Mentors Always Fail You, But I Can’t Stop Reaching Out

For whatever reason, I chose to reach out to a brutally honest expert for a mentoring lunch. I  shutter internally as I count down the minutes to our lunch. What. The. Fuck. 

Benlysta courses through my veins. The energy rush is addictive. The fog lifts and I’m renewed for three weeks. New ideas and inventions fill my mind. I am obsessively pursuing my work once again. My art. 

A colleague hushes me furtively at a meeting. I see patterns where they don’t seem to see them and I don’t know how to make them see them. My head swims in thoughts. 

I’ve had 6 failed mentors. Whether I push them away or they discover the monstrosity that is me, who knows. The inner workings that reveal themselves over time are gradual, but the cumulative damage is done. 

I expect nothing different from this one. The stories will be told in future posts, but for the time being I am left dreading and hating my blips of hope when I reach out to others. 

There’s Always the Apology That’s Too Late

“You did this wrong. I’m so much more experienced than you, you said this and didn’t do it. How dare you not be perfect! You clearly are defective to the core. Perhaps I should do this. Oh oops. I already do. I forgot to mention that too.”

I’m shaking as I read the searing email on my phone. How could I go so wrong? 

This about sums up the overall experience of someone being unhappy with me because of x, y, and z… None of which I promised or said I would do. 

What he doesn’t know is that I’ve already unfairly been bitched out today twice, and I’m sitting in a hospital chair with an IV, getting Benlysta and trying to answer five emails at once. 

I confront his twisted reality. Tread lightly. The nurse is having problems with the needle and I keep feeling pain as she stabs me over and over. The needle feels like it’s a mile wide. 

Five minutes later, I receive the short apology after he realizes how he misread everything I wrote, and he is wrong. But too late. I already made another commitment, in fear I made some promise in my lupus fog and just forgot and he was right. 

Negative charisma strikes again. Same story repeated again and again. But I’m always assumed villain just by showing up. 

Shame at My Dream Job

I walk into my dream job, fully working there for 3 years now. It’s 10 am. What. The. Fuck. 

I’m the woman that used to rise at 4 am, work a 12 hr shift, and go to the gym. 

Now I walk into the cube farm, my cheeks burning with the distinct emotion that clouds every corner of my life these days: Shame. Shame at my limitations. Shame at my lifestyle that I still cannot help but see as laziness and slothfulness. Shame at the inflammation attacking every cell in my body that makes me tired beyond any realm of “tired” I can even try to describe, hence why I’m walking into the office at 10 am. And walking with a distinct limp at 31.

An hour later a man snarls something at me because the floor is wet from being freshly mopped. I’m having a shitty day. I smirk back something witty and he walks away breathlessly, his back to me as if we never spoke. 

The janitor, a lovely lady who is working hard, giggles at this. I smile and compliment her work. Figures he can’t take what he dishes out. 

A half hour later I feel bad. This is probably why I don’t have many friends. I’m a bitch. 

Everyone left when I became sick. I couldn’t go out anymore. I was too tired. Chemo wiped me out. And no one wants to hang out next to you in a bed when you’re 25. Now at 31, I’m still alone, even in a worse way in that I’ve made friends and have had them tell me not to contact them, or they go AWOL. 

Again… Shame. Shame at who I am. I might be a monster. People don’t want me. At least the people I’m around, it seems. Shame.