Damn Central Corp. God damn them. Damn them for putting me through this hell. Here I am again, where I thought I would never have to be, looking at the classifieds. Again feeling totally overwhelmed by the sheer possibilities, seeing all these harmless-looking job descriptions and feeling how utterly impossible it will be to find the one job that pays what I need and will be enjoyable. Central Corp. would have met those two requirements. Just two. But they are silent, turning their eyes to their own troubles and duties and letting day after day slide by on a conveyer belt into the incinerator that leaves me blistered with misery. My days are impossibly long and hard while their days no doubt trip by, nestled as they are in a pleasant, secure atmosphere. They don’t deal with screaming, defiant, immature children or administers micro-managing them to within an inch of their lives, or 15-page lesson plans that still are never good enough, or obtuse conversations about things like how to teach reading that grow more confusing with more discussion. Central Corp. is a
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But here I sit, completely, utterly, devastatingly overwhelmed by alternatives I prayed I would never have to consider. I’m drowning in the countless words I’ll have to dredge up with a smile, dragged up from the abyss of my unhappiness, that will sell me. I can’t even contemplate the first step because I’ll inevitably lurch to the next step and the one after that, oblivious to how I’ll actually do it, how I’ll bring myself to do it. I am truly caught between a rock and a hard place because – astounding as it may seem – the prospect of this actually makes me think, maybe, I can sweat out the job I have because at least it’s one I know, and I’ve already got it. But how can that be when I’m crying every night and am pushed by week’s end to the breaking point, dissolving into soundless sobs because my hair won’t dry straight or the vacuum broke or I’ve run out of cotton balls or any number of straws that my back shouldn’t even be able to detect.
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God damn Central Corp. Financial crisis or no, I need them. They are my light at the end of my terribly dark tunnel and they are growing progressively dimmer.
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I thought yesterday as I walked through Homearama and ate heavy Italian food as I contemplated one more shitstorm from work – they’re following me home now; my weekends are no longer safe – that all this would just go away, slough off to leave me lighter than air, if that call came from Central Corp. I could put in another two weeks, cocooned from all the daily insults and miseries because they no longer apply to me and I’ll be gone soon. I would deal with the behavior and the never ending lesson plans and the observations and the constant stream of insults to my professionalism, if I could just submit that resignation letter that’s burning a hole in my hard drive. If I could have an end in mind. And as I realized that, over calzones I wasn’t even really tasting, it occurred to me that all this misery I’ve been feeling, this dreadful unhappiness, is such a stone in my belly because I have lost the sense that my release is coming. In the midst of all my joyful journal entries of my future, I have somewhere inside me on a subconscious level accepted that I have become a lifer in this prison, and that the realization that I could bear it all with lightness of heart should that call just come already! should not have come as such a surprise.
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So where does that leave me? That leaves me with God. That leaves me with one frayed line to hope: that “the universe” of the Secret cannot be so impersonal, cannot rely so exclusively on the strength and hope of an individual. We are humans; we are fallible. We do have it within us to become so overwhelmed by our circumstances that we drown in despair. And if our salvation always and only lies within us, then it has an expiration date. We will fail. We will drown sooner or later, because we are human. Our eyes can cloud over with the cataracts of our own circumstances until we cannot see the future to which we are striving. Our arms can be snapped from the weight of our own forced lightness, and our heads can explode from the effortlessness of living in that bright future. And then where are we? What is to become of us?
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The universe may be driven by the law of attraction, but it cannot be truly impersonal and permanently obedient to our thoughts. And that is where God comes in. The notion of “God” as the driving force of the Secret can be confusing, more convoluted and cumbersome to bear than the impersonal idea of “the universe,” but there are definitely those times when God is the only redeeming concept of that driving force of the Secret. For surely, surely our entire destinies do not lie within our own two hands. Surely there is a back-up plan to our own frail human natures. Surely, surely there is more to the force, waiting silently in the wings, ready to step in with independent, compassionate, concentrated thought to carry you on the instant you fall. Surely, there is more to this life than us. I believe, as I have since my introduction to the Secret, and desperately so since I went back to work, that yes, we can use the law of attraction to our benefit, as we will it, independent of a belief in “God” as the driving force. It is a law like that of gravity – it works regardless of your religious conviction. I do not believe that if you do not subscribe to a belief in the Christians’ God, he will bar you from the liberating truth of the law of attraction and prevent you from coming into the future of your dreams on your own power, simply on principle. But I have to wonder what those people do who believe only and always that the great power of the future is subject to their demands solely on the power of their own will when they have reached the end of their hope, slipped to the final threads of their tether? Perhaps they are just stronger than I am. Let it be. That could be it. I can only decide what to do for myself. And my life’s belief, buffeted as it’s been by the storms and doldrums of my life, has always borne witness – never wavering although certainly bitterly held at times – that at the end of me is God. I always believed he was my Alpha, but I often forget he is my Omega. Hating my own weakness, or accepting my own many inevitable ends, this has always been my belief.
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And now I grip to that belief with cramped, clammy fingers: it must be so. It must, it must. There must be more to my future and my salvation than my own strength and hope, because if there isn’t I am done for. I will keep spiraling downward with no thought from myself to arrest the flow and redirect it upwards. There must be hands bigger than my own, driven by their own will and sentience, that catch me when there is no hope left in me that can explain the abrupt change in direction. Salvation must come. It must, it must, it must. And yes, that salvation could come from all the months I invested in thinking positively and believing in the future I was drawing to me, but I believe that is another interpretation of our faith being credit, that we can store up faith and even when we lose it, it can sustain us and bring good things like drawing on your savings when you’ve lost your job and cannot deposit any more. It’s tight and doesn’t feel good, relying on a static store of money when you know you are not currently capable of adding more to the account. But I think this is all part of God’s truth. So yes, my salvation may come on the wheels of all those weeks and months of faith I invested before I lost hope and joy, but it will be hands other than my own pulling the lead. And it must come. It must. And it must come quickly. Come to me. Rush to my side. Hurry to save me. Race to scoop me up from the waters, for I am drowning, and soon I will have a nervous breakdown and I don’t even know what that looks like but it will have me soon if you don’t fly to me. Come quickly to save me. Be pleased to come to me and pick me up. Give me strength and hope and light. Come.
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