#im actually upset every time I hear about how these admins were and apparently still are being treated as of the last week

[sharptoothed-gaze]

Not saying much until the admin herself makes a statement if she chooses to, but Em’s admin was essentially fired from the project.

Not happy with the Qsmp team based on what I’ve heard of Cherry talking about them and their last communication with her.

How fucking frustrating.

[leaughrilke]

HI IM HERE FOR REVENGE 15 + rilaya pls

15.  things you said with too many miles between us

find it on:ao3ff.net

It’s one in the morning, Riley’s in London, and Maya can’t sleep.  Can’t shut her brain down enough to stop thinking that she shouldn’t have let her leave the way she did, shouldn’t have left things how they were.

It was stupid to pick a fight, to guilt Riley the way she did just before she was supposed to leave, but—god, Maya doesn’t even know.  Doesn’t have a reason for what she did beyond the hurt that radiates out from her chest when she thinks about how much she missed Riley.  How much she misses her still.

Georgia seemed to get further and further away the longer the year went on; freshman year was hell and her heart was back in New York.  It made sense for Maya to transfer.  It made sense for her to keep it quiet until she knew it was a sure thing.  It made sense for Riley, unaware of these plans, to start planning her own sophomore year.  

Which meant London.  Which meant more time apart, furthered by the internship Riley picked up at Eric’s office in D.C. and the TA position Maya snagged at a private summer school in the city.  Which meant that Maya uprooted what little life she had in Savannah and packed all her shit on her own just to go through the same awful, heart wrenching routine she and Riley managed during the academic year all over again.

It came to a head, finally; it was ugly and messy and Maya regretted everything she said as she said it, but there was no stopping it.  She and Riley’d seen each other for what maybe averaged out to a week and then Riley was going to be gone for a semester, maybe two depending on how it worked out and Maya was tired.  Scared that maybe they weren’t actually different from every other high school couple.  Scared that maybe forever meant something different after spending a year apart.

Mostly, Maya missed Riley.  Missed her so much it felt like she couldn’t breathe, missed her doubly thinking back, to all the nights she spent wishing she could touch her, and forward, to all the time she thought they’d get together.

They left things on a bad note, an uncertain one.  Maya had told Riley to leave; Riley left.  She texted a little later, but Maya was still too raw to respond softly, so she’d left it unread.

She didn’t go to the airport with the Matthews to see Riley off and—

well.  Now she’s in their city, heartsick at how awful she’s been.  It was selfish to pick a fight, to expect Riley to have been as miserable as Maya had been.  Even more selfish to be upset that she hadn’t been.

Maya checks the time.  It’s a little after six in London and Riley will probably be awake.  Just because she didn’t want it to happen doesn’t mean Maya didn’t prepare, didn’t memorize Riley’s schedule and add London’s time zone to her phone.

They haven’t really spoken since Riley left.  They’ve texted here and there, managed a couple short phone calls.  Maya’s been able to pretend things are fine thanks to the stress of move in, been able to displace her anxiety, reassign it temporarily.  But now it’s been two weeks.  She’s been moved into her dorm for four days; Riley’s been for eleven.

She misses holding her hand, how it felt when Riley would play with her hair.  Misses the easy way they fit together.  But mostly, Maya misses her voice.  Misses hearing her mumble sleepily love you, Peaches.  Misses the way her name sounds when Riley says it.

God, she’s a mess.

Riley picks up after three rings.  “Maya?”  Her voice is pitched low, raspy from sleep.  Maya can practically picture her, hair falling out of the bun she’s taken to putting it in before bed, rubbing her eyes blearily in the weak London sunrise.

“Shit,” Maya sighs, rolling onto her back.  “Did I wake you?”

“No, no,” Riley says.  “My alarm went off right before you called.  Kind of perfect timing, actually.”

She nods, then, feeling stupid because Riley can’t see her— “Good, good.” 

They lapse into silence.  If it were any other time, any other phone call, they’d already be talking over each other, filling the gaps of their time apart with details about cool dogs they’d seen or weird professors.  Any other time, and this would be so easy.

“Maya.”  Riley’s voice is clearer now, but she’s speaking softly.  Like she’s figured it out.  Like she knows exactly why Maya’s calling.  

“I—,” she starts, struggling to string the perfect words together to make this right, to make it better.  “Honey, I—I don’t—.”

“Peaches, I know.  It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not, Riley.  I—god, I’m so sorry.  I’m so sorry I hurt you.”  Maya takes a shuddering breath, squeezes her eyes shut.  Groans when she feels tears slip out of the corners of her eyes, slipping down to her temples, her hair.  

“Hey, no, baby,” she coos, proving again that Riley knows her too well.  “Don’t cry.  We were both upset, we both messed up.  I know you didn’t mean any of it.”

“I still said it.  I still tried to get you to stay and I was so out of line to do that.  I just—.”

“I know.”  A sigh, a choked off sound that makes Maya feel like she’s going to die.  “I miss you too,” Riley says thickly.

“You can’t start crying too!”

Riley laughs, the sound muffled by sleep and distance, but it’s still warm and bright and sounds like home.  Maya can’t help it, finds herself saying, “I wish I could see you.”  

“Okay,” she hums.  “Let’s Skype.”

“Don’t you need to get ready?”

“It’s orientation, I can be late.  Besides,” Riley says softly, “I miss your face.”

“But—.”

“Just until you fall asleep.”

“Riley.”

“Maya.  Don’t punish yourself over this.  I want to see you, too.”

She makes a compelling argument.  Maya huffs out a laugh that sounds hollow in the otherwise empty dorm room—her roommate isn’t due in for another day or two and the silence is starting to get to her.

“Let me grab my laptop.”

It takes a fair few minutes of fumbling in the dark to find her computer, another five before the connection to the school Wi-Fi is strong enough.  Riley stays on the phone with her the whole time, her soft early morning sounds muted, faint over the static.  There just the same.

When it connects, Riley’s pixelated for a beat, but then her smile is clear as day and brighter than the sun.  “Hey Peaches,” she grins, pressing her face as close to the camera as she can.  “You look like hell.”

It startles a laugh out of Maya.  “No shit,” she says, a smile inching onto her face.  “I haven’t exactly been sleeping well.  Apparently being an asshole to your girlfriend will do that to you.”

Riley frowns, but doesn’t argue the point.  Maya must really look awful if she’s letting that slide, not pushing back the way she normally would.  Instead, her expression softens, her mouth quirking up.  “Well, I can bore you to sleep with an in-depth explanation of the London underground,” she offers.  “Or maybe a titillating play-by-play of how admin messed up my meal plan and shorted me thirty pounds.”

“Mm,” Maya yawns, laying back down.  She sets her laptop on the other side of the bed, tucked between her pillow and the wall.  “Topanga gave them hell, I’m sure.”

“No!  I did!”  The video freezes for a second, leaves the image of Riley’s beaming face front and center for a moment even as she says, “Oh, babe, you would have died.  That woman thought I was possessed or something.”

“Did you get your thirty pounds?” Maya manages, her words running together.

“More than.  You’re sounding pretty tired, baby.”

“’m not tired.”

“Okay,” Riley says, sounding entirely like she doesn’t believe her in the slightest.  “Did I tell you I ended up across the city?  I’ll tell you again, if I did…”

…

When Maya wakes up, the call is still running.  Riley’s reading, curled up in her bed and the angle of her camera makes it feel like she’s just on the other side of the bed.  For a moment, the distance between them doesn’t feel quite so vast.  

Maya smiles, readjusts.  Falls back asleep feeling warm.

[hpzen1805]

So, it's been a crazy ride these last few weeks.

Work was geting bad again, my supervisor (who has made a point to tell me that she's my colleague, not my supervisor, despite the fact that she runs the attorney's entire practice and requires that all work product be reviewed by her) started being horrible to me again. And it took this crazy thing and talking it over with my partner to realize that she's been gaslighting me this whole time.

Fun.

Things were getting bad and I was super stressed and not doing well at all (things were like when I started high school; I would wake up feeling sick to my stomach and almost vomit every morning because that's how my body deals with stress. Fun, right?)

But I had this class for work that was out of the office with my old senior paralegal, and it turned out to be just what I needed. She kind of knew what was going on already because she and I keep in contact, but we were able to actually talk about what was going on with both of us. I told her about the craziness at work and she told me how amazing her new office is. She also made a point to tell me that they were hiring and that she had talked me up so well that they wanted to see my resume. I didn't think it was going to go anywhere, but I needed some hope, so I agreed to send it to her.

At the class, I realized just how little these people who supposedly "wanted to teach me" about my field had really been keeping from me. The class went over things that I had been told were too advanced for me so simply that I found out that there was a whole exemption that we were utilizing that I had never been told about and which made the calculations that I had been struggling with make so much more sense. Of course, when I had done those calculations, I had been given a wkrd processing sheet to work with, and no explanation of why each part did what it did or what was supposed to be used to accomplish it. When I was told I did it wrong, the explanation was that "[I] couldn't know that because it comes with experience".

No. It comes from someone actually explaining shit. Just saying.

Anyway, my friend got me an interview, and it went really well. I had an offer within the week, and with how stressed my coworkers' behavior was making me, I was more than happy to accept. However, I still felt like I owed that place some modicum of loyalty (hey, I'd been there for a year and - as ive found out is like all gaslighters - things didn't always seem horrible; sometimes they were nice to me and let me hear them shit-talk others so that I knew what they did behind my back) I felt like I should give a months notice to do right by them.

So I signed my offer letter, gave a months notice, and started working with my non-supervisor to organize the tasks that I had and figure out what I could accomplish before I left.

Weird thing, though: when I gave notice, the attorney wasn't there, and my non-supervisor had always said to tell her first if we were leaving so she could "make things easier with [the boss]", so I did. She was very nice about it and said they would support my decision.

Then she asked where I was going, which I had purposely not said because another former employee worked there and I didn't want to make things weird or give them an opening to try and bad-mouth me (I don't trust people who smile and make polite chit-chat with someone and immediately start talking shit about them the second they leave the room, sorry not sorry). I told her that I didn't want to say because I wanted to avoid any awkward situations. This was her response:

"Why? It'll be more awkward if you're not upfront with us. We need to know in case there's a conflict. If there's a conflict [the boss] will only want you to stay two weeks, but if there isn't, she'll take the whole month. "

I - like a dumbass - was startled into telling her because it sounded legit. Come to find out from my friend at the new place that it was total bullshit, and they were just being nosy. Apparently, when the last girl from our firm left for my new firm, they called to talk to the hiring attorney about her (idk what they said, but my friend basically told me that the attorney knew better than to listen to them).

Anyway, I was ready to stick out the month and blow through my task list as fast as I could. I mean, I was super into it! I wanted to do the best I could because im a firm believer in kill 'em with kindness. Seriously, my motto is "I am a ray of goddamn sunshine and everyone Will Fucking Know It". So when I went in on Tuesday, I was ready to get down to business (to defeat... the tasks? Idk, it's late, and I'm loopy). And my supervisor had seemed like she was really supportive on monday when I told her, so I thought things would go relatively smoothly.

I was so wrong.

I went into our planning meeting, and it was like I was transported back three weeks; every little thing I did or said was scrutinized and found wrong, she was annoyed by all the tasks I had that she had told me to push back, and she decided she wanted to finalize 7 of my tasks that day. Since 5 had been reviewed BY HER before, I was hoping it wouldn't be too bad.

It was.

I had made all the updates that she asked, but she found further fault with the product that she had previously overlooked, and of course, it was my fault. So I tried to fix things and get them done, but by this time, her passive-aggressive attitude and constant sighing to express her "boredom" (something she's explained before as a reaction to "people not doing things the way she wants them done quickly enough"; that's a story for another day) was really fucking with my stress levels. There was also a thing with some documents that I didn't have, which I had asked her about weeks before, and she had said that the client had kept them and we had just kept scans after the meeting; that day, she wanted to know why I didn't have them, and I reminded her of that conversation; she got mad and said that I should have them and started asking when I had last had them (I never had them) and then went to check her office. Lo and behold! They were in her office! Who woulda thunk?! Then she proceeded to tell me that it was my fault for not getting them from her and that she never told me the client kept them becuase they would never keep them (which I had pointed out was weird when we talked about it and she assured me it was a rushed decision and out kf the norm).

Basically, the whole day was a shit-show in a hell-hole with my own personal torturer who specializes in emotional fuckery.

So I went in on Wednesday after almost puking when I woke up. After crying out of frustration to my partner the night before. After talking to my partner and my parents and being told by all of them that I could, in fact, just leave if I wanted to, and that the stuff my supervisor was doing was super shady (forcing me to tell her where I was going to work, and telling me not to tell hr because the boss would want to do it "on her own terms" because of the bad relationship between her practice and the main branch of the firm).

And after all of that, I came in to a rude response to my check-out email (which was in response to a rude reminder that I had to send one "EVERYDAY before I leave") and a passive aggressive note written in all caps on a post it that a new task was an ASAP and that I needed to see her IMMEDIATELY when I finished it.

And I snapped.

I sent an email to hr giving my notice and saying that I didn't want to upset my boss, so if she hadn't sent it over Please dont tell her I did. I got a very concerned response, and an offer to talk if I needed it. I went to themorning meeting with our practice grouo and made polite small talk with my supervisor, who was using the same voice on me that she uses on the associate attorneys that she thinks are stupid and doesn't like, but has to be nice to. And at that point, I was Done.

I went back to the office and finished the ASAP. I finished my admin stuff that had been lingering. I cleaned up my desk and updated my task list. I checked that my shelves were organized. I gathered up any research that I had done that didn't have client names on it, any notes I had without client names, and any personal items I had. And I left.

Well, first I gave her the asap and said I almost threw up (which I had in the midst of organizing) and that I needed to go home. (The response was: "Leave what you have in my box and hand flap to suggest leaving". Because, since she works while sick or giving birth, everyone else is expected to as well, and if you don't, you're weak and beneath her)

Then, I went to hr and explained what had been going on. I was so stressed that I cried again (luckily, not much, cuz I hate crying in front of anyone, but especially in a professional setting), but she was super nice about it and asked what I would like to do. I said that I wanted to cut my notice to the usual two weeks, and use my sick and vacation time to cover that week and a half that I had left. I just couldn't do it anymore, and my partner's voice was in the back of my head "You gave your notice. They can't fire you, and you don't have to take their crap.", along with my mom's voice telling me "The only one stopping you, is you." And the hr lady said I could!

So I left.

And I feel SO MUCH BETTER.

Am I still worried that they'll bad mouth me to my new firm and ruin my reputation with the attorneys at their firm? Yes.

Am I super nervous about starting a new job? Fuck yes, I am.

But I am out of that toxic place, and I have a new opportunity to do the best I can with my life.

And I am so grateful for that. I am so grateful for the people I have in my life. And I'm even grateful for what those people did, because I can learn from it, and I can grow as a person so that I am NEVER LIKE THEM.

So, if you've made it this far, I'm sorry for the rant, but also: Please don't give up. It may seem like you're in a horrible situation, but you CAN find a way out. Talk to people, don't be afraid that you're bothering them. Or do it anyway, because guess what? You Deserve Better. Even if someone (including yourself) is telling you that you don't. You Deserve Better. And if you feel like no one believes in you, or you can't do it? I believe in you. And I know you can do it. If I can, anyone can.

Please, don't give up.