Rainy Days and Sundays

Melancholy, n., pl. -ies. 1. a gloomy state of mind; dejection. -adj. 2. affected with melancholy; depressed. 3. causing melancholy

Don't be concerned by the opening to this post-- I am not sliding into a decline, wallowing in my sorrows or basking in an abyss of depression. But rainy March weekends do tend to make me go a bit broody.

Let's wade into the soup, shall we?

For several days I've been bracing myself for a hellish week of work and commitments that I shudder to contemplate. I looked at the calendar Friday, shook my head in disbelief and asked myself how in the name of all that's holy did all of this shit land on my plate during THE SAME DAMN WEEK?

I won't bore you with details (there ain't a thing happening that will spark much interest). The issue is that all of this comes flying at me during the third week of every month and should not still suprise me. It's been like this for several years now, and yet each month I'm dumbstruck when I see the meetings and obligations start stacking up like flights into Pittsburgh International. I tremble to think how I'll get everything accomplished. I wallow and whinge for days, and then the week comes and I survive as usual and soon I'm glaring back, wondering "what was I so worried about?"

Part of the angst I could blame on the new job. After several false starts (i.e. no internet in my office for the first six weeks; computer melt down for the past two weeks), I'm finally settling into my new role. Knowing that I'm still very much in probation mode is what's got my knickers in a twist. At least I've decided that it really was a wise decision to take the leap that I did-- to leave a job that I had slaved over for six years, but which was steadily being eliminated by under-appreciative new management. Mind you, opting to leave the mental midgets who were my co-workers was no great sacrifice. In the 2 1/2 months since I left, not ONE of them has made the effort to cross the bloody street to visit me at the new office. I worked with some of those widgets for the entire six years, yet not one can bring themselves to walk the 250 yards between spaces to stumble in and say hello (I don't give a rat's ass if they congratulate me-- I haven't done anything yet worth genuine praise-- and I'm way too busy to miss their annoying company). So I think you can understand why I shed no tears at my departure & had to resist doing the Kiss-My-Ass Tango (it's all the rage) as I boogied my office equipment out the door in January. The issue here is that I don't know what I did / not do to / for these people that they cannot take five minutes of their time for me. ME!!! I am, after all, the alpha and omega.

The main reason the word melancholy jumped into my brain today was spending time with my mother. We've become leagues closer in the years since my father passed away, and yet there are still countless times when we spend an afternoon together and I feel like I'm logging time with a stranger. How is that possible? That before she and I turned towards each other in our common grief I felt that I had a legitimate grasp on who my mother is at the end of the day. Maybe it was youthful naivete, believing that there was any way to fully encapsulate the essence of another. But it had my head (and heart) in a muddle, thinking about how out of touch we have become. We've joked for years that if there are two different ways to approach any given subject, that Mom and I will always be on opposing teams. Since my childhood she would accuse me of being obstinate, of willfully choosing another path to conflict with her perspective. Thankfully, time has taught us that we simply have divergent thought processes. And as I mentioned in my recent post about my father, she and I have also learned that "different is not necessarily wrong-- it's just DIFFERENT."

The melancholy sprang from knowing that in all liklihood we never WILL see things the same way. I remembered back to the months following my father's death when I would cry and ask myself: Why did I have to lose the one who understood me? I never wished my mother gone. But it was terribly frustrating to my 21-year-old mind to believe that the person who understood me unfailingly was permanently unavailable for consult & that the remaining parent tended to wear a martyred expression whenever we spoke, possibly hoping some celestial Dummies Guide to Wise Ass Daughters would fall from the sky and land on her doorstep.

So I spent some time brooding. Not long, but long enough to be reminded that there is no easy way to make people understand you. My former coworkers have their merits (some moreso than others), but they are also DIFFERENT from me. And while I could choose to feel hurt by their perceived rejection, I've decided to let go of them. I know I can't sever ties completely (I have to walk by / through their office daily, and the old boss is one of my new triumverate of bosses). I can't make them understand Me any better than I can hope to understand them and their motivations. What I can do is remind myself: Their shit is their shit, and my shit is mine. I have to keep focusing on making myself a better person, and not get mired in their frailties as I walk my journey.

Their shit is their shit, and my shit is mine.