Being Better

Day 1:

Today is the day! In order to be a better person, today, I start my month of careful speech. Rather than be the asshole who says the first thing that comes to mind, I’ll take a moment to think about what I’m about to say. By the end of the month, it should be habit. This is the beginning of the end for my mouth getting me in trouble.

Day 2:

I’m glad it’s still the weekend. I had to catch myself multiple times yesterday and today. It’s not like the TV cares, but I wanted to yell at the talking heads on the news so bad! Grrrr. I was able to calm myself, though.

Day 3:

I got a lot of strange looks at work today. Rather than my usual reaction to things, I was careful with my words. The saying, “bite your tongue” that means to not say what you were going to? Yeah, turns out that doing that for real works. Not hard or anything, just enough to remind myself of the goal.

Day 7:

They actually listened to what I had to say in the meeting today. I wanted to tell them they were so stupid they were lucky they remembered to breathe, but I didn’t. I thought about it carefully, and told them, point by point, what parts of their design were likely to fail, and how to mitigate those risks. Yeah, I might have taught some of them a thing or two. It felt good, even though I think I might be developing an ulcer, and I have a sore spot on my tongue.

Day 9:

The constant pain in my gut has eased up. Probably because I spent the entire weekend in bed reading. No TV, no internet, just a good book. Not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow, but I’m still doing great on my month.

Day 12:

Hump day, and this week already feels three times too long. I was in line for my coffee and this — cuts in front of me. (See, I’m even censoring myself in my journal.) Anyway, I muttered something about his questionable legitimacy and that his head was in a physically impossible location. I didn’t say it at full volume, though. Still, it slipped out and I realized I needed to do better. So, I tapped the guy on the shoulder and said, “I’m sorry I just said something mean about you, I’m trying to do better. I was angry in the moment when you cut in front of me.”

He just looked at me like I was insane and stayed right there in front of me in line. I’m not sure if that’s when the pain in my gut came back, but that’s when I felt it, a knot of fire. I bit my tongue so hard I drew blood. It really hurts to drink anything hot or cold or eat anything at all.

Day 16:

I spent the weekend in agony. My tongue finally stopped hurting enough to eat a bit, and it seemed to help my guts, but only a little. Maybe I just need to let it all out without a target. I mean, I’m still doing great good on my month of being less of an asshole. There was the little thing on Wednesday, and then Friday, when he did it to me again, I told him, “I’m trying not to say the first the terrible thing that comes to mind all the time, but I seriously hope your day is cut short by a tragic accident.”

Day 20:

The knot of fire in my gut has grown a burning spike straight up the center of my chest. Everything I swallow hurts. I guess the sore on my tongue is just the new normal. It won’t heal. My boss noticed something was wrong with me. “You’re clearly stressed about something,” she said. She told me to take a long weekend and de-stress. I couldn’t even think of any comeback, due to feeling so awful. It was only while I was driving home that my mind kicked in and said “Gee, thanks for that, Captain Obvious. I’ll call you the next time I need you to tell me something I already know.”

Day 23:

I’ve lost weight. Had to add a new hole to my belt to make it fit. Probably because I can’t eat, can’t sleep, and everything puts me on edge. I cursed out the TV today because it decided it needed to reboot in the middle of a show. Smart TV my ass. But the TV doesn’t really count, does it? I mean, it’s just an inanimate thing. In that moment, I felt a tiny bit better. Still, I felt like I cheated on my month of not being the instant asshole — which ruined the good feeling.

Day 26:

I’ve decided that the TV, and other inanimate things, don’t count — as long as no one else hears. My computer was being a pain today. I waited until everyone had left for the break room and whispered to it. “You stupid piece of ‘made in China’ shit. Taiwan is a country. Suck on that. If you don’t act right, I’m gonna plug a USB cable into the wall socket.”

That helped a little. Someone saw me and asked what I was doing. “Just a little one-sided conversation with my computer,” I answered. They looked at me like I was contagious or something. I thought terrible things about them but didn’t say anything. My tongue started bleeding again.

Day 28:

I almost ripped the line-cutting jerk a new one today. I wanted so much to tell him he should jump off a cliff instead of jumping the line. The coppery taste of blood in my mouth stopped me, and the pain in my gut made me decide to skip the coffee.

The month is almost over, but I’ve been scheduled to come in Sunday and cover for someone else — in customer support. It’s literally the one job I hate so much that until they promised I wouldn’t ever be scheduled for it, I wouldn’t accept the job. So much for promises.

I think I cursed out everything in my apartment when I got home. I’m sorry, apartment, it’s not your fault. The nerve of this fucking company…. (Companies are inanimate, so they don’t count.)

Day 30:

I almost made it…almost. I gritted my teeth, used my best customer service voice and answered the same five, stupid questions over and over and over. Then it happened.

There were no calls in the queue, so I set my status to offline and went to the break room to get some ice to suck on — trying to get my tongue to stop bleeding. It was lunch time anyway, so no big deal, right? Wrong.

That idiot of a shift leader told me to get back on the lines. I told him it was lunch time, and he had the audacity to say that I obviously wasn’t eating, so I should get back online so someone else could eat.

The fire in my belly finally reached my throat and I gave up on the month. I don’t think I’ve ever so eloquently told anyone how I felt about them in the moment.

First, I called him a “jumped-up, junior-hall-monitor-wannabe.” I told him that if he was that worried about it, he should be online. Then, I let him know that I was well within my rights to take my lunch break, even if all I’m eating is ice. The next thing I said was that for his lunch. he should probably stick to the “paleo diet” since the Paleolithic was the last time there was a branch anywhere in his family tree. I’m sure I said some more after that, but I don’t remember it all.

I almost made it a month, and it almost killed me. There’s got to be something I can to do be better, but this wasn’t it. I saw online that it’s healthier to express your emotions than to hold them in. I believe it. In fact, that’s what I’m doing next month: expressing my true emotions. I’m going to be completely open and honest about how I’m feeling.

I’ll also be looking for a new job, since I got fired today. It seems the junior-hall-monitor-wannabe’s stick of a family tree includes the HR director. If I’d known that, I would’ve let him know how I feel about nepotism and told him to go cry to aunt mommy.