Well, against the odds, I got hired. Finally. In aviation. 20 months of wandering in the wilderness and now...who knows. I was supposed to start this week. But car problems. But I got something similar to mono and thought I was dying. My brain still is not fully recovered. Hence the inordinate use of fragments without the justification of poetry. This is how I talk to myself, to my husband, and on the phone right now. Fragmentary.

I got a crock pot this week. I'm scared of it. Because I value food and I hate learning curves and the possibility of ruining a perfectly good meal if I wasn't so damn lazy (or busy) so as to need a crock pot. I'm scared of it because of the cult-like following it has engendered in so many. Go ahead, mention a slow cooker in a a group of 6ish people. There is an 80% that someone will profess their total dependence, undying love, or eternal gratitude to the machine.

Of course, I haven't made anything in said slow cooker yet. I've been busy trying to put more fluids in my body than my body can expel. A competition for which I am ill prepared.

Where were we? Slow cooker. No. Wait. Job. Job! It's not real until my toolbox moves out of the bedroom. I've had too many jobs fall through at this exact point. I don't expect this one to fall through, but I have never expected any of the others either. I have no idea what I expect. I finally let myself look at all of Tyler's student loans, at our prospective budget, and our wishlist of things (a trip to Austria? a newer car?). Turns out, we are probably going to make it. Of course we won't get everything we want. But we at least have the tools to make a life.

"Is it really that hard to explain to potential jobs that you were fired due to sexism? Because that makes me mad."

A friend of mine asked me this. Now, I don't think I was fired because of sexism. I was fired for 1,000 reasons and most of them don't have names. But this is what I want to say to her and about sexism today.

Sexism doesn't exist in aviation. It's like the most embarrassing version of the tooth fairy. Sure, some people believe in sexism. We call them the "F" word (because you don't use the word "feminist" in aviation anymore than sexism) and then we put them in the fanatical camp. In that camp, people also believe in the Illumnati, that WWII never happened, and that the lunar landing was a hoax. They probably hunt Big Foot on the weekend. In fact, if you are tempted in an interview for aviation to use the "S" word or the "F" word, you should probably just tell them that you hunt Big Foot on the weekend. At least then, you stand the chance of laughing after the awkward pause.

All metaphor aside. If you talk about sexism, people become afraid of you like you have a disease. Like feminists cause sexism. And in aviation, women are the most protected minority. Everyone else has to suck it up and try to be a white male. Except that they can't. Because skin and biology. So everyone else has to laugh when people make fun of them. (There are precious few women who are not white.)  They will make Mexican jokes, Armenian jokes, Russian jokes, nothing is off limits. If it hurts, then you are not a man. And that has crossed cultures somehow so everyone pretends to agree.  There are no public women jokes. And you are supposed to say "thank you" for that "luxury". They will find every other way of saying "woman" though. You will find words like "emotional", "logical", "innocent", "sensitive", "independent", "angry", "strong", "ambitious", "focused" and a host of others drip out of their mouths like graffiti tags. They are trying to talk of feminine and masculine characteristics. You can tell which are which because the masculine ones all are synonyms for "capable of doing this job" while the feminine ones all somehow rhyme with "almost" or "not a bad second choice".

Most men in aviation do not see their privilege and they don't even think about it. When someone comes in and drops the "S Bomb", they feel self-conscious because they feel an awful lot like they have a ton in common with that other guy who is apparently sexist. Then they get defensive. Sexism cannot exist because they do not feel active hate for women. They do not realize that defining a successful employee by descriptions only men have is sexist (and detrimental to men who don't fit those descriptions while still being valuable employees). They do not count themselves as antagonistic toward women, in fact, they themselves take more flack than any woman does! Therefore, sexism does not exist.

I simply cannot go into an interview and say, "I was fired because of sexism." All at once I would have committed every faux pax. I will have admitted a weakness, I will have drawn attention to how un-male I am, I will have shown that I believe in the tooth fairy, and I will have accused my prospective employer of siding with my enemy causing them to defend him without even knowing the man or the situation. And definitely without knowing me and if I am trustworthy...or if I am just an overemotional...person...who is over-reacting rather than analyzing the situation.

Thoughts on searching for a job in honor of my one year anniversary.

It gets easier to be rejected (most days).

You take a deep breath, you make the call.

You smile because they say you can hear a smile on the other end of the phone.  Now this is a game. How many seconds can pass before they finally say no?

Before you call, it is placed firmly in their mind. Before they answer the phone, they think it. They take a deep breath before they answer. They don’t want to make this difficult. They don’t want to think of it in terms of “rejection”. But you make them.

You smile so big, your arms do not have room to hold their rejection. You offer your armful of happiness to them. Suddenly, they realize that their two letters are heavier than they first thought. So they try to add a few more to disperse the weight, for your sake, of course. “We really liked you but…” And you hear about how qualified someone else is, about how little work they have, about the experience that you don’t quite have, about every good intention that they just found.

This is the point at which, if you are truly playing the game, you smile bigger, deeper, broader.

You say you understand. Smile again.

You smother any sort of insincerity right out of them with your magnanimity. You thank them generously and exit quickly to leave them believing, if possible, that they really did want to hire you.

Then you let out the breath that you took before you made the call, just as surely as they are also letting their breath loose. You let all of the hope and smile fall through your fingers and throw their rejection on the heap with the others in the corner of your mind. How long before they say “no”? And each time, you hope, you learn to hold your breath a little longer. Until one day, you learn to hold it longer than them.

I don't know what is happening with my life. If anyone still reads this, they already know this. I have not said much of anything else for...at least two years. I keep saying it because I keep discovering it. Like a clock you forget does not tell time anymore.

I stopped taking naps after I go fired. I did not really notice at first. I did not know why. As I began to notice, the reasons came falteringly forward starting with "they just aren't restful" and becoming "I cannot get my brain to turn off". What I mean to say is, either as I fall asleep or as I wake up I find myself entranced, back in time, back at HAI. Somehow my psyche has staked off this time as THE TIME to take the stand that I already missed. And I am defending myself again and again and again. I am saying all of the things that I thought of too late, that I was not brave enough to say, that I thought were too emotional.

Sometimes I think God has left me here to wrestle down my will. Sometimes I think he is waiting until I summon my will. But I have done both. Often in the same day, the same hour with so much zeal and fervor that I venture on fanaticism. I am tired and cynical now. I do not tell God what he is doing anymore. I do not guess. I do not discern. And I do not wait for the prophets anymore. They do not know anymore than I do, it turns out. God is not talking to others about me behind my back. That is somehow both a relief and a defeat. Defeated is a good word for today. Also for this week and these last two years.

And the defeated do not nap. Napping is too much a gateway to unreality and in this unreality I keep trying not to lose. Sometimes I get close. I think that maybe I have found the one path that would have converted or convinced my enemies. When the gateway closes and only reality remains, I find that I have lost all over again. I defeat myself. And I am tired of defeating myself, as if there are not enemies willing enough to do that for me. I am so tired, in fact, that I cannot rest.

 

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.

I think that I will miss this time in my life. This staying up until 1 or 2 am reading a book and listening to the train pull in. This house with its magical ability to grow plants if I only ask it. This melting pot neighborhood turned calico side-walk. It has been such a safe place to untangle myself. I cannot imagine coming to terms with Hillsboro any other way.

I left that place with my arms full of insecurities that I had never taken seriously before then. I was suddenly worried about what people thought about me because they can make your life so hard when they do not value you. These insecurities have been my constant companions as I look for jobs, plan a wedding, and try to get to know Tyler’s family as my own. I have not made the best of it. Rather, I have wandered from hurt to wound and back again. I have been guarded, desperate, despairing, angry, and altogether ill at ease with myself.

I have never not known who I wanted to be…until this last year. And I have tried my best not to make all of this a problem between God and I. Still, some part of me has often asks in the in between moments if this really is the best way, if God didn’t hurt me a bit unnecessarily, and so on. I have marveled at the fact that something so damaging to myself could possibly have been his plan. I have thought seriously about whether or not I want to entrust next year to his care. And I have told him this, challenged him, and asked him to prove himself good. In the past, he has responded swiftly to such challenges. Not this year.

And yet, I am reminded of my time learning about the Old Testament prophets and the kings of the time. God would raise up, tear down, and make new as he pleased. One king set out for plunder, another for political gain, and another for vengeance; but all of them were moved by the Spirit of God to achieve his purposes. It did not matter if they thought God their enemy or their friend. God still directed their steps even in their rebellion. It was all so that they would know him and so that Israel would be both chastened and protected in turns.

This is what I am reminded of when I think of my time at Hillsboro. I left there so damaged, feeling betrayed and hopeless and…mute. I did not understand what had happened or why. I did not know how to praise God for his justice or his love. And so I said nothing. I have observed and observed this past year and more. I have struggled to be content with this desert he has given me. I have made small forages into understanding and I do not know if I will gain much more than I have now.

For now, it is enough to remember that God answered me when I told him I did not know what to do at Hillsboro. I asked for help, for guidance, and for clarity. Within 24 hours, I was fired. It is hard not to feel like I failed. It is hard not to feel like I required God to jerry-rig the first plan B he has ever made. But today, I remember. I called to him and he answered. I called to him and he moved the hearts of the people around me to be what they were. I called to him and he acted. I expected him to make my work environment better, for him to soften things, or for my enemies to repent and be nicer. Instead, he hardened the heart of pharaoh. 

This apartment is so full of my longing to be in the future already. I want to see this resolved. I want to know that I successfully hold a job for multiple years. I want the reassurance that I did not somehow thwart God’s plan by getting fired or by hating my job. And I want to be free of the insecurities that I packed into my poor fibers as I left there. This apartment has held all of that discontentment and more. For 15 months, I have wrestled with myself and made myself a nuisance to God within these walls. It has been home to my binge cooking, my not eating quite well enough because I hate eating alone, my late night books, my early mornings spent watering my flowers, my quest to find myself …somewhere in the future in one piece again with a direction and a usefulness that I have not been permitted in a long, long time. 

I will miss this place when I am gone. I will miss how safe it has been to know absolutely nothing at all about tomorrow and especially Monday. I hate Mondays. I hate the overwhelming sense of having a whole blank week to fill with my not knowing. A whole new week to hold vigil hoping the phone will ring with news of a job. And I will miss it. ...At the same time, I have never looked forward to missing something so much as I do now.  I am perhaps too eager to meet that grief and to mourn the loss of my freedom and my time. Still, this is my constant prayer.