Loneliness

All I want is a community. I don’t know why it’s so much to ask, but it seems that it’s actually asking for the whole world just to wish that I had a community of friends around me.

            Don’t get me wrong, I have friends. They’re just not nearby. They’re anywhere from a three-minute drive to a day’s plane ride, away. They’re introverts. They’re busy. They don’t have time to make for me in the way that I can make time for them. Things always come up…until they want a favor.

            There is a lot I would do for any one of my friends if they needed my help. I’m always there for my friends and I feel like they know it, but they don’t extend the same back towards me. At least, not the ones who are close enough to actually see me in person and spend time if they ever had it.

            If you need a ride to the airport, I’m there. If you need ginger ale to settle your stomach because you’re too sick to get it yourself, I’m there. If you need a ride to work, I’m there. If I can be there, I am, and I don’t ask for anything in return but the same courtesies in friendship.

            So, why is it so hard to find people who share my values?

            I want to build a community of houses—decently sized houses with yards, maybe some land—where I can live with those friends who do actively make time for me. If I could, I would move next to me all my friends who actually take the time to send me a message asking how my day went; I’d move in those friends who reply to me when I send a message and actually take the effort to keep a conversation going for any length of time; I’d move in those friends who do for me as I do for them and those who invite me out when something comes up, or come out with me when I invite them and they’re available.

            No, I don’t believe that friendship requires constant contact. But that doesn’t mean I want my friends to burrow into their introverted holes and never come out to play. My schedule is changing but I’m requesting friends to come out on a weekend night, which is typically when everyone has time off anyway.

            It doesn’t help that I have a child. The moment I found out I was pregnant, I knew I was going to lose at least a couple of friends. I get it. They’re child-free. They don’t like spawn and it’s nothing personal against me, it’s against all parents and their offspring. Knowing doesn’t change my feelings.

            Knowing that the child-free people avoid me based on principle and not on my own actions doesn’t prevent me from feeling shunned—maybe even more shunned than I’ve felt my entire life, and I’ve literally always felt shunned.

            Knowing that there are people I call friends who avoid me because of my child makes me feel like I’ve done something wrong in becoming a mother. It makes me feel like children are terrible and my child is the fucking devil just because she exists; because she’s the reason people don’t want to see me.

            How am I supposed to find joy in my child when she is the cause of so much misery in my life? I can’t take my daughter to karaoke. I can’t watch anime with my daughter, or hold philosophical conversations with her, or share a joint with her. These are all things that can happen when she’s older, but she’s a toddler. I need other toddlers for her to spend time with and I need other mothers to be my friend and take time for me the way I take time for my friends.

            Sure, I can take my child swimming. I can take her to the zoo, or the wildlife reserve, or the children’s museum, or the park. Those are all wonderful daytime activities, but now I’m going to be working nights.

            It seems my new shift will make me lonelier than ever unless my nights off correspond with my friend who also works nights. Let’s hope I get lucky again the way I got lucky to work so close to home. Otherwise, I’ll live a very lonely life.

Plans and Momentum

My third week of training and final week of classroom instruction ended, today, and I received my schedule for on-the-job training. With the luck I had in being assigned to the King zone (the zone closest to where I live, conveniently enough), I also have the fortune of only having 2 weeks of on-the-job training! It’s great for me because my second week consists entirely of day shifts; my only night shifts are Sunday and Monday nights, this coming week, and then I have to be back in Bellevue on Tuesday morning—right after my shift—for a right-of-way class.

            I’m not entirely sure what the right-of-way class entails, but I do know that it’s mandatory and if I miss it for any reason, I won’t be able to work until June because that’s when the next one is scheduled. My plan for the class is to have my supervisor take me, but if that fails for any reason, I’ll already be at a bus station, so I can take public transport. With working in my home town and the two bigger cities that border it, I don’t intend to drive unless it’s absolutely necessary—or until I get my own car.

            Speaking of plans for my money as I begin receiving checks from my company, I’ve realized that while I could afford to enroll Persephone back into KinderCare with the money I’ll be making, it will be expensive and I might look into enrolling her only part-time, or simply finding a less expensive daycare to take her to. One thought I have for that is a daycare my dad took me to when I was little; I believe it’s in Auburn, which is one of the cities I’ll be working in (the three being Federal Way, where I live; Kent; and Auburn).

            My goal is still to purchase a house in August. I am moving in the right direction and at the right speed to make that goal a reality and I have no intention of letting anything get in my way. In August, our lease for our current apartment will end and we will need to find new living arrangements because I don’t want us staying in the apartment that has been falling apart since day one.

            Since we moved into our current unit, we’ve had our half-bathroom toilet fixed twice. The first time, the guy replaced the wax seal but forgot to bolt the toilet back down to the floor, so it leaked when we flushed it, still. We had to have maintenance come out a second time to bolt the toilet properly and end the problem. Then, water began leaking from the ceiling, so we had to have maintenance come out and fix that; it took them at least 4 days to complete the job and it left a massive mess in our kitchen. On top of those things, the windows don’t seal properly, so we have black mold trying to grow on our window sills. Luckily, Persephone doesn’t get to the window sills where the black mold starts, but it’s still a health hazard and I am not happy about it.

            August is a mere four months away. With the pace at which I’m moving within my company, I’ll begin making “the good money,” as I put it, after May 13^th, which is actually sooner than I’d anticipated. With my first paycheck, I can visit a lender here in Federal Way and, if all goes well, get pre-approved for a home loan through the VA with a 0% down payment on whatever home we choose based on our pre-approval rating.

            In addition to all of this that I’m doing for myself and my family, Randy has an interview coming up soon for a job with CeX, a gaming store similar to GameStop that purchases used games and consoles and sells them. I don’t know about GameStop’s policies, but I think CeX may just be better. I do know that Randy prefers CeX. If he gets the job, whether it’s part time or full time, it will be beneficial but it will also put a rush on finding childcare for Persephone and it may just make KinderCare the most logical option, since he would be working at the Commons at Federal Way. It just wouldn’t be prudent to drive over to Auburn just to drop our daughter off at daycare, only to come back for work. It would be unnecessary driving.

            All in all, plans are in the works and I actually feel good about moving forward. Today is definitely a green day and I look forward to more like it.

Unsolicited Human Resources Visit

I was taken to Human Resources, today.

Today started out quite badly but has ended rather well, much to my fortune. Unfortunately, I woke up extremely exhausted and had such difficulty staying awake that I could easily have crashed the car had I not managed to stay just vigilant enough… but I couldn’t stay awake in class to save my life. I practically slept through the PowerPoint presentations and I’m not sure how I managed to pass the tests. Kat told me it’s because I have more brains than the average bear, and I’ll take that. I’ve always taken pride in my intelligence, particularly when others recognize it and commend me for it.

            While I’m not sure why I was so exhausted this morning, I’m equally unsure of why suddenly, around 09:00, pain shot through my chest near my left shoulder when I shifted and raised my arm slightly. The pain persisted, so I went to Kat’s office and asked if I could enter for a minute; she accepted and I closed the door behind me to sit before her and explain what was happening.

            I explained the pain and that I didn’t know why it was happening. She got up from her chair and instructed me to sit in it and lean back after she told me to take off my duty vest and belt. I followed her instructions and leaned back as told to do, then broke into some tears.

            “I can’t seem to stay awake—it’s making me really emotional, I’m sorry,” I said, my voice cracking as tears broke free from my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. She looked at me kindly and said: “It’s okay. I know it’s from frustration. You’re frustrated with yourself because you can’t stay awake.” She explained that she understood because she got the same thing; she tends to cry when she gets overly frustrated with herself. It felt so good to have someone stand before me and tell me that they get it.

            Kat told me to rest my head on her desk and get some sleep. She said she was going to go “do uniforms,” which meant going into the back room and picking out uniform items for us to take home today to wear tomorrow and for the rest of our time working on the Sound Transit account. I couldn’t believe my ears—I was being instructed to get some sleep—while at work! I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I moved the chair to the place she’d indicated on her desk and laid my head down, when she added, “and if you feel like crying, go ahead and do that, too.” I can’t remember feeling so blessed.

            I know that I fell asleep because I woke to a knock on the door. I’m not sure why, but I thought it was Kat, perhaps announcing her presence before entering since she knew I was sleeping as she’d told me to. Instead, it was Ryan, one of the instructors.

            “Are you okay?” he asked me. He’d asked me this quite a bit over the past couple of weeks and it made me slightly concerned because I felt—still feel, really—like more attention is on me because I’ve had a couple of difficulties that I view as minor but I understand how those above me view them as major. For example, when I had difficulty breathing, it would be a major problem if it persisted and I was unable to wear my duty vest because it prevented me from getting enough oxygen while breathing. I said I was okay and that Kat had told me to wait in her office for a little bit.

            “Are you okay to talk?” he asked. I thought he would want to talk to me again, as he’d done twice before. I was wrong.

            Instead, he led me to the head of Human Resources, Heather, and dropped me off in her office. I sat before her while she explained that falling asleep on the job is a terminable offense in my line of work, which was something I already understood because it had been covered in our first day of orientation. She repeated this probably three or four times before our conversation was through, but she did allow me to explain my situation to her and exactly what has been going on with me, which at first made me feel like she was truly listening… but by the end of the visit, I was left relatively unsure, in part because she got the last word.

            She led me back to Kat’s office and I re-entered after Heather left, sitting in front of Kat again.

            “What happened?” she asked. She asked if I’d gotten any sleep. I felt jittery, then, the way I feel when I’m woken suddenly from a sleep that may or may not have been very deep. It was a kind of jittery that comes from anxiety, I later discovered, but at the time I explained it to Kat as “the jittery I feel when I’m woken up suddenly, so I know I slept,” at least a little.

            “Ryan came and knocked on the door and then took me to her—her name was Heather?” Kat nodded and said yes. “He took me to Heather’s office and she explained to me that falling asleep is a terminable offense, which I already knew…” I explained what had happened and Kat looked at me. I’m not sure if her expression was sad, irritated, or a little bit of both, but she then explained to me that she had not wanted to involve HR.

            She had wanted to take care of me and help me feel better without involving HR because she understood that with me, like with her, all I really needed was a little rest and I would be good to go. And I was, for the most part. I still took a nap after I got home, but I did feel more awake after the short nap I’d taken in her office. She told me that she’d told Matt, the other male instructor who actively taught classes during the first three weeks of training, but that she hadn’t told Ryan, and she’d wanted me to simply rest for a bit in her office without needing to involve HR.

            Suddenly, it felt as if Human Resources was the enemy. Like involving them was my first step out the door of the company for which I’ve just barely started working. Thinking back on it, I’m still not quite filled with dread, but I am wary. I’m aware that things I cannot control could cause me to need to find different employment, and the idea is terrifying to me because I feel like I’m in a job that’s actually a good fit for me. I don’t want to be proven wrong by forces outside my own control.

            I left early today to make at least one appointment with the VA. I ended up leaving a message because the nurse didn’t answer her phone—perhaps she was on lunch—and she has yet to return my call. In the meantime, I’ve purchased melatonin to help me sleep at night and niacin to wake me up in the morning, as the sleep issue has been relatively persistent since starting my 07:00-15:00 training shift. Perhaps that persistence is why Ryan took me to HR.

            Regardless of the reasoning for what happened this morning, today did end on a positive note. I had a good nap after I got home and left my voicemail with the nurse who works for my doctor at the VA, we took Persephone to play at the mall, and we had a decent dinner. Here’s to hoping melatonin and niacin are enough to fix my sleeping problems.