“Well, all right. If you say so.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” I dart out of the conference room and finally make it back to my desk.
Yep, I’m going to start scheduling my student conferences during the weekly meeting. There was no good reason for me to be there.
At all.
I mean that literally. That could have been handled by e-mail.
My disguise is in danger of slipping because my irritation at how this place is run is trying to get the better of me.
I mean, Igetit. Logical Jordan understands my irritation is a symptom more of me and my mental state than anything being wrong with the department. I’m the square peg trying to fit myself into a round hole.
I need to pull my shit together. I can do this. I used to be a master chameleon at blending in with other people, especially at work. Hell, I did it for the past six years without any trouble.
Except that was a different world. Wherenotbeing able to shift patterns on the fly meant the difference between success or finding yourself being discussed on political blogs the next day.
Or being uncomfortably roasted by Rachel Maddow and Anderson Cooper on their shows.
The worst thing to happen here is…
Well, not much. Even getting fired is damned difficult, because it’s a university. I don’t have to fight every day to prove to the world that I deserve to be here.
Wow. That’s a fricking depressing thought, now that I’m actually processing it.
There’snevergoing to be an adrenaline jolt with this job, whereas before I had them nearly daily. Sometimes multiple times in a day.
There’s never going to be a last-minute crisis to make me a hero for solving.
There’s never going to be any satisfaction like standing back and watching an event I helped put together be talked about in glowing terms by journalists and politicos from around the country and, sometimes, from around the world.
There’s so much more that’snevergoing to happen again, and I mean professionally.
That’s not even touching the personal stuff.
As all that slams home, I slump back in my chair and stare at my computer monitor, letting my eyes unfocus and blurring the words on the screen until I remove my glasses and rub at my eyes.
In the East Wing, on a daily basis, I usually accomplished more before lunch than I do here in a fricking week. Easily.
My throat tightens and my eyes prickle as a quiet voice speaks in my mind.
This was a mistake. I never should have left Leo. I’m a fucking dumbass.
Except…I can’t take it back.
Yes, I’d hoped Leo would have contacted me by now and begged me to return.
It’s also increasingly obvious Leo will never ask me to come back. I’ve texted with him a few times, trying to…
I don’t know what I was trying to do.
Worse…what if I admit it to him, that it was a mistake, and ask to come back? Then what?
What if he tells me no?
I don’t know if I could even handle that. That’s a level of rejection I think would break me in a way nothing else has managed thus far in my life.
I grab my right hand with my left to stop it from twisting and focus on breathing for a minute.
I need to get a handle on this. I need to get my shit together, and fast.
This isn’t like me.
The problem is, I don’t know whatis“me” anymore. I’m not sure how I got…here.
Even worse?
Despite knowing what I “should” be doing, I honestly don’t know where I go from here, much less how I go about doing it.
