Being her own boss May 22, 2013

 

 

I keep coming back to the fairness poem because I still need to the answer to the most fundamental question about her, and hope that because this poem is so upfront, it might provide the answer as to whether she has operated over the last year as a free agent, doing her own bidding, or on behalf of one or more of the people she currently considers her friends.

If the poem answers this, I can’t find it, but it does suggest that she lives her life doing as she pleases, and then agonizes over it afterwards.

In other words, was she merely trickling up as she usually does, or operating on behalf of others such as RR.

This poem doesn’t quite answer that question for me.

But I suspect she would like to become as ruthless as the players she associates with, yet despite her claims otherwise, struggles with conscience, and the poem seems to be looking for an excuse to rid herself of this internal nagging so that she can get on with her life.

As I’ve said previously, it is a kind of declaration of independence, very reflective of a generation of people who want to cast out rules that they find too binding.

Unable to follow rules, people tend to blame the rules not themselves.

And yet, there is something remarkably appealing in the logic she employees when it comes to this poem, and the fact that right and wrong, fair and unfair are merely words.

The poem suggests that she desperately needs to come to grips with this before she can move on, shed the guilt she feels over things that bring her pleasure or power, and while the tone of the poem suggests she has resolved it, she has not.

Yet, I’ve come to believe she is not nearly ruthless enough to achieve the kind of success she craves, and this poem seems to reflect a bit of self-deception when she denies the morality and the guilt she obviously feels, more than hinting at the struggle going on inside and outside her.

Her failure to achieve seems to be an aspect of this inner conflict, even though her conscious mind seems to refute it.

Yet each time she gets close to what she thinks she wants, somehow, she screws it up, if not intentionally, then subconsciously, out of some deep seeded guilt even she isn’t completely aware of.

She also tends to pick out people who on the surface appear to offer her fame and fortune, only to discover after she’s gotten involved that they are not what they seem.

And then, there is me.

I appear to be an outward manifestation of the subconscious she is desperate to deny.

Early on, she assumed I had real power, and so gravitated towards me the way she has so many others before (and since) only to find out I was largely a waste of time when it came to trickling up. I could not help her achieve anything.

But I felt manipulated, and from the beginning, I struggled with the sense of wrongness – not morally as in right or wrong – but the unsettled sense something wasn’t clicking.

She sensed something, too, and got upset each time I did something unexpected like blocking her on Facebook.

But then, I did foolish things as well, such as assuming others such as our former temporary boss felt the oddness of it all, and I confided in him, only to discover to my dismay that he had bought into the myth completely.

Jealousy, perhaps, the sense of being used caused me to react badly, as I tried to derail what I saw as a runaway train.

I should have done nothing, kept my mouth shut, and if not buying into the program at least avoid becoming the villain.

I allowed myself to replace her Brooklyn stalker as scapegoat for her inner conflict, a focal point that could be blamed for making her feel guilty.

In that regard, her poem is accurate: right and wrong, fair and unfair are just words, proving that it is possible to be morally right at the same time as socially wrong.

I was so put off my her trickling up, I failed to realize that it did not matter if she did.

I lived the fair-unfair fallacy, an illusion in an office where nothing was fair, and to get ahead required just those things she was willing to do.

We just didn’t talk about it, as if those of us stuck on the treadmill could not afford to look too closely at the mechanism that ruled our lives.

She saw it, and intended to use it to her advantage, thus forcing my eyes to open, and she became something of a scapegoat as I blamed her for actually using the system.

We misread each other. Had she bypassed me in her climb to the top, I might never have noticed her, and gone on living my life in a fog, assuming her progress was due to merit.

Once I became a rung on her ladder. I became aware of how the system worked, and mistakenly blamed her for doing what it actually took to get ahead.

This poem goes one step further in ripping off the blinders by blatantly saying – if not in so many words – rules are for suckers.

 

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