CHAPTER 29: RETAIL HELL


Time passed… the seasons changed, and I didn’t notice because I didn’t care. I was too busy chasing unemployment money and job interviews. Worker’s Compensation said that I was unable work because of bipolar disorder that was not related to the stress of work. The insurance company said that it WAS worked related. So neither one of them accepted responsibility and helped me. They looked at the same medical reports and made conclusions based on how it would help THEM. And what was I supposed to do? Get a lawyer? I can’t afford a lawyer. I need the money that’s owed to me so I can afford to sue them.

I would love to break their thumbs.

Unemployment came with an appeal and a continuance and a letter from Dr. Kennedy and months of scraping for dimes and nickels and bread crumbs. All the calls to worker’s comp, insurance companies, UC Service Centers, doctors, and everything else really cut into my job search. When I did get out, it was no go. I’ve only gotten a few phone returns on DOZENS of resumes that I’ve mailed out. And those phone calls were all dead ends. I’d be called into interviews to jobs that were already filled, jobs that turned out to be pyramid schemes, and jobs that paid minimum wage. Any career I might have had disappeared. I had no idea what to do. Start over? Carry on? My frustration with the world tightened and narrowed, and drilled its way through my guts.

Thankfully we had an understanding landlord. The couple who own this building are good people. He owns a dry wall business and leaves the care of the building to his wife. For the time that we couldn’t keep up with the rent, we made up for it by helping her with the building’s upkeep. When we were able to catch up financially, we continued to help her simply out of gratitude. In another person’s building, we might have been sued, or on the street. And besides, it’s not a big deal to wash the stairwell and vacuum the laundry room. The building isn’t very big. It only holds four apartments, two on each floor, with the family restaurant below us. I’m glad we didn’t have to leave.

We got by because of Cricket and Crystal’s jobs with The Evil Empire. Those jobs sucked for them, which made my fight to get a decent job even harder. I wanted them to quit those jobs, and it only increased my frustration when they couldn’t. I picture some sort of Stupid Cunt Utopia where I could take care of the bills and the girls could go to school or take their time to find a good job or explore their art or do whatever they wanted to do. I wanted to make a home where they didn’t have to deal with bullshit.

Instead they were drowning in it.

They worked all sorts of hours. They were constantly being called and “asked” to fill in for other workers without getting overtime pay. If they didn’t go in to work those extra hours, they would find their hours reduced the next week. They had to lick so many boots in there to get what they needed… just the basic necessities… out of life. They had no benefits and no insurance… but they needed to eat. They needed to pay rent. And there aren’t many places that will employ frail, young, and uneducated females. Basically, your life choices at that point in your life are in retail or waitressing.

This isn’t quite the sanctuary that I was looking to build.

So as they drudge on with their lives, I twist my nerves with sleeplessness. Eventually I lost the interest in being productive in any possible way. I started staying up all night watching Cartoon Network and sleeping during the day. Julie joined me in my new hours because of her evening class schedule. She and I would spend the nights watching anime and horror movies while she worked on a few school projects. She didn’t get much work done. Time spent with each other had begun to close the gap between Julie and I, but it closed even further when she started talking about her home problems, and I realized we had more things in common. She had problems with her parents too, but it was a different kind of problem. Her parents use her against one another. For example, her mom would ground her for whatever reason, and then her dad would let her go out just to piss off her mother. Julie spent most of her teenage years passing nasty messages between her mom and her dad. When she reached college age, they finally got the guts to divorce, and their hostility turned into full blown bitterness… and just like the hostility was passed through Julie was she was a teenager, the bitterness is now being passed through her. Now she gets scrutinized for every flaw she has, which of course is the fault of the other parent. When she shows any bit of love for one parent, the other feels obligated to guilt her out of those lovely feels. It’s hardly a way to teach a young girl about love. I really started to enjoy Julie’s company. And that made it easier for me to forget the past… and if there’s one thing I can do well, it’s delude myself.

In addition to the cartoons and horror movies, we’d also spend the night looking at internet porn. Like I’ve said before, there is NO shortage of it. There’s site after site of every fetish imaginable and unimaginable. We spent most of our time looking at the “alternative” nude models- girls with piercings, tattoos, bondage fetishes, blood lust… that sort of thing. But eventually I’d find myself drifting to my mother’s personal porn site. It was a morbid curiosity that I could never seem to satisfy.

I hated her for it. My issues with my mother just flamed with intensity because of this. Once again, she’s done something without caring how I feel about it. That’s what really hurts me the most. Once the shock of seeing my mother engaging in enthusiastic sex subsided I realized the pain lied in her selfishness and total denial of the existence of her daughter, and not in the concept of sex, pornography, or promiscuity.

The one who doesn’t love me gets to do whatever the hell she pleases while the ones I love are trapped in retail hell. I hate life, because this is the way it is. It won’t change. The world seems to reward the women for the wrong behavior. We’re not supposed to barefoot and pregnant, but what’s the alternative? Should I climb the corporate ladder until I reach the glass ceiling, then go completely insane with bitterness when I realize I’ve wasted my youth by not having family? Or maybe I should just ignore my family, like my mother. Maybe that’s what she’s doing now. She followed the road of feminism and got pissed when she realized how empty corporate greed and mindless careerism was. It’s not like men were hiding that fact. They went off and divorced their wives and dated girls in their late teens. They bought sports cars and dyed their hair when they realized that half of their life had passed and they had done NOTHING worthwhile. Maybe fellating young men on the internet is the new female mid-life crisis.

I don’t know what to do with this life. Being a housewife seems like a waste of my intellect while being a career woman seems almost evil, not to mention pointless, because like or not a glass ceiling still exists. So what’s left for me to do?

What are we going to do?


I haven't proofread this completely. If you find something, please let me know.