Cheese

Victory will be mine!
Right?

As I mentioned last week, I'd gotten a call for an interview for a temp job in my chosen field. I was rather torn over it, but I went for the interview anyway. Much like a single woman in her thirties who continues to date because she feels it's her duty to stay out there, no matter how hopeless it is, I pulled out my finest interview attire and went out on the prowl.

I think my ambivalence was really showing, as I walked out of there knowing that I didn't make much of an impression. Normally I interview like a champ; I'm animated, enthusiastic, and can spew the most grandiose bullshit in response to open-ended questions, but that day I was coming off of 2 hours sleep and honestly didn't even want the job anyway. It was a task to even sit up straight.

I got the call yesterday that I "wasn't selected" for the position. GOOD. Now I can temp 2 days a week, work the night job, and get plenty of sleep for the rest of the year. Shit, I slept until 1pm today, life is good!

So why do I feel like shit? Why do I care that I was rejected for a job I didn't even want? I'm starting to think that it's the rejection itself that is getting to me, and not so much the lack of job.

I grew up an achiever. Straight A student, scholarship to college, snagged every job I ever interviewed for...I never failed at anything. It sounds egotistical, but it's true. I had an overbearing, controlling mother who would accept nothing less than perfection, and I busted my ass to get there, even though I knew it would never be good enough for her. I suppose I've developed a complex where I constantly feel I have something to prove.

Would this be good enough?
Perhaps if it were notarized...

Even after college, when I started having kids, I felt the compulsion to do better. I went back to school full time to get my master's, while raising 2 small kids, being pregnant, and working full time as well. I drove myself into a nervous breakdown, but it was ok, because I was A C H I E V I N G goddammit. I was setting myself apart because I couldn't bear the thought of slipping into the mediocrity that my mother had predicted for me after I got married.

She was against me getting married and having kids so young because The Husband wasn't "good enough", didn't make enough money, blah blah blah. She predicted that I would have babies, get fat, and never go anywhere with my career because I'd be too busy with PTA fundraisers and carpools.

Now I feel as though I've done just that. And it's killing me to think that I'm proving her right.

I've always felt that the "grand design" of life would work itself out, that if I worked hard and got my degree and tried to be a good wife and mother that I would eventually be rewarded. I feel like a mouse in a maze, frantically trying to find the cheese that some sadistic scientist has hidden from me.

I'm sick of waiting. I want my cheese.