Voices

“You are ignoring me!  Come over here and help me right now!”

May, 2014. I had been awake since 4:30 in the morning and hadn’t had anything to eat for nearly seven hours. I had just been moved to a new workstation so that the supervisor, Bob, and another temp worker could have their lunch break. In the shuffle, I had lost my lunch break and no one had taught me how the software at the self-service stations worked, other than to say “It’s pretty self-explanatory.” I was told to stand by the printer and distribute the printouts, and not to leave that position.

The irate doctor on the other side of the desk was, like everyone else, trying to obtain a certificate of attendance at this medical conference. He probably thought I was a pretty face with an empty head, unwilling or unable to do any real work.

Maybe he was right.

Less than two days ago, I had been fired from a near dream-job with a downtown marketing firm. I’d worked for months, waited for over a year for the opportunity, and had blown it in less than a month. Apparently, my job skills were rusty, my work was flawed, I was showing improvement but not enough, and not fast enough. Same song, second verse as the situation with the wallcovering manufacturer back in November. I was living in an apartment I could no longer afford, and my long-coveted health insurance was gone. If I walked out the front door and got hit by a car, I was screwed. It would be cheaper if I died.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I replied.  “But I was just placed here and I don’t know how the software works.” I looked around frantically for Bob. “Let me see if I can find someone to help –“

“I’m sick of excuses from you people! Where is your supervisor? I want to speak to your supervisor!”

Tonight, this man would likely go back to his downtown hotel room, order room service and perhaps a pay-per-view movie. Tomorrow, he’d fly back home, maybe even in first class. I pictured him nonchalantly dropping his precious printout in the lap of a subservient secretary so she could write off every one of his expenses from the past week. He would go back to his nice, secure, respected job and continue scribbling out name-brand prescriptions, which would send more money back to the drug companies who sponsored this whole rat race. I would be sitting in my apartment, staring at the wall.

 “My supervisor is Go F**k Yourself with a Pinecone, you rude, arrogant son of a bitch,” I heard myself bellow in my deepest, most aggressive, project-across-the-room, ‘holy-shit-is -she-a-raging-bull-dyke?’ voice.

“The directions on how to get your document are right there on the screen in front of your ugly face, you piece of shit. You want me to come over there and read it out loud to you? And once it prints, you can walk over here and I’ll be happy to shove it so far up your ass, you’ll taste the toner.”

But, because I’m not (completely?) insane, because I try to be a nice person, because who knows what problems this doctor has in his own life, and mostly because I needed this temp job now more than ever, here’s what I actually said:

“My supervisor’s name is Bob. He’s on his lunch break. One moment, and I’ll walk around and help you.”

****

There was someone speaking into my ear, talking in my head. It was unintelligible at first, the nonsensical language of a brain half asleep. But as I became more conscious, I very distinctly heard a menacing, metallic-sounding voice say

 YOU ARE NOTHING.

My eyes flew open. The cat was retching in the hallway. I stumbled out of bed and found him in the kitchen, meowing for an early breakfast, even though he’d just deposited two slimy hairballs on the floor. Half asleep, I dropped a handful of paper towels on the mess before staggering into the bathroom.

Puffy eyes peered back at me, under acne-blotched skin and frizzy mud-colored hair. The Target nightgown was probably designed for a teenager, not an awkward woman in her late twenties. How pathetic.

When was the last time I had looked in a mirror and felt proud of the person I saw, beyond the increasingly rare, shallow instances of meticulous makeup jobs and eye-tricking cocktail dresses? Graduation? Cap and gown donned with diploma in hand? Five, ten years ago? What did those papers, those years of work, mean if I couldn’t hold down a full-time job?

Ever-deepening circles of questions, and no answers . Or half-answers with no concrete solutions:

“Everything will be all right.”

“God has a plan for your life.”

“You’ve got to have confidence in yourself, or no one else will.”

“Be thankful. It could always be worse.”

“It wasn’t meant to be. Everything will work out.

“Pursue your dreams! Shoot for the moon; even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars!”

“Think of what you would do if you knew you couldn’t fail.”

I remember attending grade school in classrooms papered with colorful posters of some of these exact sayings, these voices. And now people shake their heads and mutter, “Millennials. They can’t take criticism and they don’t know how to work hard. They think they’re so special.”

Maybe they’re right.

If I knew I couldn’t fail, I’d fly.

I’d step right off the roof of my apartment building, and fly over to the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, bang on the door and demand an audition. But that’s not how the world works.

“Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars . . . or the gravity of Earth will suck you back down and you’ll burn up in the atmosphere.” That one was obviously not from a poster.

I was proud of what I saw in the mirror when I got my first good job after college. When I bought a home. When I left it all behind and came here. When I got cast. When the little girl looked up at me in my costume, spellbound. When he kissed me.

I was happy when I rounded that corner at the end of Interstate 57, my little car packed full, and saw the city spread out in front of me, waiting. The Emerald City at the end of the Yellow Brick Road, closer than ever.

But I had to cross a poppy field first.