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"To live is to suffer. To survive, that's to find meaning in the suffering." ~DMX, Slippin' I never before understood what exactly my friends were complaining about when they said, "I just worked four hours and my feet are killing me." I always thought, "four hours? That's not very long." I never realized that that is a really long time to stand up. Friday was my first day at work, I am officially an employee of the smallest amusement park known to man. Friday it was school picnics, lots of them. I was working water wars with a boy who goes to my old high school and is in my cousin Rene's class, they had the day off because they didn't use enough snow days. So, from 10-2 I got paid to fill buckets with water balloons and watch kids shoot them at each other. And then I got a half hour break. And from 3:30-4:30 I got paid to fill more water balloons. I came home thinking I had the best job in the world. Saturday, when I woke up, my back hurt so much I could barely get out of bed. I took tylenol and went to work from 1pm-9pm at the bumper boats. Every time a ride starts you have to bend over, unhook a boat, walk to the next boat, bend over, unhook the boat... until all six are unhooked and two minutes later you have to hook them all back up. Sunday morning my legs were so sore I could barely walk down the stairs. It was fireworks day and it was hot and I was scheduled to work the paratrooper. Technically, I'm not allowed to work the paratrooper. Somebody somewhere decided that's too much machinery for a 17 year old to operate and you have to be 18. But somebody at the park decided that's a dumb rule and scheduled me to do it anyway. The worst part is that if the ride's not busy you have to tell people what seats to sit in to balance the ride so it spins right. But they don't understand why you have to tell them what seat to sit in and little boys get really mad when you tell them to sit in the pink car, they really do. And after you get them all loaded in you have to walk around on this little narrow step in a circle checking all the safety latches. I slipped twice a little bit before I really slipped and cut my knee. It bled all over my sock and shoe before I could flag down someone to come help me. He left to get the first aid kit and I ran the ride. Press the start button, push the lever as hard as you can (meaning lean against it with all your weight until you can't anymore) watch them go around five times, watch their faces if they get sick you have to clean it up, press the stop button, pull back on the lever as hard as you can until they get down to the bottom, then let up on the lever or they'll hit too hard and it'll bang and scare the little kids and someone might get hurt. Then unload the ride, help all the little kids out, reload the ride, and start again. In the sun, standing up, all day. It was terrible. I finally got a break at 5pm, after I'd been working it for four hours. I got a half hour break and when I came back they put me on a different ride (which is what they always do, you almost never come back to the same ride) so for the evening I got to help the really little kids on these cute little cars that have hand cranks. They sit on the car and then turn the handles with their hands to go around the track. I liked doing that, even if my knee hurt and I had blisters on my feet. The fireworks didn't start until almost 10 because it wasn't dark enough, that's when someone came over and told me to help put the cars in the shed and then go home. They didn't mention there's grease on the bottom of those cars. By the time I got home my shorts and my legs were completely covered in grease, my knee looked terrible because it hadn't scabbed over so it looked like it was still bleeding, and both my blisters had popped and bled through my socks onto my new shoes. I didn't think it was a bad day, but when my mom saw me she was ready to tell me to quit. I had worked for nine hours. Luckily Monday was a slow day, I worked 1-7 at water wars filling balloons for people who might come and throw them at each other but not many people came. This morning I wasn't even sore. (5+8+9+6)*5.15=$144.50 Today I went to talk to the volunteer coordinator at the hospital... that's where I'll be on my days off most of this summer. It's the only way I can think of to figure out if I really want to be a doctor. That's been my strategy for years... volunteer doing whatever I think I might like to do. It hasn't worked much yet, I thought I wanted to be a special ed teacher until I realized they are completely at the mercy of the government to hand out funding. So I decided I'll be the person in the government. I never did try that out... it occured to me that the minute I started campaigning for something someone would come out and start telling stories and I just don't want the whole world to know how fucked up I was when I was 13. (..she says as she writes it on the internet...) She asked me what type of medicine I'm interested in, or if I knew where I'd like to work. She suggested the ER. I agreed, because that seems like a logical place to start, even if word "ER" gives me visions of George Clooney and Noah Wyle. And if you've gotten this far without realizing there's a catch... When I was at summer camp three years ago we put on a play of The Wizard of Oz. I was the bad witch (and the good witch too but that's beside the point) and I was having trouble being mean enough. The director stopped us and asked me if there's anybody I hate. I nodded, probably way too fast, and she said, "Really? Even you?" and I nodded some more. So she told me to pretend that person was standing in front of me and I was screaming at them. I did, and she said, "Good job! Do that every time!" The person I pictured? my ex-girlfriend's dad. Have you figured it out yet? I hated him. I hated him with a passion. I think sometimes I still do. I really never hated him for what he did to me, although that was bad enough. I hated him for what he did to her. He made her feel guilty. Every minute of every day. She was, and still is, the model daughter. When she was 13 she needed braces. After that, everytime she needed something, if the school was going on a field trip and she needed $10, he reminded her of those braces and how much they cost him. One day, he yelled up the stairs for her and she answered, "What?" in the wrong tone and he came upstairs screaming and disowned her. She was 13 years old and he told her that on her 18th birthday he was throwing her out of the house and that he wouldn't help her with college and that she'd be broke and have to work at mcdonald's the rest of her life. And she believed him. She believed every word of it, no matter how much I told her about student loans and financial aid. She's a senior this year and I talked to her in October. She said what she really wanted to do is be and editor but her dad wouldn't pay for her to go to school to be an English major so she thought she'd probably major in engineering. I hated him then, too. I hated that I can't go in there and rescue her, and I hate that she would never think of rescuing herself. I hate that when he told her she couldn't talk to me anymore and she had to choose, me or him, she chose him. I hate how much control he thinks he has over her and I hate that she actually lets him have that much control over her. And I hate that no matter how hard I tried I never convinced her she would be okay without his support. I hate that through the whole time I only won one battle- I got her into counseling- and the minute the social worker stopped coming around he made her stop going. And I hate that he knows so much about me, because he was at the ER when I went for an "emergency psychological evaluation"... twice. (I went four times, total.) I hate him for hating me, when he never even talked to me outside of the hospital where it was his job. I hate him for blaming me, for saying all her problems were all my fault when really all I did was get her to stand up for herself just a little bit more. I hate that he said I was the bad influence, I seduced her, everything that happened in their family that year was my fault. I was thirteen years old and more fucked up than she was. And it was not all my fault. He got a promotion about the time I left school, I think it made him the head doctor in the ER. And I know I can't let that stop me. I can't let him have control over my life because then he wins. I have to do this, and if I decide I want to work in some other part of the hospital it has to be because that's what I want. But can I do this? Really? Can I walk into the emergency room and work with him (take orders from him probably) and be okay? I just walked into the high school last week and had a panic attack, can I work in a place that has so many bad memories with a person who has so many bad feelings? I'm not sure that I can. And if I can't, where does that leave me? I'm not always a strong person, I know that. But I like to think I'm always the one in control. I like to think I have more choice than I sometimes do. And I tend to think of myself as invincible- I can do anything I want to, and no one can stop me. And I always use where I am in school as proof of that. I must be able to do anything, otherwise how would I have made it this far? I can fight with strangers, I can prove everybody wrong 99% of the time. But I have ghosts. People and things from my past that have the power to make me want to go back to bed and hide under the covers, in my little turned-around-daybed-crib that has bars to keep the ghosts from coming in. My biggest enemy is my own brain, I know that. It talks to me nonstop, usually there are at least two conversations at once- one a song, repeating itself over and over in the background, and another a conversation- either with myself, or an imaginary conversation with someone I know, or a replay of a conversation that already happened with all the things I wish I'd said. I tell myself to shut up a lot. I try not to say, "I hate you" to myself because I think that's probably bad for my self-esteem, but sometimes I slip and find myself whispering, "I hate you" into the mirror. And I wonder how that happened, how did I find so many things wrong that I need to talk out loud to tell my brain to be quiet. When did it get so loud, anyway? Was it always like this? Was I just better at ignoring it? Today, in the bathtub I found myself saying out loud, "damn it damn it damn it damn it" until I realized it was out loud and my mom was in the living room which is right off the bathroom and so I talked inside my head instead, "shhhh, she'll hear you." Where did the, "crazy people talk to themselves" myth come from? That's the first thing I think of when I think of someone who talks to themself but I don't remember ever being told that. It's just assumed, somehow, that someone who talks to themself, especially outloud, must be crazy. I'm not entirely sure that's true. I don't feel crazy. I have felt crazy in the past, I do remember what it felt like. Unless this is a different kind of crazy, I am relatively sane. But that still doesn't give me the power to completely turn off the voice in my head that says I'm stupid and weak and completely incapable of being in the same room as the one person I've ever truly hated. ~me |