You know full well that I tend to be conflict-averse; all I’m suggesting is that even when you don’t intend for them to pick up on your suspiciousness, they will, despite your best efforts to the contrary.

And this is not foreign to my body of experience. I’m getting a bit frustrated that, at every turn, you seem to villainize me as someone of privilege, someone who can’t relate to the hard knocks you’ve experienced due to an overly sheltered existence. Just because I have not chosen to share the details of that part of my life with you does not mean that they never existed, nor that I cannot have experienced similar depths of despair, nor even that believe others have less valid realities than my own.

Yes, my viewpoint is naturally tempered by the fact that I have, indeed, survived, and am therefore looking at this with hindsight. But that makes my point no less valid. (I might also add that you too have survived against incredible odds.) Negative energy held about someone in your consciousness will leak out towards whoever you hold it towards, get amplified and put back on you. Faith does work after 20 months. It will work after 70 years, too. Give me a new argument as to why it won’t work for you.

are you suggesting that i carry a chip on my shoulder with regard to my career?

pretending it doesn’t affect you works for only so long, but not as long as twenty months — especially when you are next to losing what little else you have left after dogged, extended efforts in trying to stave off the worst.

they don’t know that i’m feeling suspicious, but perhaps they should know that my confidence with them in a professional standing is pretty shaky right now. i can’t afford to be led on with really bad consolations that end up being “cancelled” altogether. perhaps this is something utterly foreign to your body of experience, and if so, bear in mind that the reality i face is no less valid than of one whom is secure, safe, imbued with professional purpose (remunerated with a salary and maybe even benefits) and not in direct threat of losing access to medical maintenance needs, the remaining few items of substance in your possession and losing any hope at lifting out of zeropoint.

The most I can offer is hugs….

The longest placement I got through them was with Monkey Ward doing those horrible circulars you see in the Sunday paper. Brr. I knew after a week that I couldn’t take it there, with the non-stop muzak, piddly workflow and “no working on your own stuff, even if we don’t have work for you to do” policy, a crusty supervisor who seemed more interested in dying than design and constantly took the other placement employee into the stairwell to yell at him for screwing things up. This was only a tiny corner of an entire maze of cubicles where this crap was going on in other degrees too. It truly was a descent into corporate hell of Dilbert-esque proportions.

I just decided not to go in the following week and acted like the client had goofed up by not telling me they wanted to keep me on past the week (which they honestly *hadn’t*). They paid me pretty well, but the environment was absolutely stultifying, to the point where I wouldnt go back, even if I were starving and really needed the money. I found out that MW was their biggest client, and kinda knew at that point I needed to find something else, and fast.

Things eventually worked out in the long run, but it wasn’t pretty in-between, for certain. :P

I know how hard it can be not to have time and space of your own when you need it too. I face that problem a lot of the time because BF works at home and is almost always there and wanting attention the minute I walk in the door. It’s hard, ’cause somedays, I’m so drained from dealing with the grind that just don’t have that energy to give.

I know it’s hard, but keep at it. :)