#if a future employer sees this: this is slash silly

[huntressofsyphonia]

a bottom you haven’t been able to admit you’ve fallen into

I came off the Effexor in January, cold turkey under the guidance of my doctor. The decision came to me after January 17th, quitting my toxic job, determining this was the best time to do so (after all, I decided after my recent visit with my doctor, which was literally five days prior, I would come off the medicine at the end of the month. My boyfriend and I worked out a plan to give my body and mind time to adjust coming off the pills, as it would be a while for everything to leave my system. For two months, I didn’t have to look for another job, just to focus keeping my mind in check and doing well in my two classes.

First week: the shivers, easily hot and cold, unable to walk without being dizzy, sick to my stomach, and at most, the loss of giving a fuck. Ambition to complete school work and get up in the morning was almost gone.

Second week: trying to fight through the body ailments and focus forward. Mental kicks began, I almost dropped out of school during this week. 

Third week: I began to think too heavily on the decisions I made leaving my job, attacking myself for every poor decision I made there and the empty feeling that I do not feel I belong in university. I spent eight years in community college to get here, but why do I feel I do not live to their expectations? My advisor was concerned about my GPA, but when I explained I was paying my way through school and when I first started I could only afford the one class (my first being a math class, not my strong suit, but I fucking passed) that was nearly $850 after the $100 online access code, she assured me all was fine as it would rise from my next courses. 

Then the weeks that followed, I watched our country fall apart and I was under the mirage that everything was going to be fine. The stress of everything around me hadn’t really hit yet. I received the government aid, a school refund for the current semester when we went online (I paid a majority of it, so hell yes), and my boyfriend assured me all was well as he was still working and my main priority was school. Everything appeared fine. That’s the thing about these drugs is once you’re off of them, there’s a fog of lies. You think that everything is okay and when you go out there and test them, you realize you didn’t really improve what you were trying on the medicine. 

I started this medicine three years ago to enable me getting out of bed in the morning and not crying every day at my job. The job I was at was a terribly toxic environment filled with careless racism, anti-LGTBQ, and discrimination based on what management deemed to be your worth. I was always told I would be nothing more than a customer service rep making $9 an hour with a paycheck that went entirely to my car payment and then the rest of the month to my other costly bills, making it impossible to pay for utilities and so forth. I blamed all the mistakes and oversights on the medication as I had been on it less than a year, but I knew it was the stress of the job and I needed to get out. I did not leave that place on good terms and that ended in tears. Once I had my second one nipped in the bud because the person who worked there got me in very quickly, and I felt like by my two coworkers that I meant something, but low and behold, two years and four months later, I left that one in tears too. That one didn’t have the heavy sheen of discrimination to others, just towards myself, as my boss didn’t like my personality and that I didn’t accept her strange need to be “my other mother and best friend.” I was tired of the bullying from a woman old as our frightening president and having to babysit her-not-really-autistic-but-piece-of-shit-son. Instead of accepting her poor parenting skills and the self-reliant creature she raised, she forced her employees to treat him as a five year old and pick up after him.

Working at the second place on this medicine, I was able to learn how to tolerate myself and be appreciated by those around me. I feel like while I was actually working on my anxiety being out in the world and talking to people, I wasn’t really repairing myself, and ignoring the inability to love myself. I let the work environment that had no sense of structure or accountability under my skin, and I just wouldn’t fucking let shit go. I always had to say or fix something because I didn’t agree with it. I let myself get wrapped up in a mentality that was frankly, doing more harm than good to me. Rather than focusing on the good I could be and fixing the flaws I have, I spent too much time thinking how to manage little things. Thus, ending another failure place of employment.

Now, four months into pandemic, five off the medicine, and still jobless, I’m wondering if it was too soon because I didn’t take any time to reflect on myself like I should have. Once again, I’ve felt that I shouldn’t be in a university, that I’m not good enough or don’t fit in. I always feel that something about my personality is odd or bothersome to others and I am to be avoided. Online class discussion posts and no one wants to talk to me, sideswiped to other people. It doesn’t help that in my classes, I’m the first or second oldest, surrounded by eighteen to twenty year olds, some bragging about reaching twenty-one and going out to the bars. Almost thirty and far from that kind of entertainment, how the fuck am I supposed to relate to these kids? Why bother with this shit anymore? But I told myself I can’t quit after all this damn time and now that I finally got grant money to continue my education without panicking about funds. I know if I quit, I am limited to the retail and service jobs in my area that do not pay a goddamn thing and very little opportunities. Even with the associates degree, I’m in the same exact position as everyone else. In a tourist-slash-college town, there is hardly anything if you don’t have that four year degree. All the coping mechanisms I created with my doctor seemed to be based on the moment in time, fooling her and myself to think I’m actually getting better. 

Today, I had a Zoom practice interview for my business class, practice that was so broad, it didn’t feel like an actual interview. It was literally another person talking to another and giving their feedback on what they had experienced and me answering questions. I was aware of the silly mistakes I made: lack of eye contact, too many hand gestures, and sometimes going a little too in depth of my explanations. I only talk to people I don’t know on Sundays and that’s at the grocery store and I felt I was a little carried away. I truly wasn’t prepared because this wasn’t a traditional interview and it was presented as if I was to talk about myself, something I hate doing, but I do it as I must.

I was given a lot of good feedback during the practice but then when I was emailed for my “final rubric,” the interviewer failed me. He highlighted on when I was asked what my goal was in the future, and I was honest, that because I’m really an introvert, I want to break more out of my shell and not be afraid to build connections. He made it sound like me being an introvert is a terrible feature. I have spent the last month, dwelling on the “problem” of being an introvert. This business class has expressed that introverts are seen as an issue in this field. A little side note that in all my jobs, I knew that it was my duty to force myself out of my comfort, and while I did come home exhausted because of the energy I put into my day doing this, I still fucking succeeded.

When my boyfriend saw the results, he was floored, because in his work place, where he’s been over fifteen years, it’s full of introverts in all departments, and that isn’t a deterrent for their job. He also was baffled from the little knit-pick things, like the hand gestures and lack of eye contact in the video chat, and my resume. A majority that was covered by this class, to build my resume was deemed to be presentable by two professors. Then my low GPA (it’s low because I’ve only taken three classes at this university), and the lacking to make myself seem unique. 

How could I make myself seem with this poor structure of this assignment that wasn’t formatted into a proper interview practice? I took this assignment way to personally, like I do everything. I strive so damn hard to do well in my classes, as I am aware my GPA depends on it to get into the super business school. For once in this scenario, I was being myself as I have been told in interviews are based on that honesty, I felt as I was shot down for not feeling good enough. Like always after my good vibes are torn away, I went to my room to curl into a ball and just lay in the darkness with my iPad on Reddit. After a while, my boyfriend came into the room, trying to encourage me that I cannot be hung up by this little thing and to take into the fact that this was a one time thing, that it was one person’s judgement, and others could and would be different. At the end of his comfort, he said he wished I could see the good in myself that he sees. We’ve been together for nearly five years and he’s been there through all the problems. 

I feel I am at a loss, because I wish very badly that I could see what he does, to love myself when it’s brought to question and to be able to look in the mirror and not hate who I am anymore.