Take This Job And Shove It

So, I wrote up my resignation letter.

The irony is, I'm not quitting because I hate my job. Sure, it's incredibly stressful and there are days and many things about it that I do hate. But I'm just now getting comfortable with everything, and I like my coworkers. When I think about the horror stories that I've heard from other floors, I know it could be a lot, lot worse. I really don't mind. It's a known quanitity, and even on a really bad day, I know it's going to be over at some point and I can go home.

The problem is, "home" sucks. I hate living in this fucking hellhole.

It's bad luck, and no mistake. In the last month alone I've had two people damage my car (someone keyed the passenger side door just recently--unfortunately I think I know exactly who--and then there was the whole baby-buggy-bumper incident last month, too). I feel like nearly every day I'm dealing with some jerk-off who's nasty and snarling at me for no good reason, making my life a living hell.

For example, a couple of weeks ago I called the prosecutor's office to get some information on how to ask for restitution for my damaged car and was yelled at by someone who said they were an "attorney" but refused to actually help me properly. When I asked if I could speak with someone else because she sounded 'busy' (which was my code for "premenstrual bitch from hell") she actually screamed, no, nobody else has time for you either.

Feel the love, people.

It's bad enough I can feel doctors sneer at me over the phone, I have to deal with this kind of shit on my day off. I can't think of one day in the past two months that I've actually wanted to go outside of my house and do something for fun, and not worry about someone damaging my property, screaming at me, or otherwise accosting me.

I feel like I live in the exact same socioeconomic strata from which Jerry Springer chooses his guests and audiences. It's like having Joe Pesci throwing mafia type tantrums every time you pick up the phone, ask a simple question, or try to figure out how to do something innocuous and within your rights as a citizen without pissing off everybody and his Uncle Tony.

I just can't win, and it's dragging me down into the depths of a truly nasty depression and sense of despair and resgination that is starting to shut me down from the world of the living. (Yes Katy, there is such a thing as an undead person.)

Just this weekend, a frustrated house officer started yelling at me for something that wasn't even remotely my fault. I just kind of stood there, numbly, and instead of trying to defend myself, just shrugged and said, "Yeah, I'm sorry about that," and waited for her to finish her tirade because in the end, she was going to have to write the order any way, so let her rant and take it personally so I can get the hell out of there and take care of my patients.

I was just too tired of being yelled at without cause to fight it. Luckily, a fellow nurse was sitting around, and he cut in and rationalized with the doctor, who then calmed down, but remained pissy with me for the rest of the weekend. The nurse was like, "You didn't deserve her to yell at you."

Yeah, but no one really seems to care, do they?

It's really not about work any more, because work is work, and yeah, we all have really bad days (or months) where we want to quit. It goes with the territory.

I'm just beyond demoralized living here, and it hasn't a thing to do with work dissatsifaction, although being beaten about the head in my daily life I've found is starting to make me look like I'm on massive doses of thorazine at work. "Huh? what'd you say? Still yelling? Okay, get back to me when you've finished, and we can go over your orders."

I'm scared to death to leave my job, because it's the only hospital job I've ever had, and walking into the unknown can be scary business. It's also risky to quit working full time and lose medical and dental insurance, but as my mother pointed out, "Sure, the money's great, but at what cost?"

And that's when it hit me: I'm literally going crazy living here. I haven't slept or eaten decently in six months. My overall general emotional state is some fucked-up combination of angry, defeated, depressed, anxious and full of attendent apprehension and dread. It's horrible. I can't remember feeling genuinely happy about anything for months now. Nor do I ever remember what it was like to feel calm and relaxed. I don't even remember what it was like to enjoy living, rather than face each day wondering what kind of hellish, fucked up experience is going to bite you in the ass today.

I feel like I'm Meg Ryan in that scene from "You've Got Mail" where she's decided to close her mother's book store, and her accountant says, she's doing the brave thing. Meg Ryan's character gives her this funny disbelieving look, to which the accountant says something like, "Oh, I know it doesn't feel like that all. You feel like a big fat failure. Imagine yourself going out into a world of opportunities... armed with... well, nothing."

That's exactly what I feel like. Hopefully my boss will let me stay per diem instead of let me quit outright, at least until I figure out where I'm going to go next, but I figured it either had to be now or never, because at this point I'm becoming a complacent pink collar slave.

Last night I had a prophetic dream: I was on the beach, flat on my tummy, crawling over hard packed sand, which was cracking and breaking off like ice on a pond in those dog-saves-drowning-girl movies, and beneath the sheets of sand were deep chasm-like tombs. I just kept thinking, "If I could only just get to the end of this bit of sand, I'll be safe, " only to realize the beach just kept going on like that for miles.

I won't beat you around the head with the metaphor, but you get how symbolic this is of my current plight.

I also had a dream I had that new nurse manager from recent episodes of ER. She was training me, and I was running around trying to hang a bag of TPN. When I came back, she was very angry, pointing at her watch sternly and saying, "That took seven whole minutes for you to do! How do you think you're going to be able to function efficiently as a nurse if you don't learn how to be more productive?! I'm very disappointed in you, Miss Campbell. You're going to have to work a lot harder than that if you expect me to keep teaching you anything."

Some days I think my life would be a lot better if I was just really, really stupid and happy with my life.