I exist outside of work, in ink and words.
I exist outside of work and inside this world; and sometimes the world is cruel. You look in the mirror and it's a stranger looking back, you look at your family and it's strangers in their skin, you look for your friends and they are there but still you feel so... alone.
You forget who you are, from time to time. You forget the places and the people that know you, you change, not always for the better.
Sometimes you see a coworker's scars, and your heart breaks because you know; I know.
You change and you break your bones to fit a mold you weren't born to fill, you change and break your bones again to do a better job, you change and break your bones to lift someone who won't lift themselves.
You learn a dance sitting still, alone and trapped in your head when you forget who you are; breaking yourself and losing that makes you unique because it doesn't get you anywhere.
You work, you work and work some more, work when someone doesn't want to, work when the bills need paid, work to live and in the end you cease to live because there is only work and never life.
Working with anxiety is working with a mountain in your chest. You're trying to breathe but there is dirt and stone and too much going on for the air to get in, so you choke.
Working with depression is working lost deep in a ravine, people asking why you aren't climbing on your own instead of if you need rope.
Work with both and you can't gain any headway, because the mountain in your lungs tells you you can't move, the ravine keeps you from the sun, and the dirt on that mountain stays barren, festers, fouls. They fight their silent war and I am left empty. Neutral, maybe lukewarm on a good day.
I am a phoenix sputtering, my pyre in the pouring rain fighting; the song on my lips dying.
I get home and I will cry or I will sit and feel empty.
I will get home and I will write until my hands ache, will type until my fingers are sore, will bleed ink until the pen runs dry... and still I can't feel alive.
It's numbers, inventory, how fast we get the orders in, out, how much product we sell, upsell, how many hours we work, save, how long we take, how much money we make, how much product we waste...
They ask you what you need to do your job better, they ask you why you don't do the job better, they ask you to do better; you do better and they ask if you can do better. If you can do more.
Hoping but choking on the ravine, the mountain in you bursts and nobody can see that you're just a natural disaster; that they can't tear you down to rebuild you because you're already in ruins.
Sometimes you can crack jokes faster than you blink, and sometimes you're choking so hard on the disaster inside that you can't think.
Get deep in late night talks, find that your words aren't the ones you need to communicate, and the point you want to make is just there in your mind, but you can't grasp it in any of those words. Find shallow early morning talks, cry because nobody remembered a thing, because again you're forgotten, again you're ignored, again because you've been starved of anything kind... because your life is work. Work becomes your life.
Sometimes I want to scream and sometimes I want to quit talking, but I can't let on because that's for the weak, right?
Sometimes I feel and sometimes I don't, others I feel too much or not enough.
I put my life on hold and this is my return? Is this my return?
No homecoming, no welcome parade, no cheer or joy... work.
Work, work hard, work more, work when you're not sick, work yourself sick, work through the sick, work into the sick, work sick, get sick of work, sick at work, be afraid to call out of work sick.
Be afraid to tell work when you are sick, be afraid when your body is betraying you and work demands you in sickness and in health, an arranged marriage you never wanted, an arranged marriage where you take the dowry, but they take you. Your time, your life, health, sanity, patience, they take you and break you to fit a mold they tell you is great. They break you and put you in a square mold and tell you to do a round job. You move, you learn, you can do a round job in a square mold. They break you again. Round mold, square job, told to do another good job.
They keep breaking, same round mold, square job.
Round mold, Triangle job. Round mold, hexagon job. Close, not good enough.
You break the mold and try, you try so hard... to make yourself; you can't remember who that is.
You look in the mirror, body aching, body betraying, nose bleeding, sick; not good enough.
Sick; demonized if you take time and heal.
Sick; demonized when it spreads.
Empty talks at full tables, no changes.
Full talks, empty tables; no changes.
No talk, no tables; change for the worse.
More full tables, more empty talks, and the foul mountain lost in your soul's ravine is pain in your chest because it's always going to be your fault, isn't it?
I don't have enough backbone, or I use too much force.
I have no compassion or I am too soft.
I am a complete doormat or a brick wall.
I'm a slave driver or I'm a slave to their needs.
I have my expectations too high or I have none set.
Just always a fault to place.
Step out of work, day off, you don't recognize anybody.
Who's this in the mirror? What is under those layers of makeup to make itook like she's slept, like her eyes aren't dying?
What is under the makeup to make it look like the pills are maybe working? To make it look like she is stable.
Day off, more news, bad news, drink.
Cry because you can't recognize someone anymore.
Cry because they changed.
Cry because you can't find them when they're right there.
Cry until the tears stop and the ink dries.
Cry. It's all you can do, it's all you remember of you.
Cry because things changed, cry when things change again... if things change again.
Cry because you've lost on your way to being you again, cry because the people who made you into you have changed.
Cry because the best of them never changed.
Cry because the closest changed, because they're not even the same.
Cry when they lie, cry when they're honest, cry when you realize work is calling, cry when work is tomorrow, cry when you get ready for work.
Cry over the fact you went from wanting to work to working to want something again.
Cry in the parking lot at work but don't let them see.
Cry when you can't remember the shape of who you were.
Cry when you don't recognize your own eyes anymore.
Cry when you don't remember what it feels like to smile against the sun.
Cry when you shy away from kindness.
And then, one day, you run dry... and you can't even do that, cry.
You stare up with sandy eyes, unable to cry, face bone dry, and that's when it twists you inside and you truly lose who you are.
You cannot un-break that part of you and you have to relearn yourself and start the cycle again...
The ravine grows, the mountain climbs. You can see over the edge of the ravine, but people don't grasp that it's a long way to them, they see only as the crow flies. They don't see falling back down to the darkness, all the way down just to climb up the sheer edges up again. They don't see the demons within, they don't see SHIT.
They just want you to work, and the world doesn't care, because the world is cruel.
