It's my turn to be brave

So lots of news has come down the pike.

Firstly, my big mistake at work is coming to a resolution finally. After two months of "investigation," I will be officially reprimanded for my actions - a letter will be placed in my official file for one year and I will need to complete some relevant training. In her fury and dismay, my boss had initially threatened suspension - days, weeks, it was left up to me to imagine, and of course I imagined the worst. People kept saying, "You won't lose your job over this," which freaked me out to think that it was even a remote possibility, but still, these accountants take things so seriously when it comes to provable misdeeds. Unlike sustained bad management practices, for example, or sexual harassment, which are so much less easy to prove, and which go on being perpetrated around here without any effort to rectify. Various Inspector General reports about mishandled contracts in the millions of dollars to vendors who provided free golf trips to senior management resulted in those managers being required to take a two-hour ethics training. The disdain is so high here for ethical behavior that most of the managers taking the training (it was mandatory for the rest of us as well) sat in the back of the auditorium checking their emails on their Blackberries. A most disgusting recent episode involving a manager who, it is believed, took pics on his cell phone of his most recent conquest (an employee at the office) in the most compromising positions and showed them to the fellas around here has resulted in his resignation - what about the fellas who chortled and hee-hawed at seeing the pics? It's hard not to be a little bit angry and a little bit bitter when my little administrative boo-boo receives so much heavy-handed review and the most outrageous behavior around here goes unchecked.

Have I become a disgruntled employee, the classic kind whom everybody wink-winks and says, "Well, you know, he WAS reprimanded, after all, so how can you believe anything he says about his agency?" Yes. I look around here and whatever good will (and gratitude for being hired in the first place) has evidently melted away. I spend the morning commute girding myself to the repugnant task of walking through the doors and being "cheerful." It used to come easy to me. I'm actually quite a cheerful person generally. But it's not easy for me to put on a happy face if the feeling isn't real. By the same token, I don't want to be some zombie, walking through the halls with a sullen, stepped-on look on my face, grumbling under my breath at the hypocrisy.

Plus can I forget that my boss engaged in every possible maneuver to distance herself from my error, throwing me under the bus on this one occasion when I faltered after two years of innumerable moments when I saved her ass from the fire? I keep flashing on the self-serving questions she asked me when she conducted the "investigation" and the way she's bossing me around now to show she's "handling" me. My whole job now has become covering my ass to protect myself from my boss, which I suppose is what it was always supposed to be about.

Anyway, it's almost over now, I can put it behind me, as everyone says for me to do, and in a year it will be gone from my record. I feel like a caged animal, warily sitting in the back of my cage, looking left and right, waiting for the moment when I can claw myself out of here. Great management, folks - you took an engaged, capable, productive employee and squeezed all the life out of him. Well done.

In other news, I've been informed that the job I applied for at the depths of my despair has ranked me at the top of the applicants! I hope I'll get the chance to interview in the next couple of weeks. It's a great job - I'd be writing and editing publications for the agency - and, most importantly, it would take me out of the secretarial category I so willingly plunged ino again in order to get a job. I'm tired of being the servant. I don't need to keep replaying that "Please your Mommy" game. If Mommy doesn't love me unconditionally, so be it, I don't need to be looking for love in all the wrong places. A boss is a boss, not a mommy, and I want to start fresh.

I also applied for a job - an even better one - in San Diego. That's a huge step forward, to acknowledge that although I like it here, I would like it better in San Diego, where I could walk on the beach and breathe the temperate breezes. It's a little hard to consider returning to San Diego. After all, that's where my whole world crashed seven years ago. But what happened had nothing to do with San Diego, loving San Diego. And I've turned a corner in my thinking about life there, about all that happened. This is my biggest news.

My friend/business partner/housemate/unrequited love and I never had closure (to use a word I loathe). We just screeched to a stop in October 2001, walked away from the mess and never looked back. Yes, he was using meth and was a different person. Yes, concerns following 9/11 prevented people from making vacation plans so the phone stopped ringing (we ran a vacation rental business). And yes, my feelings for my friend had turned generally rancorous, which I realize must-ve been hell to deal with 24/7 - might even have lead to the meth use. But also I was ready to give up. I was gaining weight (my perennial gauge of emotional well-being) and felt that there wasn't a resolution to our situation. If I really loved him, would I have stuck it out and helped him get off meth? Could I have turned the business around somehow and made it more successful? Maybe. Probably. But I was wrung out, emotionally and physically, and I just wanted to escape.

I jumped on a plane to Seattle to have a quick break from the mess and visited my dad for the first time in years. His health shocked me - his fragility - and I realized I needed to be with him. My decision was clear. I returned to San Diego to end things and discovered the house my friend and I shared abandoned, my cat pushed out into the yard along with a food bowl swarming with ants and an empty water bowl. My friend had been gone at least a week. Honestly, I was frightened. I was deeply afraid of a confrontation with him, afraid of the things I would say, afraid of the things he would say. After a few days without contact, I just packed up what I could get into my SUV and drove to Seattle. My friend and I had just one phone call after that, a month later, a call in which his meth paranoia was in full flower, and I closed the door to the messy, messy experience forever, but it's been on my mind, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, ever since. Seven years of "What if." Like so many dismal things, there was a bright, silver lining - I was able to be with, care for and express my love to my dad for the last year of his life. I couldn't have done it if my life in San Diego hadn't gone to shit.

I've been angry and hurt and grieving about "San Diego" for seven years now. But I just stopped it. Stopped.

I think it's because I admitted my mistake at work and, yes, there were repercussions, but I'm moving on. It's not so bad to admit my mistakes. Regarding San Diego, I think I was so hurt that I couldn't admit my role in it. But hell yeah, I made a shitload of mistakes. I'm as much to blame for everything as my friend was - we both let each other down and we both wanted out of the situation. Finally, finally, I can take my fear of recrimination out of the equation and just feel sorry. I'm sorry, friend. I gave up on us. And I forgive you for everything just as I ask forgiveness for everything (and learn to forgive myself).

The cloud over San Diego has lifted. If I were to see my friend again, my heart would pound and I would be nervous about what would happen, but I would also be ready to express my regret, to apologize, and to forgive. The likelihood of running into him is remote - I don't believe he lives there anymore. But I can return to San Diego without being always in fear of a surprise encounter.

I don't know just where I'm going
And tomorrow is a little overwhelming
And the air is cold, and I'm not the same anymore
I've been running in your direction for too long now
Lost my own reflection
And I can't look down if you're not there to catch me if I fall

If this the moment I stand here on my own
If this is my right of passage that somehow leads me home
I might be afraid, but it's my turn to be brave
If this is the last chance before we say goodbye
At least it's the first day of the rest of my life
I can't be afraid, cause it's my turn to be brave

And I might still cry
And I might still bleed
These thorns in my side, this heart on my sleeve
And lighting may strike the ground at my feet
And I might still crash but still I believe

If this the moment I stand here on my own
If this is my right of passage that somehow leads me home
I might be afraid, but it's my turn to be brave
If this is the last chance before we say goodbye
At least it's the first day of the rest of my life
I can't be afraid, cause it's my turn to be brave