A Mental Health - or Lack Thereof - Update

I'm at the end of my second month of Cymbalta. And while I'm not crashing and reaching for pills, guns or whatever, I feel so.... I don't know - Down? Yes, but more than that. Frustrated? Angry? Burned Out? Oh Yeah.

I wish I could feel like I'm worth a damn. Maybe that's the wrong thing - somewhere inside I know I'm worth a damn. Except for having a great son and Hubby, I don't feel like I've amounted to anything.

I'd like to have a well-read blog, like those on my list on the right. But I don't have the talent, just the profilagacy.

I'd like to get the 5 stories out of my head - but just because I like them doesn't make them any good.

I'd like to have a job I enjoy, that I make a decent living at. Hell, I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Oops.

In my twenties, I was just making a living. It was okay, though, my life was still ahead of me. I just knew I didn't want a job that put me to sleep (as they usually did).

I spent pretty much all of my twenties in federal service with the Department of Defense - first in Outbound GBL's (government bills of lading - the shipping department) at Tinker AFB (the ONLY thing I'll ever thank Ronald Reagan for), followed then-husband to NYC and got a similar job, though a down-grade, at Defense Contracts whatever (can't remember the acronym), then lateralled to Defense Contracts whatever in Dallas when then-husband lost the job we moved to NYC for and got a crap job that didn't seem destined to last long. (oh, and Jimmy was starting to talk at that time - with a NY accent - and I thought, "No way in hell") Marriage is going downhill at that point, my eyes just beginning to open (actually I was in an avalanche, but didn't know it).

Now I'm approaching 30, the decade is coming to a close. My marriage has only gotten worse, and I no longer had any excuses for his abuse. And though the flex-time I had in Dallas really rocked, I hated my job. I was approaching ten years total in federal service, doing the same old shit with no advancement opportunities.

December 1, 1989, the worst day of my life.
I went to work and never went home. Then-husband (shortly to be ex-) and I had another fight the night before (and Jimmy was having recurring nightmares, and coloring mostly with black at daycare), He was driving me to the Irving DART (Dallas-area Rapid Transit) station where Jimmy and I took the bus downtown (Jimmy being at the federal daycare in the building next door to the train station). He was telling me what "my problems were". It was almost an out-of-body experience. I was quiet, just looking at him, asking myself "What are you doing?" I spent the day second- and third-guessing myself. I spent the night with a co-worker and my parents picked me up the next day. I spent a week back home. I almost went back. "I'll change, I'll go to counseling," he said. I went so far as to make air reservations, but then I realized that was just talk to get me back to the same ol' same ol'. Thats when I took off my wedding ring (that I bought anyway).

I went back to Dallas, living alone for the first time. I tried to make a go of it, but I guess I had changed. I was trapped at my job, but with RIF's (reduction in force) going on at Tinker and freezes elsewhere, not to mention that I plain-d hated that job, I decided to quit federal service and move back home. Dallas was just too close (of course, at the time, the moon was too close). With federal service, it's not what you know, it's who you know and the only place I knew people was NYC (by-the-by, loved the people, hated the city).

So, before moving home I temped for a while in Dallas, mostly at places I didn't want to work at. Now I did temp a week at Southwest Airlines headquarters - just stuffing envelopes for a frequent flyer promotion. It was like a different world. Management appreciated their employees, employees loved their company. I'd never before or since had an experience like that.

Moved home to Midwest City, OK in August of 1990. I temped for a while, but where I could make a living temping in Dallas, not so OKC. I had one crappy job (data entry - snooze) that they let me quit before being fired, temped some more, then in February 1993, just before my Grandma Ben died, I was hired as a reservation agent at Hertz.
At first I was like a different world, I could talk to people without being shy! And I enjoyed what I was doing! Well, at first, domestic reservations got real old, real quick. There's only so many times I could take: "Where do you want a car?" "Here." "Where's here?" "Oh, I don't know, the airport, I guess." I was going insane. I transfered to International. And again, another world, people from everywhere going to everywhere. And not much domestic backup. That didn't last long, soon we were doing domestic backup all the time. And of course, international is so different from domestic, we get rusty. Other things about Hertz bothered me, too. They treat (or treated) travel agents like they were made out of gold, but we were a necessary evil. A lot of the supervisors were never on the phone, they were hired from outside the company straight out of college. And yet, they had to tell me how to do my job. Right. And like all call centers, they give you sick leave, but it counts as an absence to take it. And they really didn't want you to stay more than 5 years (they'd rather pay new people less, than try to keep established workers). People would leave right and left when new call centers opened: Aol, Sprint, etc. But I knew it was a pipe dream. A call center is a call center.

My mother died in February, 1999. I kept on working, but my performance steadily went downhill, along with my mood. In June, 2000, one morning I woke up and just started crying. The Hubby said, "If you feel that bad, don't go to work."
I really tried to do the short-term disability with Hertz, but I ended up screwing myself. When I finally got the form (the second one - my mail sucks), I had been out for 2 months or so, but when I went to my then-doctor to fill it out - he only put a week down. I wasn't nervy enough to tell him off. Hertz let me quit instead of being fired. And if I had had the presence of mind to put down a date 2 weeks in the future, I could have been rehired later on.

So, now it's late 2000, and I've reached another fork in the road. I get a job at a place called Young America, that handles different companies rebates, contests and other promotions. It was a company that was more concerned with bodies in chairs, than caliber of employee. My client was RJ Reynolds, I handled Camel Cash and the Free Doral programs. As a non-smoker, who watched her smoker mother decline, you can tell how much I liked that job. It lasted just over a year. I told the Hubby I had to look for something else, and I wanted to do something I liked. I did once get to the point of almost starting a class with Southwest (who has - whatelse - a call center here in OKC), but they said "sorry, we don't need you, we'll call you later" HAH! Still waiting on that one!

The job I did get is the one I still have: January 2002, I became a travel agent with Cendant Travel. I discovered one thing, I can't sell. Well, I can't do the hard sell, if you want to buy, you want to buy. So I went to Customer Service. You would think that I wouldn't like being griped to constantly about real or imagined travel problems. Well, since I've crashed 3 times now (twice this year alone), maybe it just took time for me to realize.

I guess the question is - What Now?

I just don't know.

Hah! maybe radio!