Enough!

Wowee, what a day this has been.  If you read my recent post, Heavy, you know that things recently, for me, have been…  Well, heavy.  There are a lot of things that are weighing heavily on my mind and my heart, and I don’t have time tonight to go into all of it.

Highlights for tonight are simple.  I hate my job and the situation has become unbearable.  I know that I must get out of this job ASAP.  The day I walk into my boss’s office and turn in my resignation is going to be one of the best days of my life.  If I’m turning in my notice with the reason being that I’m going to college, it’ll be even better, but so far that issue is still very much unresolved, and I’ve become abundantly aware that I’m not going to be starting school anywhere this fall.  At this rate, I’m not even sure that spring is likely and I’ve never been good with the patience, so waiting to see how this is going to pan out is just adding pounds upon pounds of stress to my already debilitating situation.

The environment in my office is so toxic.  It’s just awful and I can’t even begin to clearly convey how bad it is.  I have lost all will to go on.  I do not care about my job.  I do not care about my co-workers. I do not care about my customers.  I just do not care.  I know that part of it is the depression that I may never truly be free of, that is taking hold to some extent as I experience these conditions, but even as I go in with the best of intentions to do my work and be productive and go about my job, before I know it, six hours have passed and I’ve done nothing more than keep current on my twitter feed, fish and read blogs.  I know I’m not being professional.  I know that my actions are shameful and yet, I can’t pull myself out of my funk long enough to do what I must.  And now after seven long years my boss has suddenly gotten the idea that he wants to have monthly one on one meetings with each of us to review our projects and their status.  I actually think this is a good thing and yet I know that he will not stick to it, something always comes up and his staff is very put-offable.  And yet, my bigger fear is that he actually will see it through and for the first time in I don’t know how long, he’ll finally realize that I AM NOT WORKING.

I have to quit this job.  I know I have to quit this job, and I’d do it tomorrow if I could only know what comes next.  I can’t rely on temp agencies to keep me working right now.  My unused vacation time will only get me so far and since I have a two week vacation planned for next month, I’m about to chop that in half anyway.  The best thing would be if I got laid off and I have no idea if there are lay-offs coming or not, let alone how to volunteer for such.

The issue of school is, in and of itself a really stressful topic because of the patience issue and the fact that ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAPPENS, NOW, NOW, NOW! with school.  That whole going into things, wanting to know the outcome problem is really getting in the way.  And then today.  Such a heavy, heavy day.

There was a personal situation that I’ll update about soon, but in a separate post that was weighing heavily on me.

We’ve all been hearing about Farah Fawcett for months and so it was no surprise to hear about her death this morning.  It’s sad that she died.  It’s sad that her family is left in such a state.  And what a horrible way to die.  But there is a bright side to her death.  The poor woman is released from all the pain and suffering she’s been going through all this time.  Her death is nearly tragic, but mostly a relief.

And then middle of the afternoon, I check the evil Facebook, only to see a report (my first) that Michael Jackson has been taken to the hospital in cardiac arrest.  Of course by now, everyone knows he has died.  Of course it’s sad.  It’s always sad when someone dies.  But I don’t have a whole lot of  sympathy, nor much passion on this subject.  Michael Jackson is dead.  OK.  Whatever.

TMZ, quite possibly the least reliable news source on the internet—No wait, check that, Perezhilton.com is THE LEAST reliable—reported before anyone else that Michael Jackson had died, and because TMZ is the second least reliable news source on the internet, I began searching for some corroboration from legitimate news sources.  And that’s when my phone rang.

It was my mother.  Due to the strained relationship we have, and my mother’s well known disdain for talking on the phone, my heart always skips a beat when I see her name on the screen.  I answered.

“Hello”

“Hi.   Whatcha doing?” she asked, in her usual just checkin’ in tone.

“Nothin’” I said, fairly truthfully.

“You working?” she asked.

“Sort of,” I told her.  I was just about to tell her what I was really doing when she said, as if she was telling me she was getting her car washed…

“Well, I figured I should let you know, I’m in the Hospital.”

“What?!?  Why?”

“Well, I’m going to have an angioplasty tomorrow,” she told me, again as if she was describing the Mona Lisa to me or something.

I inquired further and she informed me that she had been having “really bad indigestion” for several days.  She went to the doctor and they gave her an EKG which they told her was “abnormal” and then referred her to a Cardiologist.  She had her appointment with the Cardiologist today and by the time the appointment was over the doctor had ordered the angioplasty and admitted her to the hospital…

She told me all of this as if it were a description of the weather, or recounting the birth of a child.  When the conversation was over and we were getting off the phone she told me “don’t say anything negative.  Don’t say anything that’s not ‘Faith’.”  I have much to say about the ‘Faith’ angle, not that I’m knocking the faith angle, but we seem to have reached a contradiction here.  Nonetheless, I’ll save that for another time.

I was very worried until I came home tonight and looked up exactly what angioplasty entails on WebMD.  I’m relieved to know that it’s not as significant as I had originally thought.  She’ll be awake for the whole thing.  In fact, WebMD calls it a “non-surgical” treatment.  This is good, and yet, we’re talking about her heart!

My mother is angry.  She told me she was angry because, “typical hospitals” they’re not dealing with the “real problem”, the indigestion.

“Well, Mother,” I told her, “you know indigestion is one of the most commonly misperceived symptoms of heart problems.”

“Yes, I know,” she said.  “But it could easily be the reverse too.”

Heart problems are a misperceived diagnosis for days of indigestion?  Really? I’m afraid I haven’t heard that.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not wishing anything on my mother.  I’m not hoping she’ll die.  But this is scary.

My relationship with my mother hasn’t been great the last several years and as nice as it might be for this situation to be the catalyst to change that, it’s not.  The barriers that stand in our way aren’t going to be broken by this “close call”.

Because our relationship has been bad, I’m a little ashamed to admit that I’ve given much thought to, “how am I going to feel when/if she dies?”  Certainly a part of me would be relieved.  There would be no more physical manifestation of her judgment and disdain.  On the other hand, she’d have died without our having resolved our differences, and I’d feel some level of relief, which would be bound to carry with it a level of guilt.

I realize, now that I’ve read up on the procedure, that she’s not in any real danger tomorrow.  I’m glad to know that, though I won’t be fully relieved until I hear from her that she’s out of “the woods” and in recovery.

It’s been a really emotionally stressful day for me today, and unfortunately, I think there are more of them ahead…  Bear with me!