Happy Anniversary!

In some unflattering but-I'm-not-caring news, I cried at work yesterday.  Almost exactly a year since I cried at work last time.  You gotta celebrate these occasions, apparently.

I was limping around work yesterday and feeling more than adequately sorry for myself, wondering why no one was noticing my LIMPING AROUND, and I started to whisper sweet nonsense into my brain.

"Pssssssssst."

"You know, it's becoming really obvious that no one here cares about you.  I mean, everyone is too busy to even notice that you're clearly hurting over here."

"Check your phone.  I bet no one has sent you a text either." I didn't dare check my phone.

"You know why?  Ya, you know why.  No one cares. Not here at work, not in BC, not anywhere."

"And in case I haven't made my point: no one could ever love you.  You're overweight.  You work in a kitchen. You have arthritis.  The boy who plays NCAA soccer in the States will never love you."

And I went in the freezer to cry, which was my tactic last year, but I could hear that there were people in the fridge going over the protocol for pulling product out of the freezer.  So I got outta there in a hurry.  And I bolted to the girls' bathroom.  Complete with a mirror so that I could just stare at myself, pitifully, as I kept saying "No one." over and over again.  You know, dramatic emphasis.

I might have stayed in there a long time except that someone banged on the door and I froze.  Time's up.  Face the music with a face that's all red and blotchy.  So I went into the kitchen, to the back where I was portioning rice (new rice! how exciting!) and one of the boys must have seen the  mess that was my face and told someone else who came back and asked, "Are you alright?"

"Ya, I'm good."

And cue whispers.  Behind me.  Boy whispers about the girl crying the back of the kitchen and what.... should they do about it.

Hand on my back.  Boy asks me what is wrong.  Says he doesn't like it when people cry (me neither, dude).  I tell him that I'm fine, that he shouldn't worry.  He stares at me for a long time like he's waiting for me to talk but I just keep portioning rice.

I go about my business.  They go about theirs.  One of them avoids me like the plague, like actually jumps out of the way when I walk in his direction because he is so uncertain of what to do with this emotional thing.  It's like a sleeping tiger.  You want to pet it, but the risks... You could lose an arm over this.

And eventually someone chimes in, "Are you in pain?"  Oh gee, I guess my pimp walk and the scrunching of my face with every step finally gave it away. "Ya, I can tell you're hurting."  Thank you for noticing, you great detective.

Anyway, the point of this is that maybe I'm more susceptible to emotions in the late winter, I'm pretty much a Mean Girl to myself sometimes, and boys are not like girls.