The One That Could Get Me Fired

I'd love to say that I still don't know what's causing the depression, or maybe, if the tight chest and pounding heartbeat are any inclination, the anxiety, rather. I'd love to. But that would be a lie. I'd be lying to you, but more so to myself because I do know what triggers that feeling. I know what pummels me in the chest so hard that it ends up taking the entire weekend just to start to feel a little bit normal again only to spiral throughout the week back into this horrible, wrenching feeling of ... nothing.

It's work.

Am I asking to be Dooced here? I hope not, I certainly am not intending to, this just needs to be let out.

I love my office, fine cube. I love my cube. I love my boss, truly, I do. I'd write that even if she didn't know where my blog was. I love most of the people in our office, most of the time, even. It’s a small company, pretty tight knit and I love it despite the Jesus propaganda that so often pops up on the break-room bulletin board. I love it despite the crazily crappy fluorescent lighting and the old-school computer monitors that seriously give me headaches like no other. But the job? The job sucks the ever living life out of me. It leeches itself to my jugular and siphons every last ounce of anything good and worthwhile from the blood as it flows by. The job makes me want to drive my car into large, hard objects on the way there in the morning. The job is killing me, quite literally. And yet? I live in Michigan which means there. Are. No. other. Jobs. None. Zero, zip, zilch. Nada. Sure I could drive an hour and a half from home to some minimum wage McD’s in the heart of the ghetto, there are those jobs. But there are not job, jobs. Especially not close to where we live. Hell, my commute is already almost an hour each way. Which, I’m pretty sure contributes greatly to the sucking out of my life. Killing me.

I spend eleven and a half hours per day on my eight hour per day job. Nine hour per day job if you count the hour in the middle of that where I break for lunch. I don’t, because lets face it, if it meant I could be home an hour earlier in the afternoon I’d skip it. I can eat at my desk. As a matter of fact, normally, I do. So that I can blog. The hours are not flexible like that though so that dream is hopeless. I cannot keep up with it. I can’t. I could, if I loved it. If I wanted it. But I don’t. I want to write. I get to write at work, if there are things to be written, I write them. Unfortunately there are not often things to be written and there are very often things that are tedious and annoying and FUCKIN-SHOOT-ME-IN-THE-TEMPLE-NOW-y that need to be done. I also do those. Everyone does those and yet as I look around I am the only one drowning. Why? How do they do it? I wish I could figure that out.

No matter how many additional responsibilities they give me, no matter how great a raise they offer me (and they did!) it’s all fleeting. The responsibilities get old and tedious, the raise gets eaten up by the gas to get here and the rising cost of chocolate so that I may soothe the feeling of losing my life to this place. I am not an office woman. I don’t do well. I just don’t. The lighting, the tediousness, the formality, the quiet (OH THE EFFING QUIET!) it. All. Kills. Me.

But, really, what’s a girl to do? A girl who must put food on the table, clothes on backs, and Christmas presents under the tree? What’s that girl to do when there is no other way out?