Day Off

I’m home from work today. I decided to take today and tomorrow off as a kind of mental health vacation. I left my office around 3:15 yesterday afternoon, exhausted. When I got home I fell asleep. I woke up a couple of hours later with stomach cramps and chills. I took my temperature; it turned out I had a very slight fever. It continued into this morning, but now it seems to be gone.

When I write here about things that are stressing me out, I’m always worried that it’s going to come off as whining and complaining. If it comes off that way, I don’t mean it to. The thing is, I do this for myself. Putting things into words can be helpful, seeing my thoughts laid out in a progression of sentences. There’s this odd beauty in it — especially when it’s on a computer screen.

One day recently, I suddenly thought to myself, “Jesus Christ, Tin Man, how did you ever wind up working as a public utilities lawyer for the state of New Jersey?” I have no idea what I’m doing in this job. My desk at work has piles of paper, and I’m lost in them. All my cases seem the same to me, and they’re all equally uninteresting. And I’m so poorly organized; I’m always forgetting things. And I hate how slowly things move in the legal world. Everything requires paper, multiple copies of it, and multiple phone calls.

Going to law school was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I’m now $50,000 in debt, and not only do I hate what I’m doing, I’m bad at it, too. My most recent annual evaluation stated, “Needs improvement.” My job is making me ill. I am a public utilities lawyer for the state of New Jersey. This is not what I ever expected to be doing with my life.

The thing is, this world isn’t made for people like me. It’s made for people like my brother, who’s extroverted and interested in business. I couldn’t care less about any of that stuff. Words such as “investment,” “mortgage,” “insurance,” “banking,” and “broker” make my eyes glaze over; my brother seems comfortable with that stuff. That’s something my brother and my dad have in common. They also have in common their season tickets to the Rangers (or used to, anyway, until the Rangers apparently started to suck.) Then there’s the fact that my brother is straight and I’m gay. All of this is probably why my dad calls my brother at work all the time to chat, while he rarely calls me. It’s not that he doesn’t love me; it’s that he doesn’t feel as comfortable with me, I’m guessing.

I had dinner with my mom last week. During the meal, I compared myself with my brother. My brother is on his third serious girlfriend, while I’m perpetually single. I started to talk about this, and my mom cut me off. “This is the lifestyle you’ve decided you want to live,” she said. I stared at her. “I thought we were past this,” I said. Indeed, I did think we were past it. Last year, my mom told me that she and my dad don’t want me to be alone, and that if I wind up in a relationship with someone, I should feel free to bring him to family events. I felt my parents had come so far. And then — this.

My mom seems to understand that I’m attracted to guys, but she doesn’t understand why I don’t get married anyway. She said that I’d be better off with a woman, someone who could nurture me, look after me. First of all, that’s insulting; if I’m in a relationship, I don’t want to be coddled. Second of all, even if I did want that, why couldn’t that be a man? And anyway, didn’t she see “Far From Heaven”? Does she want me to wind up like the husband? Because that’s what would happen.

Here is what I want.

1) I want to enjoy my days. I want to have the financial freedom to stay home and write if I want to.

2) More importantly, I want to have the discipline to stay home and write.

3) I want the guarantee that what I write will sell.

4) I want to live confidently and happily. I want not to care about what other people think. I want to be so confident that I don’t give a damn if someone else doesn’t like what I’m doing with my life.

5) I want to have a partner: someone I can have fun with, joke around with, be open with, be serious with, have meaningful conversations with, have great sex with. I want this to come out of a place of strength. I don’t want someone who pities me or wants to take care of me (sorry, Mom); I want someone who loves me for all the great qualities I have. And I know I’ve got lots of them. And I want to love him for all of his great qualities, too.

Now I’m going to go enjoy the rest of my day.
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