Paranoia, my old friend

I should begin by saying that it does not take much to send me down the road to self destructive, unproductive thinking.

My teenage years were rife with social awkwardness, heartbreak, and just plain old insecurity. That insecurity runs very VERY deep. It's like the Grand Canyon of my psyche. Unrequited love, exclusion from the cliques, new girl, awkward girl.....I was never cool. Ever. I learned to be OK with that. Frankly, I am pretty used to getting the short end of the stick (usually poked in my eye).


If you do not return my calls, I assume you have discovered what an ass I am.
If I hear that people have been talking about me, I am confident that it was nothing good.
If I screw up in some way, I wait patiently for the termination of the friendship/employment/phone call, which I know is soon to come.

It's not self-esteem necessarily.....I mean, I try to be kind, and do the right thing, and be a good person, and help others, and treat others as they would want to be treated......I think I am a perfectly nice girl. Really, I do. Why, what have you heard?



All week, I have been thinking about work. My place of employment has a history (and a well-deserved reputation) for ending a person's employment with little fanfare. Sometimes, you just disappear from the schedule with no discussion whatsoever. Last week, I was being a teensy bit bitchy. Nothing was going right, I was forgetting things and moving slower, and getting hot and aggravated. Sunday afternoon was my fourth shift if the week, and a very trying one. It culminated in me yelling at the owner of the restuarant. Never a good idea. But we have a habit of yelling at each other, and then getting over it, because we are very similar in many ways, and I think we see that in each other. So on Sunday, I yelled. I was mad, and frustrated, and tired, and hot and aggravated and HUNGRY, and I yelled. I regret yelling, but at the same time, it is what I do. I yell. So I did.

Since I don't work weekdays, I have had a lot of time since that last shift to reflect on work, and why the previous week was so challenging for me. And of course, I assumed that because I struggled to do my job, and yelled at the owner, that I was probably going to be fired. Because that's where I go you see. I go right from "that was a hard day" to "I'm probably fired."

So with those thoughts in the back of my head, I called the restaurant today, to talk to one of the girls who had asked me to cover some shifts. I think "evasive" would be the best way to describe her response to my questions about start times, and days of the week needing coverage. I called back later to tell her I could work some of those shifts, and she didn't answer. The owner answered. I asked him a few questions, he got annoyed, I asked him to have her call me, and (you know where this is going) she never did. See ? I'm fired, of course, I mean, there is no other explaination other then I'm fired.

I called the manager and left a message on her cellphone (now that my crazy, desperate stalker mode has kicked in) asking her to call me about these shifts that may or may not need covering, or maybe just need to be covered by someone other then me....hm. She doesn't call me back.

The stress is killing me.

Then, suddenly, she calls. I think she was calling to ask me to work tonight, and not to talk about "that other thing". So I went into work. And it was quiet, and we closed early, and I had very little to do, and I still fucked up. I left some glasses and bottles on the bar. And if my boss sees THAT, well, I am probably fired.