Sometimes I wish I could just burn my life to the ground and scatter the ashes to the winds. Or cut ties, walk away from everything, begin again. No sick and helpless father (though he's out of the hospital now and still has both feet/legs!). No massive student debt ($48,000+). No crappy infighting and bullying at the library. No annoying underemployment. No frantic, fruitless job hunt. I could be/find something novel, something new. I could find my place without the weight of everything dragging me down.
I imagine myself as a of the hero in one of the fantasy novels I love so much: wanderer, poet, mage, bard, adventurer, lover, dreamer, warrior, witch, princess, thief. Brave and strong and smart. Wild and wily. Have you ever noticed that they don't need funds? That they can walk away from or stab their enemies? Have you noticed how everything works out for them - these heroes of my faery tales? Somehow, everything works out. It must, otherwise it wouldn't be a good story.
Life isn't a story. It sure as hell isn't a faery tale. And I'm not sure that anything's going to work out for me.
I'm so tired of bad luck. I'm so tired of failure. I'm so tired of thinking I'm moving forward only to find myself further back than when I started. I'm tired of not being told what I'm supposed to do at work, then getting in trouble when I don't do it. And I'm tired of platitudes, and "it gets better"s, and false reassurance, and "at least you don't live in (whatever 3rd world hellhole is fashionable at the moment)"s. I'm tired of "it could be worse." I know it could be worse, but it's pretty damn bad now.
I almost walked out of the library tonight. That's one of two things I've never done at any of my jobs: I've never quit without giving at least a months notice and I've never been fired. But I was ready to walk out, go home, and never return. My boss actually talked me out of it. She was right when she pointed out that it would damage my future career. It would, but I'm not really sure I have a future career to damage. I have a couple of meaningless, expensive pieces of paper that ideally should make me employable, but haven't seemed to help me at all. I have a constant headache and tears in my eyes every single night, but especially when I leave the library lately. I have a brain that replays the bad parts of my day, my life, over and over and over again keeping me from getting to sleep until I pass out by way of pure exhaustion. I have a desire to cut myself, something that is so fucking cliche and upsetting to me, something I haven't done in over a decade. I have an almost pathological fear of going to work, and the beginnings of a need to avoid libraries from now until the end of time.
Which sucks because I truly love libraries. And for the most part I love my job. I LOVE helping people find books, answering questions, doing research. I love thinking up programming ideas and learning about new trends and conceptualizing my ideal library. I love making pathfinders and study aids. There is a comfort for me in libraries, but it's slipping away because of stupid internal politics and a fucking bully of a supervisor.
And I hate it. I hate that I hate going to work now. I hate that I feel underutilized and unappreciated. It just compounds, you know? It just keeps getting worse. I'm so stressed and upset and it seems like nothing is going my way. Nothing IS going my way. All my family drama is stacked on top of my professional failures is stacked on top of my general depressed person depression, and that twisted layer cake is topped with this new work bullshit. Something's gotta give. I just can't do it anymore. I'm having nightmares, night terrors, again. I woke myself up screaming and tearing into my arms the other night with my fingernails. I can't do this anymore. I feel sick inside. Rotted.
Knowing that I'm not the most stable, mentally, at the moment, and not in the best frame of mind to make decisions, I'm going to give it a couple of weeks - until the end of the month. Then I'm probably going to quit my job. I hope that something comes up before that. That somehow, miraculously, one of the many, many, many places to which I've applied gives me chance. It would be better that way, easier. With my luck, though . . .
I wish I could just walk away from it all. Disappear. Go on some grand and magical adventure, and return home triumphant, if I return home at all. Life's not that neat though. It's messy and awful and painful. There is no "better." There is only the same or worse. Or at least that's the way it's been for me for my life. And I know from trying that there's no way for me to change it. I endure.
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