Let's just be honest:
I am angry. And I am broken. And I do not trust myself.

Why? Because I got fired from a job that I hoped that I would like. It was a job that I thought might be a career. Yet, in ten months there, I can count the days that enjoyed on my fingers. I am angry that I am not over this yet. It has been just over a year. One year and 17 days. I am impatient. I want to move on. But I am still angry. I am still figuring this out. I am still so lost.

They took something from me, but I do not know what it is. How can I look for it?

People are so quick to reduce my present reality to a lack of confidence because I got fired.

I find my behavior to be much more erratic than that. I want to chop all my hair off, get a tattoo and a leather jacket, buy some makeup, wear my largest earrings, and go back to where I used to work and try again. This time, things will be different. I will refuse to be silent. I will not maintain the status quo. I will definitely rock the boat. I will be every bit the strong woman that they were afraid of but that I failed to deliver on. This time, I will be all storm and rage without any of the demure peacemaker I used to be.

I will ask all of the same questions that I did before but this time I will not back down when I sense that I am becoming "too much", that I am making certain managers feel insecure, that I am upsetting the delicate balance of power. I will not apologize until I have done something wrong. I will not apologize for being different. I will not apologize for being more comfortable with myself than they can be.
I will not apologize for what is not my fault.
I will offer no peace offering. I will not sit through my joke of a write-up meetings just so management can feel "masculine" and in "control of the situation"...especially when there is no situation, there is just me taking things at face value that I was supposed to read into. There was just me waiting for their power trip to be over so I could go back to work without looking over my shoulder.

No. I am afraid that "lack of confidence" does not cover this. "Believing in myself" is not a helpful prescription nor is "realizing that they were the problem" or any of the other suggestions people have offered to help me not be afraid. I am afraid, but I do not think that I am afraid of what they expect me to be. Sure, some part of me is afraid of failing again, afraid that I am not enough. But, I know that I can be a good mechanic. If someone asks me that directly, the answer is always yes. Unhesitatingly, yes. Can I be who they want me to be? That question I am afraid of.

I have a whole new respect for the Rosie Riveters and Phoebe Omlies. People talk about their pioneering but they do not know the inherent loneliness and immense self-acceptance that those women built their lives out of. And I do not either. This is a different time. Portland is such a different place. But I know that they must have had a lot of expectations that they may not have even wanted to meet. I do not know if they chose to meet them or chose to do things their very different way. Maybe they molded themselves to the world. If so, they are more flexible than I and I still admire them. See, I tried to be someone else on the outside while keeping my core identity safe. It didn't work. I know now, that I do not want it to work. I know now...to just walk away. I know now to not even try to be anyone but myself. That is a hard lesson to learn because adaptation is my first language and mediation is my second.

I am afraid that next time, people will still want me to be someone that I am not. I am afraid of unleashing all of this anger until I learn the art of fusion and burn like the sun. I am so afraid of trying again to not be myself even though I know better.