warmer. And it’s not Talcott.

I told him I’d visit, that I’m planning on being in California in the beginning of February. He has no idea what the circumstances will be, though. I almost want to tell him my plan, right when he’s about to leave, you know, let him in on the secret.

It’s strange, really, working with someone for so long, going through so much garbage with someone. Usually when someone quits in this office they’ve only been here for a year, that’s not much time, people like that come and go regularly (especially here, where the turnover rate is so high because everyone hates it here so much), but Vance has been here a while.

We used to talk a lot about religion. As an athiest, the people you have the most interesting religious conversations with are, of course, the religious freaks, the ones who don’t drink or swear and saved themselves for marriage and go to bible study. Well, when he was first here, we’d talk on our lunch breaks about life and it was really interesting. But then his wife got wind of the fact that Vance was having lunch with a “girl”, all alone, oh my gosh, Janet might convert him (or worse yet, pervert him), so then he was forbidden by his wife to really spend any time with me.

You know, I never understood why she didn’t want Vance to talk to me. Even if she didn’t trust me, which she could have, she should have at least been able to trust her husband. I think he’s probably one of the most trustworthy men ever to work at Talcott (well, I guess that’s not much, since the men that work here are usually alcoholics anyway), but why did she brow-beat him all the time? And why did he put up with it?

***

Dave called me three times after work this evening. Twice to see if I was okay, because I told him I was in a bad mood, and once to start an argument with me about how I never open up to him and he can’t take this anymore and he never wants to speak to me again. So I ask him if he means that and he says no, that he want to make me happy. Can’t he make up his mind?

I don’t mean to drive him crazy, I realy don’t. I need to keep him at least as a friend, if not more, in order to make my plans work for the next year. But I can’t stand the way he badgers me for more than I am capable of giving to him. He wants such a full relationship, and after the way he had treated me in our year-long relationship, I don’t think there’s any way I could ever feel comfortable with dating him, or particularly having a realtionship with him, again. He’s been too much of a jerk in the past for me to think of him as reliable. And since we work in the same field I can judge his work, and he may be a talented painter, he may be talented at drawing, but he’s not good at graphic design when it comes to the publishing world, and it’s hard for me to respect someone that is wose than me in their career. I know I demand a lot of a person, but I know I have a lot to give and am worth it. And I know I need to look up to someone, and I can’t look up to Dave.

Besides, he just can’t satisfy me in bed. I mean, it’s been fine sometimes, but it always seems forced - and what I mean by that is that it doesn’t just “work,” it doesn’t feel “natural” or “right.” It did with Eugene.

Sometimes I really miss him.

Sometimes I wonder if we’ll eventually get married anyway, even though we’ve been broken up for a year now.

It just might happen.

But as Jason Pettus so often writes, “but that’s another story for another time...”



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