Personal Journal

A Fantasy Becomes Reality

Isn't life interesting sometimes.
You spend years, sometimes, thinking over something that you would hope to have happen.
You build a hypothetical scenario in your mind, and visualize the actions you would take were you thrust inside of it. Wild musings, fantasy, something that entertains you on a few afternoons over the course of a few years, until finally you let go of the notion, and it's replaced by others more novel.

How ripe are memories!
So easily wounds heal, and having to live always toward the future, we stop thinking about things from the past. And then some tchotchkie dances within your periphery and you wander backward
Oh yeah, that
And you revisit it, time-travel back to feel again, as though for the first time.

Such is what's happened to me today, truly a first-time experience. I'm caught up in a new human experience, bouncing back and forth between the memory of a thing 5 years ago, and an understanding that the hypothetical I once dreamed about is soon to exist, really, truly.

LR was a wicked tyrant of a boss. When I think of her, aside from remembering her features, I remember how completely hostile I was toward her. A person hates truly few people in his life, really, because it takes so much energy to hate. But LR is one of 5 for whom I had such strong sentiment. Now, two, maybe three years ago, I released myself from the punishment of my own hate, and around that time I came to my conclusion about hate in my life. By hating, I wounded my own soul. By visualizing such contemptuous vengeance toward her (or the other 4), I gave energy away, energy that could have been used to bring peace to my life.

I have hated only one soul since, and even then, I let it go.

So why LR, and why are these memories back?
LR was my boss in the documentation department of a small software company. I had been a desktop-publisher and tech writer (much more the former than the latter, as I was fresh and wet in the field, then). There were 5 of us, including LR, working therein, trying to put out great manuals for average software.

LR was simply demeaning of us. By simply, I mean she espoused it the way a kitten does curiousity, ubiquitously. Perhaps I would say she was innocently demeaning, because to me, it seemed she had no malicious intent to bring others low. She just managed it; it was the only tool in her reportoire, unless you count incompetence as a tool.

We, the four others of us, loathed her. We were paid well, with interesting work, and were it not for LR, we all would have been happily headless. But LR oversaw us, and when she was confused about something, she turned mean about it, projecting her befuddlement upon each of us, making the problem out to be us, our approach, our intent.

We existed together for some 8 months, LR and I, all but one of the others for less time than that. Then, as a high-profile booklet came closer to deadline, LR bore down, making things extra difficult, extra uncomfortable.

Somehow, I forget exactly, our collective groaning and misery in her office became noticed by the outside community. We weren't aware it was noticed until such a time as we, her employees, were marched into Human Resources individually and interrogated as to what was really going on. Strangely, the powers that were took sympathy on our position, and not with their chosen, LR. Within a day, perhaps two, LR was escorted from the building, without a word spoken as to why. And we never asked precisely what their story was.

Someone asked me that day, whether I was ready to dance the jig. Being who and what I am, I told them no. I should never take pleasure at the misfortune of another, even though I thought they deserved it. To do so, I believe, is to invite upon yourself similar karma. No, LR was gone, and I would content myself to working without that negativity in our midst. Whatever LR's future, I hoped she learned something, and regardless, whatever wrongs she did to me were not adjuticated by the company; they were between her and me.

And so on we worked on the project, a headless team, and we managed. We published, took accolades, and within a month, 3 of the remaining 4 were escorted out of the building, told only that there was no longer work for us with the company (the three had been temporary employees, the 4th the only permanent tech writer). Looking back on it, I've no doubt that they felt we were all made impure by the conflict, and like bad eggs, were cast away to hatch in another's henhouse.

Five months I stayed without work thereafter, hating LR so very passionately. I would have loved to work in that organization; it was someplace I felt I'd belong... I still feel, were LR never there, I could have swung a position within.

Such was not to be, of course, and I'm perhaps better off here than I would have been there. For those couple years after, I visualized whatever I might do if I bumped into LR at the movies, or at the mall...
I spent many years being angry in my life, sometime after those days of LR, I would learn the detriment thereof. But in those days still, I fantasized about vengeance. Nothing permanent, of course. Actions have consequences. No, instead, I dreamed of symbolism, great symbolism, however would I make her pay her toll to me...

I had set myself, were we ever to meet, to approach her dauntingly, to inspire within her great fear worthy of the misery she wrought in my life. I would say nothing, and only when very close would I repay the damage. One single, phlegmatic spit, I felt, somewhere upon her face, would fully make amends for our history, and I would storm off, vindicated.

Alas, I grew and matured, and came to peace with the past, and let go of the rage I bore. In these years, I have rarely thought of LR, for there was no need. And she matters not in my life now, a life in which I'm happy, and vibrant (most days).

Until today, of course, reading my new boss' (my boss/2nd mom) e-mail saying that a new employee is coming to work next week. Whose initials are LR, whose name is the same as the tyrant from that unpleasant past.

I remember it all now, even the rage. Like a lost pet, it reminds me what we meant to one another then. And in a way, I'm saddened. How dramatic it would have been, to be the judge, jury, and executioner to the role she played in my life.

No, no, that's not who I am, nor what I embrace in life. Nor do I hope I ever shall again embrace such seething.

No, now I must recognize that she and I share a history, and one that's not good for either of us. I represent one who got her fired (and I note with interest that where once she held a position far superior to the one I now hold, now she comes in junior to me, though not subordinate, and a temp [I laugh at the irony]).

However will we gaze at one another, next week, when we must stand face to face, and admit that we remember what we remember about a past I'm sure neither of us wished we had shared...



It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn