Can we talk?

First, the lady in the next cubicle really needs to stop eavesdropping on my phone calls and then asking me for more details about them because I was talking too quietly for her to hear it.

Next, note to everyone in every office, even you have a door: we can all hear you. We can hear you clipping your disfigured toe nails. We can hear your insipid ring tone even when you can't. We can hear you talking to your date/GYN/sponsor. We can hear you gossip/apply for jobs while you're supposed to be helping someone here finish a project. Heck, the cats in the alley downtown can fucking hear you.

I try not to talk loud enough for you to hear me. Kindly return the favor. If you could use a monotone while you're doing it, even better.

I have been emailing over-the-top suicide notes to my husband all day begging him to get a job, any job, just get one so I can get out of this shit hole before I kill someone preferably the vp who sits right next to me and can't mind her own goddamn business and just be happy I'm the best editor she's got and stop trying to fix me because I ain't broke, or maybe the HR person who tells me I can go remote as long as I leave town and take a 15% pay cut (why? Do I get to work 15% less? No. Can I make 15% more errors? Will I laugh 15% more when I quit?) anyway, each email more desperate than the last because who knows, it could be menopause, but it feels like I'm in the wrong job and doing too much for too many people for not enough. Oh wait, that's motherhood and marriage.

So that's what's happening.

I just realized yesterday that I took my last zoloft some time last week. Now I finally understand why I've been hearing the "zaps" so typical of going off antidepressants, why I'm so weepy and forgetful, why every little ache hurts so much more. I have to laugh at myself for not putting it all together, or at least considering it might happen, but I tapered off so slowly this time that I was using a 7 day medication tray, and had gotten down to 25 mg every 3rd day when I quit, so basically I didn't even realize I'd quit. Now I'm not on any daily prescriptions at all. It's awesome. Even if I can't leave the house without a keeper.

A moment of grace is a dangerous thing.

So I was walking home last night, singing Home of the Heroes and crying about Jesse, and this group of girls strolls around me and one goes, "I ain't gonna steal your purse, white lady!" And I said, "what do you need, five dollars? How bout we go for a drink?" And her friends were grabbing her saying come on come on, and I was like, really, let's go to the bar and get a drink." Looking her in the eyes so she could see that I wasn't joking, or angry at her. Letting her see into me if she dared.

I was crying because Jesse is gone forever, trying to hold my tears back so I could talk, and she's younger than he would be now, and she was just kidding around using me, a total stranger white lady on the street to make her friends laugh and didn't realize I ...was bleeding my heart out on a public street at 11 at night. Jesse. She and I would have probably had a nice chat, but her friends (understandably) did not want to cross that bridge from wherever they were to the bleeding hell behind my eyes.

She was looking then, you could see the micro expression (what you look like when you realize you just stepped in way over your head but this is a New York street and you get your poker face back fast as you can) and I could feel the tears streaming down my face again, and I know she saw them and realized that I wasn't afraid, I was just dying inside. Poor thing. I wonder if she'd ever seen that before in her life. Living death. I wonder.

And then she was my own daughter. I couldn't tell her that. I would have done anything for her.