MaMaLiRZ

I hate being American.  Really?  It bubbled inside me, percolating to the surface and once it exploded and was free, I reacted like someone shocked by stray voltage. Suddenly awake and aware.  The smokescreen lifted and shell of a human was all that remained.  After a lifetime of being a patriot: a full career in the military and multiple deployments when I was seen as the face of America, I was on the phone saying that I hate being American.  There is something wrong with me.  This isn’t normal, not even MY normal which can (at times) be drastically different than other people’s normal.  I had to pause…

Pause…

Quiet my mind and reflect.  Walk through the void.  Find something to cling to.  Something to awaken an emotion, any emotion that could bring me back to life.  The void. I had to muster the strength to walk through the gas chamber and emerge from the other side.  The disgust and distain lingering on my shell and find the seed of renewal.  Plant it and nourish it. 

Pause…

And reflect on why such a shocking emotion was alive yet kept silent for so long that it reached for breath during a mundane, yet frustrating, call with the IRS.  She didn’t deserve my verbal meltdown.  She was a civilian casualty of my inner war.  The bomb landed, even struck the target, but there had been no knowledge of the car passing by at that exact moment, and KABOOM, irrevocable damage.  She was after all just doing her job.  —I’m so sorry Agent number 87653094357301248.  Yes, their badge numbers really are that long…as if that isn’t frustrating enough!  I digress… There is some humor there if you can see it.

You see, since early February, in addition to dealing with a failed marriage, and owning my faults within it; losing my father so fast though with time to think and say goodbye, my foundation was shaken, and I saw not just cracks but the aftermath of an earthquake.  I was the villain in the story, suddenly and without warning.  Not because the divorce was my decision, or because I returned to care for my children instead of holding his hand, but because I was a federal civilian employee (that surprised you didn’t it?!).  I mean who knew!  My own country that I loved and fought for, knowing that we were on the right side of history, now saw me, without warning, as a villain.  I was lazy, I was not reporting to work. I was overpaid, and underperforming, stealing money from every American whose freedom I would have, without thought, laid down my life.  The hate was everywhere.

^^^insert sound of a needle on a record screech here^^^

wait a minute!  None of those things are accurate, none of them are true.  But we live in a World that believes every bias and reason for elitism that it can find.  And instantly, every United States Federal employee was all those things, and none, at the same time.  Oh, and yet still expected to keep their head down and continue coloring, and don’t let that coloring be outside the lines!  Keep working, keep getting just one more paycheck. And one more, and one more while your spirit dies ever so slowly that you forget your worth, forgot life’s value. Your shell faces the World but is void, empty.  The World looks on and wonders why you are haggard, why you don’t smile, why you aren’t happy nevertheless, you have “one-more paycheck”   -they have already forgotten that they hated you, that you were the vile in the bit of a rancid stomach lining.  Smile, tap dance a little longer, a little faster…

Agent number 87653094357301248 you didn’t deserve that.  Afterall, you too are “just” a federal employee, trying to do your job.

I would listen to the tirade of a neighbor, ranting on and on about what the latest TikToker said about the disgusting federal worker, only to remind them that I too, am a federal employee…

Well, you know what I mean, not you, the federal employee.  The lazy ones… ugh…

Seed, meet shell:  rain, food, sunlight, grow.  Grow damn it!  Why aren’t you listening…

Pause…

Rain:  cleanse the ground and prepare it.

Food: nourish the ground.

Sunlight: warm the Earth with your beautiful rays

grow… grOW…   GROW.