[1143] Deep Breath In

 Ok, I’ve tried to ride it out, but shit isn’t passing.

Around 3 PM, I got a very, it would be comically sad, email with [insert client name] not even auto-filled with my name to be rejected for a job. This is boring by itself. But, I’ve worked for the state of Indiana before, and this job would have been in the Monroe County Jail. I’m speculating, but I think someone, somewhere, has marked my file in a way that prevents me from working for the State anymore.

Why do I think this? Well, it’s recently prevented me from even volunteering to be part of CASA because, “My testimony would be in question” given my voiced disapproval for what I witnessed and was subjected to as a DCS assessor. Who cares how engaging, insightful, and meaningfully contributing I was? Who cares if I was actually fucking correct in my concerns and had genuinely exhausted my options?

Let me be extremely clear for the stranger on the street. I’ve committed no crimes. I’ve threatened nobody. I’ve never violated a policy. I’ve never even cussed-out a supervisor. I’ve never raised my voice.

I wrote a letter. I was in direct communication with the head of Indiana’s DCS, we had lunch once, for months. I was sharing concerns in a deliberate and respectful manner with management up and down the chain for months. What did I get? An extreme cunt supervisor, a complicit boss above her, and broader DCS regional apparatus situated directly against me when I finally broke and wrote my letter. Naturally, it got passed around beyond who it was sent to.

I wrote about specific examples of negligence. We’re talking life and death levels of disregard. I’m not complaining that the storage closet is out of pencils. I’m upset that you’re directing me to bring police into environments that don’t require it, tell parents to escalate the drama in their home after they’ve reached out for help, or make up and over-hype allegations to paint a damming picture that doesn’t exist.

From that point on, I made the enemies list. I attempted to start my own casework company and get contracted. The people we talked to said a dozen times “Oh my God! That’s so good, we need providers! We’re lacking so many resources!” The day before we were to get a contract? Radio silence. Flooded with new paperwork and expectations and told to bid against multi-million dollar cabals that monopolize the service space. I think Laura, specifically, accounts for that.

The lies and slander Natalie was willing to put into my mid-term review I’m sure flag my state profile in some kind of way. Natalie who I worked under for 2 fucking weeks, who was allowed to “evaluate” me at the end of my 2 year rope of service in that role instead of my actual fucking supervisor who I never had even a hiccup with.

You can make the argument that I eventually threw all “professional” respect out the window, and you would be nominally correct. What you’ll have a hard time answering more completely and comprehensively is what the fuck else I was supposed to do. You won’t find me unjust in my outrage at their behavior, lack of response, and then targeting of me unless you’re built like them. I don’t think you need any particular sympathy for anyone who gets embroiled with the State to not what someone with the power to break up your family to do so in a consciously deliberate and malicious way.

One of my supervisors argued we’re worse than the police; we won’t just shoot you, we’ll drag you through hell and make you dance for us as we leverage your children.

That brings us back to today. I don’t want to work in a prison environment again. I would have found a way to put up with it for $37 an hour. I would want to be rejected from that role because I was unqualified or unfit or unreasonable. Because I’m being haunted by negligent Mean Girls shit? This brings up my existential anxiety about the absurd conditions I’m trying to operate under altogether.

I’ve mellowed considerably in my ambition and feverish drive to set examples and do the vague outlandish goals I set for myself as a younger person. What does mellow look like? Continuing to develop my house, go to 2-5 shows a week, watch all of TV, and now begin learning how to record music. I’m not too old. I’m not too tired. I’m not just so outraged and exhausted by how fucking stupid everything is to self-destruct. But my fucking god, people. It shouldn’t be this hard.

I’ve got an interview tomorrow (well, later today) for a job that won’t call itself a job, requires an hour commute, and would pay me approximately $400 a month after bills and gas. It’d be on par with plasma donation before those cash cows got stingy.

I reflexively, now, pivot to the conversation about how much bigger the world is than these petty bitches and this kind of bullshit, but I’m not sure it is. I think part of the reason I, if not us all, suffer this kind of posture indefinitely is because it’s baked in. It breeds and morphs and manifests until it’s the self-justified norm. It’s hard not to see things through the analogy of addiction having been counseling people the last couple years. The universal drug is self-righteous bullshit, and far too many are huffing away.

Happy birthday to me.