kagablog

I am a normal twenty eight year old woman. I’m of average height, 5″4 and average weight. I have an average job that pays an average salary. I am neither below the poverty line or well above it. Everything about my life screams standard; I went to university and did a standard degree in psychology, which pleased my parents and sounded good when it told it to guys on dates. It made me sound interesting to people who went to college instead of university, or to people who were studying business or accounting. It sounded less dry but it wasn’t. I had to take a lot of statistics classes, had very few electives, and had to spend the better part of four years studying. Even up until the year I graduated, I attended classes with as many as five hundred people. When you’re in first year they teach to you to memorize your student number, and while other programs are small, and you never really need it, in my program you do. In my program, what you need to understand is that you’re one of many. Apparently a lot of people, especially girls all over the country major in psych because they’re not sure what else to do with their lives.

I’d heard stories of taxi drivers who had psych degrees and still it wasn’t enough to deter me. I started out idealistic; I wanted to help people, I wanted to change the world.

I’d been depressed as a teenager, writing on my basement walls and listening to dark music, crying as I sat on plastic blow up furniture next to beaded curtains, wondering why the guy I liked didn’t love me. Slowly, over the years there I lost my idealism.

I lost my desire to do anything but get through it. I stopped thinking I could change anything, change the system. I stopped believing in internal subversion and started believing in the need for my own survival. A lot of people call that growing up but to me it was just sad. I felt like I’d lost the best parts of myself and I never figured out, to this day, how to get it back.

When I was in high school I had fantasies about being a rock star, being a celebrity, being important. I thought about being a journalist, being a voice that everyone listened to and took seriously would make me feel good enough, make me feel important enough, fill the void inside that was endlessly starving for attention and love.

I tried it for a little while, on the side in university and this is what I found; most rock stars are assholes, and the ones that aren’t are so fucked up you wonder why it is that people idolize them in the first place. Their secrets aren’t amazing, they’re sad; you see the people everyone looks up to and love, and you think what the fuck? Why doesn’t everyone know what kind of people they really are? And why does none of it matter?

Here’s the thing; lately I’ve been going to work, I work as a receptionist at a hotel downtown, and I keep thinking, what’s the point? A monkey could do this job.

Being a receptionist means being friendly, being nice to people even as they yell at you.

I know why I got the job, I know I have a good smile, a nice attitude, I treat the people I work with and for like I’d eat their shit for breakfast an be happy about it, but I don’t know why I stay. I know that people assume that because I’m a receptionist I don’t have a university degree and that I’m dumb. My parents are always telling me that I can do better, but the thing is, you need a graduate degree. You need a Masters or a PHD to practice as a psychologist and after studying it and volunteering at a hotline from 12 am to 6 am one night a week for a year as part of my program, I realized that it wasn’t for me. You go into it all idealistic, thinking you’ll help change lives or save lives or make a real difference. In training they tell you all about suicides, and how people call you right before they’re about to jump, from cell phones on a bridge and how what you say to them is so important because it can help to save their lives. They mislead you in training. They make you think the people you talk to can be helped. They don’t tell you how to handle people with severe emotional disorders, schizophrenics who call in at 3 am talking to the walls because they forgot to talk their medications. They don’t tell you they have and make files on everyone, cause everyone who calls in is a regular caller.

These people are lonely, and what you give them is friendship, not help or a cure cause even though you’re intuitive, you’re not qualified to help them, and never in your life will you ever go into anything so important again, not knowing how to handle it.

The thing I like about reception work most of all is how there’s a formula, there’s a method written on a notepad for everything.

Here’s the truth- I am a highly anxious, not overly smart woman with few discernible talents. I am organized and friendly. I am overweight but cheerful. I’m not good enough to be a professional at anything. I wouldn’t know what kind of professional I want to be.

I hate the days at work but I hate all the hours I have to spend by myself like a hamster in a cage, pacing in circles, wondering what I should be doing instead. For a year or so, I tried to fill the void of wanting to be special with food. I tried to stuff the hole so full it wouldn’t bother me, but that didn’t work and now I’m fat. On top of everything else.

I wish I was unique- I wish I had good friends to remind me of my good qualities, the things about me that only people who’ve known me for years can observe.

I wish I had talents, I wish I could tie my tongue in knots, or paint pictures or write books that everyone wanted to read, or write plays. I wish I had an amazing singing voice- hell sometimes I wish I was the star of a reality tv show. Celebrities always complain about the annoyance of cameras following them around, but at least they know that people are watching and interested. At least they know they exist. At least they have confirmation of the belief that people find them interesting and unique.

I guess what I suffer from most of all is low self esteem, anxiety and boredom.

I want to make a difference in the world but I don’t know how. I want to have a life that I find rich and fascinating and stimulating, a life that I’m proud of.

I don’t want to cross the street when I see people from my old school because I know that they’ve done better than me. I know how the world sees my current job, and I don’t blame them. The thing is, I’m paralyzed. I just don’t know what to do.

I know that there is nothing unique about any of it, in fact my greatest fear is that there is nothing unique about me at all. Sometimes, I just wish someone would remind me of the things about me that are just mine, that would give me potential or hope or possibility. I’m not asking for a solution, just a small reminder to give me hope. In the face of all the real problems in the world, I don’t know if it’s asking for too much. I think horoscopes are stupid, and I don’t believe in psychics but I can understand now why people do.

It gives them something to cling to, a tangible thing to grab when they need it the most. That’s what I need right now, a thread that’s real. I don’t know where to look but I’m going to keep my eyes open. I’m waiting for the universe to respond. I’m waiting for a sign, for the answers to fall into my lap or suddenly become clear.

I’m waiting to be reminded that I deserve better than this job, this purpose in life and to be given a clue about what to do.