The Hell Year Known as 2017 · 7:54am Jan 12th, 2018
I cursed myself.
It was my fault, really, for assuming anything better than the worst for the year that opened with the swearing in of possibly the greatest embarrassment of the Great Experiment known as the United States. But I had yet to be crushed so completely and fully, and so I started the year out with an act of hope. I'll warn you now, this is gonna be a long ride, and not a fun one either. It has not been a good year for me.
The first thing I did was leave my job. I was the lead of a mobile phone and electronics sales group, contracted in a major retailer, and the pay was good - but there were...developments that made leaving the smart choice. At the time of year known as "Black Friday" I always come down with a case of the sniffles - a consequence of being in a high-stress situation, surrounded by people carrying all their respective micro-biomes. Usually, it can be dealt with using little more than some cough drops and a thermos of tea or hot cider. But this time - this time it was the flu, complete with delirium from fever and drowning in my own bodily fluids. If you've ever worked in a retail setting, you know that calling out sick during Black Friday season is frowned upon - but I was barely able to get myself to the bathroom, and so I had to call out. This did not go over well - I think, in part, because management had just recently shifted, and was still in transition. So rather than having the manager who had hired me - whom I had worked 16 hour solo-shifts for, with less than two weeks of training because the only other employee walked with no notice, the manager who knew I wouldn't skip out when they needed me - I had one who just saw an employee calling in sick during one of the most notoriously stressful times of the year.
When I was finally able to hold myself upright for more than the 30 seconds it took to stumble to the bathroom, I came back to discover something unpleasant: the newest of my only two coworkers had left the keys to the phone locker out when she went for a smoke break, and they had been stolen. There was only one other set of keys that can access that locker, and they were on a store managers keychain. So there were no spares for us, and consequently we had to ask a manager to walk with us to the backroom any time we needed access to the locker, during one of the busiest times of the year. Nobody was happy about this - and when I mentioned it to my manager, he had not been informed - and I was unable to provide any details, as I had been out sick and neither one of my coworkers had thought to mention this development to me until I asked them - in which case details were minimal. As the de-facto leader of this team of three, blame fell on my head.
I wasn't fired, but the tone of voice used over the phone and email conversations grew more tense and hostile, even as I did everything my half-fried brain could manage to get things back on track. But the stress was building and, as this was by no means my dream job, I decided to poke around and see if I could find some -better- job out there - maybe one that wasn't retail. So I nose around online, and my heart drops into my stomach when I see a posting for my position. The same company name, nearly identical descriptors to the one I applied to - and the town I'm in is only big enough for one of these stores. I had received no indication that they were looking to expand our staff - we had only recently moved from two reps to three, and they had been looking for ages - so I could only assume they were looking for a replacement.
I cried. Quite a bit, actually - I didn't know what to do - but after some thinking and looking about, I realized I had enough in the bank to go back to school and finally finish what I'd started there. I couldn't do it with the phone job - it had originally been meant to be part-time, but after the other member walked...I got promoted to a full time position because, with my two months experience, I was the best available - but if I had something part time, my boyfriend and I could make rent and other bills, and once done I could look for something better. So I sent in my two weeks and registered for the two remaining classes I needed. I got a job with the school in question as a computer lab monitor - it mostly involved filling the printer with paper, and helping people find their email. Neither the pay nor the hours were stellar, but they would be sufficient until school went out, and the lab closed down.
And then my grandfather died.
It wasn't exactly sudden. He'd been using a respiratory...thing for years, and it was clear his time was limited. But there had been no warning, no last talks - and my grandmother, left in the lurch, confided that she had expected to go sooner. I don't care to describe all the medical details - as ultimately, they don't matter here - but she was tired and fragile - so her affairs had to be managed by someone else. One of my uncles, the youngest and one with the most availability, took on the task. My father helped when he could, but with house payments he couldn't stay forever. An Aunt, my grandmothers daughter-in-law, offered to help - but was not trusted as she has a reputation of, ah..."repossessing" things. The only other Uncle suffers from some mental instabilities, and was up in Alaska - and here's where things got messy - for this segment, anyway.
Between the time of my Grandfathers passing and my Grandmothers, an accusation arose from the aforementioned notorious Aunt - that the Uncle in charge of my Grandmothers care had misappropriated some finances. My father was incensed and offended that said Aunt - who had tried to break into my grandmothers house while she was still in the hospital - would accuse his brother of doing such a thing. But he is a diligent man who, for all his flaws, tries to do right - so when she passed and he was named executor of her will, he ran the numbers...and found the accusation to be true.
I'm going to leave that there, because that's a mess that I largely steered clear of - and it's about the same time that the third shoe dropped. Knowing the lab would be closed during the summer, and the job gone, I was on the lookout and found another job that, while labeled as a Marketing position, largely consisted of delivering free food using my own vehicle - for which I needed my car up and running. If that's not enough of a prelude given the nature of this blog, I'll just say it - my car croaked. It was a stupid, preventable thing - if I had known what was going on, which I did not. I know just a little more about cars than what it takes to maintain them - but I can't tell you what a funny sound means, or when you need to pull over and call in a tow. So when Google maps turned a wrong turn into the worst turn of my life and sent me down a road that turned into a tractor path that turned into I-think-I-can-see-the-tire-tracks-there, I thought the noise was a result of some of the plant matter in the fan that already made funny noises. But no, it was the result of an oil leak, and suddenly my car was out of commission. It took a week for my mechanic to look at it and declare it a lost cause, and then another before I was able to find something I could afford, and then I had to wait for the check that had once been my emergency savings to make it and by that time...my employer had found someone who had a working car.
The rest of it is pretty short. I found one more job, right on the edge of my disaster threshold, dared to hope again - and they let me go after less than a month because I wasn't a good fit. The drive home I couldn't think about anything except crawling into bed, because any more thought meant running the risk of taking a sharp turn and driving myself into the river because everything hurt and I just want to stop hurting. Luckily, I have plenty of experience with burying dark thoughts - so I don't think I cried this time - I just lay in bed for days. I had nothing left to give.
My boyfriend and I had to move in with his parents - the only job I was able to get was a merchandising job with very low hours, and he couldn't carry the rent burden by himself - not for much longer, anyway, as his bank account was being depleted too. I was emotionally dead, and I suppose the one good thing is he got a taste of his own medicine on the questions and answers front - it's impossible to get him to pick something, his answer is always "I don't care" or "I don't know, what do you want?" which can be very frustrating at times because it puts the burden of decision on me...but given that I had fallen into the emotional void I couldn't carry him. Maybe that was a single good thing, some perspective being shared there.
I think that's about it - oh wait, no, one more fun thing happened. When I was looking for a budget car, my computer died with no warning. It took another month of troubleshooting and testing before it was clear that it was the motherboard - a mixed blessing, because while it was one of the least expensive pieces in the machine, it's the hardest to remove or replace, and there's no fudging on it. At this same time my entire state is on fire - and I'm allergic to the smoke and the trees that are burning - so the added stress of choking in my sleep and worrying about possible evacuations while I'm out of transportation knocked me out.
Anyway, we finished moving in October. While I wouldn't say I am happy with where I am right now...I am safe, and I can hold on to the edge, and maybe even pull myself out to get somewhere where I can be content, and right now - that's okay. I'm okay. But for most of the last year - I haven't been, and it's only recently that it stopped getting worse - so I'm only just getting any kind of emotional and/or creative energy back - and I intend to use it as best as I can. I've always been fickle and fragile, so I don't know what that'll mean in volume - but it's good to be writing and making things again. I feel like me, and not an empty husk.
So I'm back, as much as I've ever been here - at least until shit explodes again. Hopefully this year is better than the last one, because I don't think I could survive 2017 part two.
Holy crap, well.
Welcome back to the land of Ponewords.
And now the long hiatus makes sense. Here's hoping things stay on the up and up for you.