They say that the worst thing a woman can ever do for her career is get pregnant. I think the second worst thing - the one that nobody ever tells you about, is fall in-love.
It seems simple; like a standard process that would happen to everyone as part of life's regular progression. We're born, we're slightly traumatized by our parents, we're teenagers, we go to college and drown in student debt with only an arts degree as our proverbial umbrella; we meet someone, get married, have kids, die.
It's a fairly straightforward process and maybe a little depressing if you think too much about it, that there's nothing more to life than what a Sim experiences - minus the risk of getting eaten by a plant looking for vengeance. All I can say is if you didn't want to get eaten by a plant, you shouldn't have been showing up at my dorm, uninvited, and wandering around.
I mean, the amount of people I had to kill with that fucker because they were just randomly showing up, is insane. Also, maybe killing people with a plant because they want some Kraft Dinner could be seen as insane, but that's beside the point. The point being that love is horrible and you should avoid it at all costs if you want a flourishing career.
That's what my dad used to say, well, not say because he would never say those words aloud, but that's what he meant. He spent my entire adolescence warning me of the dangers of love, his own story being ruining his life by marrying someone with a mental illness. And not one of those Silver Linings Playbook ones where the person's quirky but still can be handled; a mental illness that brings you out of this world and into a different one.
"Hey Rosie, do you have a second?" Oscar asks me, making the short trip from his office (31 centimeters away) to my desk. I say it's my desk, but really, it's everyone's desk. If my desk had a location - which it does but will not for the purpose of this metaphor, it would be the land of lost toys.
Anytime someone has anything they don't want; they dump it here like it's from a garage sale and I'm a cheap grandma. Nothing against grandmas or garage sales, but I would prefer to not have my belongings covered in stains from the beverages of middle-aged office workers, if I could.
Another thing that gets dumped on my desk? Random leftover food that nobody wants. I swear, it's like they think I'm a stray cat that hasn't been fed in weeks, and is just scratching their mangy paws on the door, begging for scraps. Which I guess is true, seeing as I don't eat much and am sitting in the middle of the communal area.
The place where most departments would have dedicated office space for gossiping and talking shit about each other, I have occupied with a twenty-year old desk and office chair with one leg missing. Technically the leg is still there, just doesn't work; but that doesn't stop me from imagining pulling it off with a wrench. Except, I don't know how to use a wrench or where I would find one.
"Yeah." I answer, not after looking around the scarce desert that is my gentleman-callers. Also known as the line of people that would actually need my opinion on anything but whether their boss is in. The answer is usually no.
Whenever someone wants to talk to me, or tells me they need to talk to me, I assume I did something wrong. Whether that's my generalized anxiety disorder reeling its ugly head or just the pessimist in me clawing its way out, is for a licensed therapist to decide. Am I one? You better believe I'm not.
Most of the time, it's just me stressing over nothing and the person is just wanting to ask me for a favor (not the sexual kind, thankfully). Or they're looking for someone to do laundry or cover for them while they're away; maybe answer their incoming calls. All to which I smile and say, for sure.
"I know you were helping out with the ticket distribution while Danielle's away." I nod my head eagerly, too eager? I embarrass myself. "Would you mind checking your last entry; I think some of the extensions might have gotten changed when you copied over the new info."
My nod is no longer considered eager and while on the outside I apologize and assure him I'll fix it right away, on the inside, I am crushed. Destroyed; ruined; disgusted. I know it might sound like I'm just being overly dramatic and oh is she on her period? No and no.
The truth is, anytime I make a mistake, it kills me. I know mistakes are part of learning and growing and great when you're new and have an excuse for them. I know everyone makes them and even Leonardo Di Vinci at some point probably looked at his master pieces and said, for fucks sake. But for me, despite whatever improvement they might earn me, they kill me.
Especially when you consider that I am the only young duck in a sea full of roosters. I am the one everyone's watching to see if she'll fuck up, if she's really cut out for this world, if she's only here because she's shacking up with one of the players. And I'm sure that's what some of them think, that I'm only here - sitting in this uncomfortably cold office space, because my boyfriends on the team.
That also kills me, but that's a separate murder not associated with this one. No, this one, is all me. Me and my OCD and double-checking tendencies - which are usually the thing that allow me to not make mistakes, that and my eagerness to learn and ability to work better with a computer than most of the boomers around me.
But lately, I've been feeling myself slip. Slip, in an unpaid internship? Yes.
Whenever I'm at work, the only thing I can think about is Erik King. As Danielle once said about Justin Bieber when he stole our hand towels, that fucker. His perfect face, back, that looks like it was built for a camera following it around during a gym commercial, and happiness, that is as contagious as the plague.
And as I enter the crime scene (the spreadsheet in question), I think back to the day that I was last editing it. It was the last day I was in; the day before Erik and I left for his parent's house: December 23rd. If I were a detective, I would be scribbling this down in a dusty notebook with overly-caffeinated hands.
Instead, I'm staring at the screen like it's someone's diary.
"Sorry about the spreadsheet." I call over to Oscar, whom although has left the yellow tape, is only a few feet away. If I threw a rock, it would miss him and smash one of his family photos. And then I'd probably be escorted out. "It's been fixed."
"Great." He calls back, absent-mindedly nodding along - I imagine, since that's what he usually does. "We have a lot of people that use it for distribution; so, just try to double check your work, if you can." He says, his request a simple one that most would take as a learning opportunity - before going back to scrolling on their phone, but me, taking it like a knife to my side.
It's not an ego thing. It's not that I'm perfect and don't make mistakes - it's that I need to be perfect. I have fully acknowledged that I am my harshest critic and while others may see a mistake as just that, I catastrophize it like it's the last thing I'll ever do.
How could I mess up something so simple, like copying and pasting info into a spreadsheet? Even a monkey could do that. Probably while also eating a banana and maybe smoking a joint. I don't know why, but every time I think of a productive monkey, I think of that test subject Amy got addicted to cigarettes on the Big Bang Theory.
December 23rd. The overly-zealous detective in me underlines the date. Erik dropped me off; I was stressed out about making sure everything was ready for when we left the next day; we had sex. That right there, is my problem.
And now I remember that on that day - like more than I would care to admit since we started doing the proverbial dance, I was thinking about him. A lot. And how good it felt when we were making love in the morning; and how much I wanted to do it again after work. About the way he looked at me – with this glisten in his eyes, that told me he could never be more in-love.