It was one of the best Thanksgivings I’ve had in a long time. I made side dishes while the turkey and other goodies were brought to my house by other guests. We popped open the wine and everyone had a great time eating and catching up. The weather was pleasant and we meandered outside, some relaxing in lawn chairs smoking cigarettes while I lingered by the pool enjoying a Smirnoff Ice. That was when I struck up a conversation with my former coworker who had gotten laid off 2-3 years previously.
Our industry had been through the ringer. I was nearly running a full department with a skeleton crew and had been ridiculously underpaid for three years. Feeling like I had nothing left to lose, I went into my manager’s office demanding a raise. “I hate to be this way but I can’t go into 2018 without a change,” I said. “End of the year will have been six months since the company was bought out. At the end of the year I start applying.” She nodded and told me that she would do what she could but that I’d have a letter of recommendation regardless of what happened. I wasn’t demanding anything outlandish. I simply wanted a fair and livable wage. Today, Thanksgiving Day, was when my new check hit my bank account and I got to see those digits on the screen. My life was about to change.
I told my former coworker the recent news and instantly reacted that he already knew. I was somewhat taken aback. He was close with one of our higher-up managers but didn’t see how that topic would have come up. He said he’d asked if I was getting taken care of and the manager responded, “Oh yeah, I’m just waiting on her to ask but we ain’t letting that bitch go. If she asked me for $100,000 I’d give it to her.” I knew this was a gross exaggeration of principles and linguistics on my coworker’s part in storytelling, but I was blown away and a little bit insulted. Just had to ask? They’d let me go on a meager wage, and unlivable wage, carrying that department for half of my career and I hear all she had to do was ask. I ran over in my mind all the things I’d had to do, all the sacrifices I’d had to make in my personal life just to stay at that company just for the promise of something better. Was it really just at the expense of asking a simple question?
But everything had worked out, right? I got what I wanted. I put the conversation to rest and the evening continued as normal and I forgot about the whole thing. That is, until I went to bed and had a rather gut-wrenching dream.
I was in a dark room sitting in front of the glow of a vintage television set, with broken green lines streaming across the screen. I saw a drawn out figure of a woman strung limp upon a mattress getting pounded by a grotesque man. I stared for a moment at the odd figures as he continued to grope and ram inside her lifeless body. Upon turning her over I saw her face fall in front of the camera and my heart fell into my stomach. The cascade of dark blonde hair. The inexpressive brown eyes barely peeking through consciousness. The face on the screen was me.
All I knew was that I had to have answers. Other than the flood of emotion in my realization, I felt the deep-seeded urge to make someone pay for what had happened. In the dark room I started fumbling with cell phones and random communication devices scattered across the room, trying to find remnants of anything I could piece together. I listened in on one voice message, my only clue. A foreign-sounding voice breathed,
“You were just lying there, so I helped myself.”
I woke up feeling physically shaken. It seemed like I had been asleep for hours, centuries, and it was pitch black outside with no sign of morning. Reaching for my phone, I squinted into the light of the screen. It was exactly midnight.
I’ve been going to counseling for about a month. My therapist has observed my trichotillomania, something I’ve been dealing with since I was 18. I was recommended anxiety medication and the usual tactile stimulants. You need to be more present,” she said. She would catch me pulling my hair during a stressful point in our conversation and would stop me and ask, “How do you feel?” The worst part is, I couldn’t say. She’d show me a diagram of emotion. I scanned it over and nothing she presented before me really summed it up. “I don’t know.”
Is this what I’ve become? At one point in my life I could say I felt sad, at another angry. Here at the end of 2017, I don’t know. I’d become so passive in just getting through the shit storm of the day that I hardly even checked my vital signs or even thought to reflect on how anything was affecting me. Since that visit, I use the pulling as a cue to check in. “How are you feeling?” Occasionally I can put my finger on it in a mundane and vague way.
Tonight changed everything. There was a Vesuvius of human emotion that wasn’t going to be ignored by my psyche. It wanted to disturb me, it wanted to offend, it wanted to wake me the fuck up. My worst nightmare had come true and there was no one to blame but myself. My deepest fear has been getting fucked over, getting taken advantage of. It’s the common thread in my career, my personal life, my love life. As I mulled over this dream that had so violently gotten my attention, I started to see the connections take shape.
As a woman in a male-dominated industry, I want to take charge and get what I deserve. As a Millennial, I sell myself short. I don’t know what I deserve when the world is constantly telling me that I need to pay my dues. Today I realized that I had compromised and lost three years of my life that I would never get back. I was watching myself on a screen getting fucked by “the man” metaphorically. What’s worse, the power was all in my hands to begin with. “You were just lying there, so I helped myself.” In reference to the man metaphorically, people treat you the way that you allow them to. They will only give you what they think you can put up with. I had let myself push every boundary until I ended up at rock bottom. For nothing. For all intents and purposes, I let myself get fucked.
Ah, but there is hope. Just as threatening your manager that you won’t go into 2018 without a change. Just as shiny new digits hit my account on Thanksgiving Day. Just as waking up from a horrible nightmare at 12:00 AM. It’s a new day.
Photo Credit: Frank Okay