I'm not crazy. It's Christmas Eve.
It's the one night when we all act a little nicer.
We...we smile a little easier. We...we...share a little more.
For a couple of hours we are the people we always hoped we would be.
Bill Murray
So I skipped our company Christmas party last night. It’s
been a difficult fall since my last post. I’ve been really struggling with mood
regulation. I seem to fluctuate hourly between why-bother depression and everyone-sucks
anger.
In September I had so much work I barely had enough time to
breathe. My online classes restarted at the same time as my seniors applied to
college and I wound up working every waking minute. Not the greatest choice but
it’s what I committed to.
In October my father had another difficult surgery and again,
I flew out and took a bath in the toxic atmosphere that is my parents.
Honestly, the best metaphor I can think of is a sheep being dipped in
insecticide. Being with them is like being dunked in poison. Not so great for
the mood either.
In November I got a rude awakening at work. After setting
some boundaries and saying no to a project, a colleague called me out and said
that she had some major problems with me. I’m pretty open about the fact that I
have a disability and that we’ve had a really rough year personally with the
whole surrogacy situation. But my colleague said that my disclosures made our
boss hesitant to treat me as brusquely as she treats others and that it made my
colleague feel like the only way to be treated well was to spill her guts too.
I admitted that this could be the case and apologized if my actions had
affected her negatively. That didn’t work.
She then said I was a hypocrite because my preferential
treatment at work made me seem two-faced when I’d voiced frustrations in the
past. I couldn’t fault anyone for incompetence because those people weren’t
getting my special favors. When I approached the partners and asked if it was
true, I was told that it wasn’t but it was a complaint they’d heard before and from
another senior colleague.
Of course, this all happened about 6 hours before I’d
planned on taking a few days off to rest and regroup so suffice it to say, this
completely derailed that plan. Instead, I spent my long weekend visiting
friends and asking, could I really be THAT clueless? Ultimately, I decided
that I just didn’t have any allies at work and that my openness was at the very
least, divisive.
Shortly before and after this we celebrated my best friend’s
birthday and Thanksgiving at her house and both visits brought reminders of how
truly and profoundly shattered I am about the whole no-baby-because-friend-is-dying
situation. By early December, I felt like 2014 had been one long beating. I
felt drained and sad and honestly, a bit hopeless.
My 40th birthday is coming up and it’s inevitable
that on such an occasion, one takes stock. And when I look back at the last 40
years I see pain upon ceaseless work upon bad luck. I don’t know if this is
what life is like for other people but I’m not really enjoying it. I’m more… surviving
it. I try to count my blessings. I DO. I have a wonderful partner. I have the
luck of intelligence and socio-economic privilege. I’ve had remarkable
experiences and opportunities. I know I’m living better than most people on
this planet. But underlying all that is 40 years of illness that drains the
color from these things. And that’s real.
So instead of going to the company party last night and
pretending that I have any meaningful connection with the people there, I
stayed home and tried not to feel sorry for myself. It wasn’t easy; there were
some real woe-is-me moments. And then my husband took the remote control and
kept putting on holiday movie after holiday movie until slowly, the spirit of
the season started to get the better of me. Around midnight, we watched the end
of the movie “Scrooged” and as I listened to Bill Murray’s drunken rant about
Christmas Eve, I realized. Um, hey, that’s my birthday and that’s kind of
describing… me.
I’m well known for being an over-sharing softie. I’m
sensitive in all the good and bad ways that word connotes and I’m not saying
it’s some gift – it’s just how I’m built. And it gets me in TROUBLE. I get easily
frustrated when I see people around me struggling or failing and I have a hard
time holding my tongue. Some probably wouldn't think of that as “nice.” I want
people to be better, to do better to, as Murray says, to be “the people we always hoped we would be.” Because I know that
every morning I wake up and I try to do that and it’s frankly exhausting. And I
don’t think I’m going to be able to stop anytime soon. I’ve tried the whole
saying “no” thing this fall and it’s gotten some surprisingly negative results.
Maybe being born on Christmas Eve imbued me with some crazy,
elf-like kindness and tendency to share too much of myself. Maybe it’s just Christmas
Eve. Maybe I’m not crazy.
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