Posted August 27th, 2003 by Michelle

The Q train decided to stop running at Pacific Street tonight, two stops before my stop, and as the people filed out to transfer to the “new” Q train, I fought my way against the crowd and walked up to the street. 1 AM in Brooklyn, on Flatbush, is not my perfect idea of safe, but I needed to be out in the air and didn’t want to wait for another train. It reminded me of the joke about the guy who parachuted out of an airplane. When he had fallen the appropriate distance, he heard his leader screaming into his headphone from the plane: “Pull the cord! Pull the cord!” “Okay, but hold on,” says the jumper. This repeats three more times when the leader screams “PULL THE CORD!!!” and the jumper says, “It’s okay, I can jump from here”.

Not the funniest joke, but I decided I would walk from there, safe or no.

I went into work tonight doubly miserable because of how bad the night was before. It got worse when I saw who I was working with, and by the time I started my sidework I was inventing reasons why I could leave. And then I made a decision. I approached a woman there who hasn’t been very nice to me the last few days and I confronted her. She was upset about me leaving the other day. I immediately started bawling, since I am a kind or mean word away from tears all the time lately, and I told her that I didn’t make a good choice but that passive aggression and meanness weren’t good either. In three minutes she had her arms around me and said she was so, so sorry. I tried to compose myself and went to another server who was acting the same way. He immediately put his arms around me and said, “I know you are having a hard time. But you should come to us when you are having a hard time. Don’t leave. Honey, we love you. We love you.”

So though it was a crazy, busy night, and we had some awful people unleashing their miseries on us poor servers, it was a much better night. Much, much better, and it reminded me why I’ve stayed there for so long. Was it enough to convince me to stay? Not nearly. But the night was bearable, and that right there is a victory.

I got a very sweet email tonight from a blog reader. Seems she has been going through a rough patch as well, for similar reasons. It meant the world to me because I’ve felt rather mixed about writing about what I’m really feeling, but I’ve also been unable to censor myself. It makes me feel like less like a big loser and more like a human if even one person out there is relating to my whining, my woes. She mentioned the difficulty and pain of unrequited love.

I’m hoping to get one last shift covered, and then I could run back to the farmhouse for the entire Labor Day weekend. It will be strange and hard to be there, but it would also be really great. I think. I don’t know. At the very least, I won’t be at work, and the very most is I get to actually hang out with Ian and Tessa without 200 other people.