Out of My Head

If you've read more than a couple blog posts, you might have noticed that there are huge variations in my mood and state of mind. I've written blog posts about self-hatred and about hope for the future, about hating life in general and about amusing things that have happened.

I want out of my head.

This has been a hard summer, and I don't even know why. For about three weeks it's been severe depression almost constantly. Severe Depression as in sitting somewhere crying until I start to hyperventilate, getting dizzy, then forcing myself to breathe just long enough for the dizziness to go away before it's near hyperventilation again.

I don't want to go to work because hell, it's work. No one wants to go. I've gone every day except two. The first day I was hyperventilating when I called in and the person who answered the phone couldn't understand me. The second day I spent attempting to calm myself so I could go back to work on the third day.

I don't want to go to sleep. I lie in bed for an hour trying not to think, or at least to think about something that doesn't terrify me. I fall asleep and wake up several times, often from nightmares. I lie awake again for a while, and eventually I get sick of trying and get up. Then I zone out because I'm not sleeping.

I don't want to eat. I don't want to do much of anything, really. I've written a couple stories, many of which were violence-themed or crime-themed because it gets the thoughts out without me doing anything.

Here are some things people diagnosed with depression can do at home to ease the symptoms:

• Get adequate sleep
• Eat healthy
• Take a walk outside/exercise

Here is how people in the throes of actual severe clinical depression might feel about that:

• HAHAHAHA *sob sob sob*
• Who cares about food? I'll grab what's closest so I don't starve myself. That counts, right? (Or, alternately, What does it matter? I'm worthless anyway. Gimme the choco-ballos.)
• What does it matter? I'm worthless anyway.

I don't know how I'll make it through the next few days, let alone another thirty years of life. There's not enough good to make up for all this crap.

Adventures at Smile Central

As you may recall, I have a job at a store I shall hereby refer to as Smile Central. That is not the store's real name, in case you were wondering, and in fact has nothing to do with the store. It is a pseudonym, because I dislike the idea of being fired and sued. Because I'm maybe going to complain about the place a little, and corporate entities don't have much of a sense of humor about these things.

But back to my job. I'm working a temporary security gig, sitting at a back door making sure construction and remodel guys don't steal anything. When the construction and remodel is done, I no longer have a job. Maybe. I have strongly hinted and pledged and vowed and sworn on my name badge that I would appreciate continued employment. At least two people have consulted the store manager on my behalf, and other employees miss me when I'm not here, so I'm doing a decent job.

So I got to work tonight and no one acknowledged my request to open the door (not unusual, actually), and eventually someone wandered back and asked what I was doing here. He told me that the remodel guys aren't using this door anymore, and hauled away their mobile office. As we debated the merits of sitting by a closed door making minimum wage and playing smartphone for four easy hours versus being sent home, someone else showed up and blew my cover.

Send Lyric to stationery.

Does Lyric know how to do this?

How about housewares?

Pharmacy?

Go see the manager.

I'm going to say I don't have to worry about being dropped and jobless in a week. Nervescitement? Lots of it. I've been waking up my daughter with somewhat noisy nightmares about work for weeks because I knew the remodel was wrapping up. I could about puke right now from the nervescitement.

I ended up talking to the store manager personally. Not a department manager. Not a shift manager. The Big Boss of this particular Smile Central. I was asked what position I wanted, to which I replied that I was open. I mentioned the departments which had expressed interest in me before. I was asked what my Goals are.

That's right. My Goals. In the blink of an eye, about a million thoughts rushed through my head. My goal for the past however many hears now has been stay alive, with a side of get a job so there's one more reason to stay alive. Before that, my goal was to move to a specific urban area where there would be job opportunities appropriate to my bachelor's degree, which so happens to be in a field I love.

So I blinked. I said that I was interested in management, that I've applied for management positions more than once, and that I have a degree in a field without many opportunities in this area. I said that when I'd graduated I hadn't intended to stay in this area, but now I do.

This is true in a way. I cannot legally leave the state and take my daughter because her other parent objects. I will not leave without her, and if I must stay, and I don't have the resources to move to a city (I don't), I may as well stay here.

Big Boss asked what my degree was in (Graphic Design), and I told her. I can't say what the smile she shared with the shift manager was about, but I said that I was thrilled that they knew what Graphic Design was to begin with. Many people don't, or they have a very limited view of what it is. Graphic Design isn't really something you do for glory.

This hasn't turned into me mocking the place. Sorry about that. Too excited and all.

Big Boss asked if I minded working in produce.

Now, that sounds bad, but what I've learned is that they shuffle people from position to position, based on what's needed, and they desperately needed someone in produce. I said that was fine. I was asked if I liked cleaning. Pfft, who likes cleaning? I said I like feeling useful, which is the truth. Approving looks all around. I was given a new schedule and sent out... to straighten shelves in housewares.

By this time I'd run back and forth answering summons to this place or that (as mentioned in paragraphs 4-8), and straightening shelves sounded pretty decent. I've got no clue how long I did that before someone walkie-talkied someone else to call me back to the remodel door. Then they paged me over the store speaker, by which time I was halfway there.

Apparently they'll need me at my door until at least Friday.

Okay, complaining time now. This place is a mess, and I don't know how they manage to keep things on the shelves. The right hand not only doesn't know what the left is doing, but is totally unaware that it should be watching its own fingers, and that there are also arms, feet, eyes, and other such things.

Earlier tonight I got paid a total of approximately fifteen dollars to sit by a closed door, listen to people bicker about what to do with me, and straighten a few aisles' worth of merchandise. I was given a new schedule, then put back onto my old one in the space of a couple hours.

For now, I'm still door security. I have no desk to rest my head heavily on, so facepalm, I say. Facepalm.

Wear Your Underpants; A Cheese Factory Tale

So one time, at the cheese factory, we had a guy who was fresh out of prison working as a janitor. He had a bushy mountain-man beard going on, but what he was really known for was the complaints about his refusal to wear undergarments. See, at the cheese factory everyone wore white, and if you didn't buy your own whites, you could use a jumpsuit deal provided by the factory. Those things were well-worn and therefore a bit thin.

People complained, especially the older women on the janitorial staff with him and the younger women who had no desire to see his hairy butt-crack. It was, indeed, hairy. My lovely photographic memory has the moment I realized what I was seeing as I followed him up a staircase burned into my brain. I was told that the front view was even worse, but cleverly kept my eyes up to at least mountain-beard level after that.

He was told several times by management to wear something under his jumpsuit, and didn't. So they fired him. Today's lesson: Wearing underpants to work is probably a good idea, unless you're a stripper.

Why I Don't Dance in the Rain

Life's not about waiting for the storms to pass... It's about learning to dance in the rain.

Not for me, it isn't. I will wait inside, thank you, and this is why:

One day as a young adult I decided that dancing in the rain was a very romantic notion. I had never danced in the rain, to speak of, without an umbrella and a destination. I declared that I was going to do so, just for the experience, so I went outside.

I tried dancing, but it wasn't very pleasant. "Is rain supposed to hurt?" I asked, and my family, watching from the door replied, "Get back in the house! That's hail!"

I grew up in Southern California. I wasn't really familiar with hail, so forgive me learning that lesson the hard way.

A few years later I was confident that it was not hailing, it was only raining. I had a significant other, and again romantic ideas flooded my head. We could go dance in the rain together! What fun, what a way to live a dream! My s.o. refused to dance, but we walked together, so I counted it.

All in all it was successful enough, until I arrived at my aunt's house, sopping wet. Something was wiggling in my hair. I pulled out one nasty green worm-thing and decided in retrospect that I wished I'd just brought along an umbrella. I haven't danced in the rain since.

If you're now thinking that the whole dancing in the rain thing is a metaphor and maybe I'm taking it all a bit seriously, my reply is that this post is an allegory answering the metaphor. Dancing in the rain usually ends up backfiring. I am, therefore, a cautious person, despite the fact that, at my core, I am a rebel. I am a rebel in mind, heart, and spirit, who is contained by the lesson that if I'm too happy, I'll get slammed in the face with hail or a worm or something. Metaphorically speaking.

I'm not going to tell you not to dance in the rain, though. I probably won't tell my daughter not to, either. Maybe it'll work out for you. Maybe you'll get hailed on or step in a puddle that looks an inch deep but is actually a small pond. I will be perfectly happy standing off to the side with my umbrella, chuckling.

Grandma is a Klepto

Grandma is not literally a kleptomaniac, I'll get that out of the way first. Still, she's developed some bad habits over the years, and one of them is assuming that anything she sees in certain places is hers. I'm going to tell you a short story, and I promise it's relevant, so pay attention:

Once upon a time there was a loving couple. The wife died, and so the husband let the house go, because let's face it, bachelor pads happen. His daughter and her husband eventually came to live with him, but the son-in-law had mobility problems and no one was willing to go through Mother's Things anyway. So more things got put on top of the original things. Then the son-in-law died, and it was just father and daughter, neither willing or able to go through their deceased loved ones' belongings. They now had A Mess.

The daughter is my grandmother, and now that her father has died too, about twenty or thirty years' worth of stuff has piled up against walls and taken over entire rooms. I am currently living in said stuff, and cannot afford to move out. Back to the point.

There's so much stuff that Grandma has grown accustomed to poking through piles and finding things she doesn't recognize. Sometimes she finds stuff on top of piles that she doesn't recognize, and if she really likes it, she takes it back to my dad's house, where she's currently living. That would be cool if everything in the house was still hers.

I am currently living here.

Sometimes she finds stuff on top of piles that she doesn't recognize, and if she really likes it, she takes it. You see where I'm going with this, don't you?

She's tried to give away my stuff before. I left some things behind when I moved to my sister's, and when I'd visit, I'd find things like my vacuum in places slightly closer to the door every time, as though they were in the process of being sneaked out. My dad actually caught her trying to give something of mine away to a cousin because she'd found it and it looked nice. I believe she tried to give away some of my stuff that's in her storage unit, too. "There's so much stuff in here, I don't know where it came from."

Another short story, but I won't pretend this one didn't happen. Sorry for the subterfuge up there, but I wanted to convey a sense of sympathy and understanding instead of the baffled frustration I really feel.

My father had brought a flashlight over intending to look at and/or fix something, but when he needed it, he couldn't find it. He asked my grandmother, who was also here, if she could help him find a flashlight, any flashlight.

She smiled and said, "Yes, I have one right here in my purse." She dug it out and handed it over. "Isn't it nice? It's much better than the other one I had."

And my dad's like, "That's my flashlight." He let her keep it since she liked it so much and since her old flashlight really sucked, but things like that happen a lot. You don't set things down in this house, even if you'll remember where you put them, because they'll disappear. Sometimes they'll get knocked over, but more likely a visitor will take them.

By "a visitor" I could mean one of my cousins, but I don't. I mean Grandma.*
*Author's Note: I love my grandmother. All this is between me and you, right?

Does This Job Come With Benefits?

I'm not too bad-looking. I'd say I clean up well enough. My first day on the job my boss said, "Don't let them flirt with you. And they will." And they did. Two weeks later I've got a date coming up this weekend and a friend who has confiscated my right to low self-esteem due to my persistent single status.

The last time I had a date (more than two years), I exploded with nervescitement. It was high school all over again with the talk and the social panic. This time was actually kind of fun, though. And then, of all the ridiculous things for me to think about, I realized that the nicest clothes I own are my work clothes.

When you're unemployed for a while and don't get out much, or at least in my personal experience, you don't buy new clothes for yourself. It doesn't matter if the edges are frayed, doesn't matter if there's a little stain right there. Who's going to see you anyway?

Well, maybe, just maybe, you have three interviews and have to wear your "best shirt" more than once. Maybe you realize that your "best shirt" might not work the same for a movie date as it did for the old lady who interviewed you. Three times. Maybe, and this is all hypothetical here, maybe this movie date is an attractive person whom you find witty, amusing, and/or attractive. Like, really attractive. Hypothetically.

It'd be cheating to buy something from the discount store I work at, right? Especially since my not-actually-hypothetical date is doing work for said discount store until sometime this summer? Maybe I'll go next door to the factory outlet place and get something there instead. I'm not vain or anything, but I'd like to look at least as decent as I do in my work clothes. That's fine, right?

Like I said, high school. At least I'm not talking in all caps this time. I did that yesterday, via text.

Epilogue:
There was no date, after all. Someone went and got drunk instead, and my interest faded while watching them work with a hangover. Nothing ever got arranged and nothing ever happened. The end.

I have a job.

That's right. Actual, legitimate employment where I'll be going to a certain place every day at a certain time, working, and getting paid for it. It's a temporary security gig until July, but there's a possibility of being hired for a different position after that. And by security I mean sitting at the back door checking toolboxes and receipts while remodel workers go in and out, but I'll get a walkie-talkie.

I finally found a place that doesn't mind my art degree, and I'm taking it, dammit. It'll get me approximately $600 per month and no benefits, but that's four times what I get in child support. (A certain someone quit their job a week before going to court to have child support calculated, then had another job a week later. Bad form, that.)

I didn't tell anyone I had an interview until after it happened, so don't feel left out. In fact, the only two people I ended up telling after wouldn't have heard about it either, except that it was valid information in Obviously you don't want to work, or you'd have a job by now arguments. Because obviously everyone in a small town with no art-related fields is very interested in someone who wasn't born there, didn't grow up there, and went to college elsewhere for graphic design.

But I digress. I didn't tell anyone I'd been hired until after my first day of orientation. That would be yesterday, and a total of four people; the two I mentioned arguing with, my best friend, and my daughter.

I also didn't tell you guys that my sister kicked me out. According to her, what she said was that I needed to get a job by the end of the month and move out by summer, because she can't handle having a kid around all day. According to me, she said (and I quote), "I want you out by the end of the month. I want my life back!"

So I'm living in my grandmother's house in the middle of nowhere again, only this time I have permission to clean it myself. On days I haven't been in orientation I've averaged 3 bags of trash per day. Whenever I'm bored I'll throw together another bag or two.

By trash I mean old, empty envelopes, things too broken or otherwise destroyed to be saved, grocery lists from the 1970's, torn up fake flowers that generations of cats have peed on, that kind of thing. Boxes and boxes of that kind of thing, and I go through every bit of it because I'll find a deed to some bit of land somewhere or a photo of a man in a military coat from WWII or handmade paper souvenirs from 1907 that a teacher made for his 18 students grades 2-5 who attended a local school.

Some things could have historical significance and some things just couldn't.

My father, who is notorious for making wonderful promises that he may or may not be able to actually keep, but wants to keep, told me that if I spent the summer here and cleaned this place up, he'd give me the thousand dollars I need to get into my own house. If I manage to get hired permanently at my actual official job, I may not need him to keep that promise at all, which is a relief.

I'm gainfully employed for the first time since I started this blog. It's no longer the story of someone struggling with unemployment, but no worries. I have more goals to reach. I'm still hoping.