And then in a fraction of a second, I turned it completely off, face still, voice steady. As if I were running a meeting. I kept talking, the department dissolving story, getting that news as the grad student is texting me news of having just become his new object of affection in front of everybody. I didn't cry. I didn't look like anything but as if reading from a teleprompter.
😭 how long can a person function this highly while getting punched so low?
She was appalled, and maybe a little impressed (wow, but your body can't) wrote me a letter that said I was in incapable of working until further notice in case I wanted to try a med leave for stress, as two of my colleagues had done. But they're both white men. I can't survive using that letter. But if it's the only way to survive?
Then I called a lawyer. A very crabby one, at first, who demanded to know who had referred him and all this shit in a thick NYC accent of some kind. I flew at him in my underwear this time: one prideful guinea to another, these people are bullshit and this is who I am. (Was.) The NEH ecetcetc, and I need to know what a person like you can do for a person like me. Now, please. 🤬 His body language changed on the other end of the phone, I could feel him relent. Said he'd look into it. I believed him, liked him sorta. Storms make ports or wrecks, I've learned. He kept his word.
[image removed]
I know that place like I know my own body. I don't have the right words for that either, but I know when it's dying. It's doing it now, dying. The school needs new dick and a cheeseburger STAT. It needs a miracle.
Then I went to the Basilica and lost it and lost it and lost it and lost it. I haven't been back to OG Mary in that condition in a long while. Keening. I just sobbed and begged and apologized for everything anything just not any more of this, please please, I need a hand to hold across this 8 lane bullshit, please please just one break. All I want is decent work and a decent mate, and I'll settle (again) for just the work 😭, please. Please. 😭🙏
And then I drove home and my phone started blowing up that we'd been all merged into a mega department chaired by my own faculty vice president (chair), followed by the guy I gave my job and grant to graciously (vice chair) and last but not least the woman I'm teaching the crows class with that she does 99% of and thanks me (vice chair). Those are my new bosses. My own ducklings. All grown up, which is unexpectedly so useful. Wow.
I pulled over to text my new boss how unspeakably grateful I was, then scold him for letting everyone have an EXISTENTIAL MELTDOWN over NOTHING why the fuck did he sit on that for a week god dammit, but still, thank god.
(Update - I talked to them at more length today, they didn't know ahead either, one was crying, thought she'd been pulled in to get fired ... 🤦🏻♀️ )
I know all these people to trust them.
So, here I wound up. Right back where I started. But I am changed forever. Now I live a body of veal meat with a much more sober than sunny mind. 👁
A thing exists that I didn't know existed: micro betrayals. Like micro aggressions but different.
Mary is 🙏 wow. Amen. Whether Jesus ever puts me in baskets not withstanding.
If my own ducklings run this show, that changes everything. There's almost no hope of stopping the spiral, but not no hope.
There's a world of difference between almost nothing and nothing.
Today I will finish putting in final grades. End it for the year. End THIS, the bullshit ride. And start rebuilding.
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| the cottage is blue now, not brown as in the old listing photo - that's the bush - the more I looked at it yesterday, the more I thought to tuck it around the corner |
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| woodchuck, needs shot |
My mind is so tired of bullshit, all I want is the simplest of things.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Healing is returning to wholeness, not necessarily how things used to be, but how they can feel right again inside you. It's cellular and spiritual, personal and collective, and non-linear; it circles back, deepens, pauses and resumes.
