Written to my former co-worker, with whom I have continued my friendship (in fits and starts more than with any sustained attention). An interesting postscript to this entry: only a few hours after said friend replied, in kind, albeit brief terms to the correspondence that follows, I received a call from the Richmond field office of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, with which I had initiated a process - in October! - of filing a complaint after my being terminated from my last job; the agent there wanted me to know there was still time for me to finish that process, and that I really should do it, given the nature of my case, about which I shall not elaborate here, at this time. Suffice it to say that whether or not my situation requires me to produce "witnesses," the confluence of timing here has convinced me that I should in any event follow through with the complaint. The letter follows:
"I want to write this with some haste, forbidding myself to re-read or edit: thus making good on two always-elusive goals: 1) actually sending stuff I've written to people I care about before whatever it is I had to say has already become irrelevant, cold to the touch, etc., and 2) not subjecting you to the usual floods that have typically offered the only available punctuation between my silences and sputtering efforts to speak. (Hopefully I can make good on at least the first thing. I'm not sure I'm even capable of making good on the second one.)
"What happens with me and anxiety, no matter what meds I'm on or not on, is that something provides a trigger and my heart obeys whatever instinct is called for by that trigger, and then I stay there: occupying the trigger-space, unable (usually for months at a time) to command any cognizance of that that trigger was: what placed me there.
"And then, once I finally identify the moment of psychological derailment, it's generally too late for me make amends to anyone I've apparently blown off along the way.
"Please note (for whatever it's worth, which I'm inclined to think isn't much) that I wasn't always this way - or at least, I wasn't this way, to this grossly exaggerated degree. The trigger --> panicked, numb limbo -- > 'aha, that's what triggered me' cycle was a lot shorter before I made the mistake of getting the job I thought would facilitate a great number of long-deferred educational and economic self-repairs. While there, I signed onto a particularly cruel delusion that I was authentically respected in my position, blithely ignoring the numerous instances in which I was shit on by a broad variety of individuals (yourself being the especially remarkable exception who was certainly not trying to 'prove the rule').
"When I left there, I still had limited reserves of self-confidence, all of which were almost immediately exhausted as I began to comprehend the enormity of the humiliations I would have to subject myself to in order to do what the lawyer assured me would secure some modicum of justice (whatever the fuck 'justice' means), when he was immediately willing to represent me on a contingency basis because the circumstances were that immediately and obviously egregious, 'slam-dunk' worthy in other than the 'Iraq definitely has weapons of mass destruction' sense. I actually remember precisely where I was when it hit me: driving down Lakeside toward a doctor's appointment, talking on the phone with you. I had been going over the bureaucratic paperwork I was then intending to file, and the forms required that I add the names of any witnesses to specific events, of which I already had a clear list enumerated. At the time, you were still at [our former workplace] although you'd given notice, were on your way to [your new job], etc., and in our conversation I said something about how I wouldn't feel comfortable putting you in the awkward position of having to say whatever to whomever about the whole disgusting ordeal while you were still working for my own former supervisor. And you said, I don't know what, something benign like thank you, and it hit me: it didn't really matter whether you were still there or not - my putting you in that position, having to answer whatever bureaucrat or lawyer's questions about stuff, felt ugly.
"Maybe it's because I still harbor a belief that I don't deserve justice, even when it's easily obtainable (for once). I guess that's part of it. But it's also because you were my only real friend there, the only person who never lied to me, never manipulated me, never used me, never behaved in a blithe and arrogant fashion whenever excessive demands produced the extremely predictable response of my being overwhelmed, never contradicted me when I assumed any state of overwhelm was entirely my own fault, never sabotaged my work (while simultaneously doubling, then quadrupling my workload) in retaliation for my standing up for myself for once.
"My friendship with you has been the only piece of redemption I have been (at least until recently) able to excise from that humiliating morass. Which is why I never filed that paperwork. Hell, I couldn't even bring myself to deal with the unemployment people until around one month ago, when I'd run out of saleable books I could actually bear to part with, and had no other option. The last damned thing I have wanted was to bring you any further down with any of this. Which, when I've seen you, has meant vacillating between three modalities: 1) conversation that goes to enormous pains to avoid certain obvious subjects, largely concerning specific actions (both those already known to you and not) of a specific person with whom you still have some degree of a friendship; 2) conversation that attempts the first modality, but becomes diverted: pointing in both obvious and oblique to that proverbial living room elephant; and 3) silence.
"I am a very literal pain to be around. (I should know, since I can't get away from me.) You've had to hear enough of my shit. You shouldn't have to hear any more. Especially since I've regressed (even though my husband claims it's progressed) into some really biting and unsparing anger that I really can't seal tightly into some invisible, non-combustible place. Which means that I rant, ache out loud, complain. I mean, sure, my complaints and snarky comments (I've renamed her Cricket* if that tells you anything) are entirely ineffective, and will never begin to facilitate any kind of comeuppance, but they're still abrasive, difficult, pathetic, embarrassing, burdensome, sad.
"I'm afraid to see you, talk to you, write to you. Because this is what will happen. I'll complain. Possibly even spurt multisyllabic, metaphorically intricate invective. I have wondered, sometimes, if the aforementioned insect belonging to the Gryllidae family* (okay, now I'm just being gratuitous) has, since my ouster, subjected you to her own bitch sessions about me, and then I think to myself, well, if she has, then that's certainly her right (you were friends with her long before you ever knew me, etc.) followed by and even so, I should be above that. (Funny how I can internally, and fruitlessly, fight for any shred of dignity within a humiliating situation, when I could be fighting for much more than shreds; I could be fighting, for example, for Department of Labor sanctions, payment of my tuition which came due right as I got canned, etc.)
"I am not always so 'high maintenance' to the people I care about. But you've had the misfortune to know me in a context which has produced ongoing, raw agony for me which, on a variety of levels, you witnessed, which has resulted in my finding it impossible, for the time being, to fully dissociate you from an experience I can neither excise from my history, nor repair, nor forget - and my communications with you (sporadic as they have been), through no fault of yours, necessarily remind me of all that. While I'd like to hope there might be a time - and soon - when that was not the case (let's say: we could get the kids together for a romp around Maymont, or just hang out on your lunch break, or whatever), but that's the way it is now, and pretending it has been otherwise hasn't made it otherwise. It's bad enough as it is; I don't want to exist as that ugly, alternately self-silencing and loquaciously grieving (not to mention selfish) bitch. (In theory, this apparently 'purging' communication might serve as some kind of ephiphany-facilitating, productive trigger, but that's just a theory; if I promised, right now, that I could go forward even from this point as an All Healed Up person, I'd only be setting myself up for more embarrassment, and setting you up for further burden.)
"The bottom line is, I couldn't bear to ask you to do anything more for me than you already have. That was the trigger that shot through me on my way to the doctor's office that day. It's been an open wound all this time - my guilt - and pretending it wasn't there, or else that it was there, but it wasn't that bad, has only led to its infection.
"I'm trying very hard to deal with it, detoxify, recover. I want very much, and with unceasing sincerity, to be your friend. But I surely don't want to be your burden, in any sense of the word - bureaucratic, emotional, whatever.
"I hope very much that you and [your husband and baby] are well. (Yes, I finally make some mention of you in here, about your welfare, and it falls in the last paltry paragraph of yet another unintentionally novella-esque selfish missive. Great.) I miss you a great deal; I hope very much that you can believe that, despite my embarrassingly self-obsessed state.
"V."
