june eleventh.

I hate what I do for a living. I’ve had that feeling for quite some time but today really drilled that in. It’s monotonous and I sit all day. I feel like I’m wasting time.

Retail remixed. I don’t know if I ever had the temperament to deal with people in the ways I’ve conned myself into believing. The customers can be a lot. I was warned about that but I thought my decade-plus of working in every damn store in the mall prepared me for such theatrics. I was way wrong. You get talked to and tried in ways that only class-privilege and good ole Western Pennsylvania racism can produce. 

It also exposes how much I don’t advocate for myself. How it’s easier to take disrespect than address it. Silence is complicity and in a lot of ways, I’m willing to be uncomfortable if it keeps everyone else’s peace. You don’t move up in the retail industry without the customer always being right, especially at the expense of yourselves. 

I’d rather be angry than sift through what makes me that way.

I’ve known this about me for a long time. I sometimes think I can’t work through this perpetual feeling of discomfort. I came home, stewed, ordered takeout I know I couldn’t afford and napped. My dreams were a reflection of all that plague me. Woke up, ate the rest of that takeout I really couldn’t afford, sat in silence, strolled through an Instagram full of content that really makes me hate my life and went back to sleep. 

But sadly, this type of agitation is more comforting than the work of getting out of this hell. 

I really want to get out of this fiery pit of sadness, career numbness and creative suppression. My life can’t continue to be lived like this. I’m literally living for myself so I don’t have any excuse. 

I don’t have these responsibilities. No aging parents to worry about. No little humans to raise into bigger ones. I’m unburdened and unencumbered. Yet, I’m miserable. Not because both of my parents are dead or because I’ve yet to become a mother but rather that I have no one to blame but myself for where I am in life. Sometimes you wish you could put your situation — and life decisions — on taking care of parents who keep trudging on with living or children who need food or a roof over their head to survive. The so-called ultimate sacrifice. 

I could literally do whatever the f*** I want and with no strings attached. 

But I’m not. Because confronting the myriad of emotions I carry does nothing but shut me down. It’s exhausting. I wish I could tackle all my worries one at a time but, like, I’m Ciara. I’m pissed that I don’t have it all together to the point that my worries are legit figments of my imagination. 

I want to say I’m overwhelmed by life but I’m not sure that I’m using the right word. The conflicts and confusion I face are things I can actually control. If I say something, if I ask the right questions, if I acknowledge that I need help, if I learn how to say “no”. If I understand how to better manage my time. I come home and try to counter the day I felt I wasted earlier by doing “my own thing” but that means zoning out to anything that allows my brain to fully shut down. I can’t get anything done even if I had all the intention in the world. Simple things. 

I no longer say that I don’t want to be alive but I cozied up to a lifestyle that’s slowly killing me. Its cousin, perhaps. 

A part of me believes that if I had a life outside of work, if I found some purpose outside of those eight hours of the day that I could counteract a lot – if not all – of what I feel. Truthfully, if I did, it would make me stick around in something that I know is temporary. Create a false sense of security. Complacency. 

I don’t appreciate the irony in that I’m feeling stagnant either way. And even in the discomfort of it all? I’m not sure if I have the energy to leave it all behind.