I am a thousand good intentions and hundreds of posts and photos behind on this blog. All my introspection has been unplugged. Except tonight. Tonight, I need to analyze an old thing that I do not yet know the name of inside of me. Like finding out that the name you call your friend is only their nickname and suddenly you find yourself needing to know the true name of an old friend.

It is Sunday night. I have been home from my wedding and honeymoon for 4 days, I think. I am sitting in bed with the computer. But I am not really sitting here. In my mind, I am standing next to a giant book the size and weight of the life I have yet to live. I am trying to turn the page. But I don't really want to. I do not trust the book to tell the story right. I do not want to be on the next page officially. I want time to crawl between the pages, to prepare the future plot, to brief myself on a few of the important cues that I am more than likely to miss.

You see, before I got fired, I was on better terms with the unknown. Before I got fired, it was a lot easier to just let the story be. Before I got fired, I had some amount of optimism left.

Now? Now, I am filled with this strange sort of PTSD. Every time I go in for a job interview, I get really psyched up. I think about all the good things about the company. The things they value, their neat quirks, the fact that they allow dogs at work, the benefits. About how much healthier this or that job will be compared to the sweatshop and HAI. And every time I find myself in the parking lot outside wondering if it is even worth it to go in. I haven't even had the interview but I have convinced myself that whatever job is inside is probably the worst decision I could make and definitely comparable to indentured servitude. Despite all of my work to convince myself of the opposite, I find that at bottom I am tormented by the idea that every job will always be just as terrible. And I do not want to be that person again. I do not want to be trapped like that again--unable to explain to anyone who doesn't work there what is happening, unable to explain to anyone who does work there that it doesn't have to be that way.

Tomorrow I am supposed to make the phone calls and try to get myself hired at a number of places which are genuinely likely to hire me. Ok. Two phone calls. A place I interviewed with in June. And  a business I worked at through a temporary staffing agency. Both have offered half-promises of employment. Both are reasonable places to work. At least, I thought so until this morning when I woke up with my third eye burning with a warning from the future that as soon as I commit to either company, they are going to bleed me dry, guilt me into never leaving, work me dozens of hours overtime, and sap any energy I have so that I am unable to go to flight school, cook dinner or make any semblance of beautiful art--I will mostly be grateful if I get to my laundry.

(Oh flight school! What an absurd thought that seems like most days now.)

That message is still burning in the empty space in my skull. That space barely has a high enough success rate for me to continue listening to these panicked premonitions. It's not so articulate as I make it. It just screams worry and paranoia until it is a white noise in the background of my...everything. I feel paralyzed. I feel vaguely nauseous when I think about calling tomorrow. Moreover, I know that as soon as I commit to either job (assuming either even want me!), my dream job will elusively prance in the background but I will hardly notice as I will have already bent my nose to the grindstone.

I'm afraid of being left in exile.

And I'm afraid that leaving exile is not all that it is cracked up to be.

I feel like the pathway out of exile has historically been made of war and chaos, of a certain amount of death and renovation. I am afraid of being carried away by the currents of time and change to a place of suffering. Pain without purpose or control. Every time I try to make this not about control I sight myself using a metaphor built 60% out of the sensory experience of having lost control. Most of the time, I put the metaphor back in the tool box and look the other way. I did not want control so badly until it hurt and it did not make sense.

But HAI broke me into fragments that I do not recognize as pieces of myself. It is so hard to trust because I am so afraid of dematerializing again.

I am badly off. I need rehabilitating in a sorry way. I need physical therapy for trusting that jobs won't always ruin your life by competing for all of your time, health, and energy. I am uncertain about most things these days, but I have a fairly stable hunch that no one ever has or ever will make rehab for job trauma. In fact, if it wasn't for the mirror that is my husband, I wouldn't even believe the trauma to be real. But every time it comes time to interview, I sit there in the parking lot trying to remember that not every job will change you into someone you don't like being. I try to climb back into my old skin to build a life I used to believe was possible. I still want that life. But the skin doesn't fit anymore. I have lost some limbs and gained others. I am not the creature I used to be, but not at all in the beautiful butterfly sense.