Tuesday, July 13, 2004

This has the potential to be a long, multi-part entry. Bear with me as I try to get everything out in this entry that I need to get out.

I'm going to start with a timeline of today's events at work. I reread something I wrote in another journal not too long ago in the style of a timeline of sorts documenting the day I had had at work. I think it worked pretty well so I'm going to do it again here. Deal with it.

Cast of Characters
Keith - pharmacist
Jim - pharmacist
Peggy - tech
Sarah - tech
Roberta - tech
Joe - manager
Rose - photo manager
Renee - tech
Jean - tech

There might be more, but those are the main people I worked with today.

8am
Vaguely aware of my alarm going off the first time. The snooze button becomes my best friend.

8:45am
Finally drag myself out of bed to get ready for work. Naturally, this leaves me no more than 20 minutes to get ready. Really need to work on this. Walk to the bathroom, quickly wash up, put contacts in, and head back down to my room to get dressed. It's almost 9am by this point so it's a must I hurry.

9:05am
Dressed, teeth brushed, and ready to go, I finish getting ready and realize that I stand a chance of being on time despite my best efforts.

9:25am
Arrive at my store and minutes later, punch in right on time. Lack of sleep is obvious though as I barely move around without feeling like I'm going to fall over.

9:34am
Jim makes fun of me for the first time during the day. It's actually a blessing that he waited four minutes to crack a joke. Thanks Jim, you're such a pal. When are you leaving again?

9:45am
Say hi to Peggy who I haven't worked with in two weeks due to vacations. As annoying as she can be, I kind of missed working with her. Oh, now I remember why. She's competent. Unlike Roberta, who's idea of filling fast is to do 4 scripts in the span of an hour. Most of us do that in five minutes.

9:52am
Keith has first mini-meltdown trying to find out where the big bosses are traveling at at that time. This would become a theme.

10:30am
Joe makes an appearance to talk to Keith about something. Keith then disappears for 20 minutes. This would be the second disappearance. Again, a theme is developing.

10:55am
Sarah shows up, without a turtleneck on to hide the hickeys she obtained last Friday night (which is something I actually know about since I was out with her that night; I didn't give them to her though). Keith freaks again, thinking that the regional manager is actually going to notice the small mark on the underside of her chin.

11:05am
Keith switches gears and tries to tell an insanely stupid joke about Sarah's hickeys. Probably would've been a good joke if anyone knew what the hell he was talking about.

11:15am
Sarah grabs a large container and writes a sign on it asking for tips for an underappreciated, overworked employee named Sarah. This is, however, a load of bullshit and she knows it. Sarah admits being lazy, making the tip jar that much funnier. Keith sees it finally and makes her take it off the counter.

11:33am
Roberta disappears, then reappears, then says she's going on break. Coincidentally, Keith disappears for the fourth time during the day. Must be a black hole in the back room.

11:45am
Keith reappears finally, just in time to help me with the rush that I just finished taking care of. Always great to know that I have help. Keith then tries to get me to do the Cardinal order. I refuse, which leads Keith to decide that he'll sticker the order if I scan it in. I hate the stickering part so this is an easy decision.

12:15pm
Cardinal is scanned in, the order is put away, and in less than 15 minutes, I have done what seems to take most people an hour or so to do. Keith disappears again without telling me as well, leaving drop-off unmanned. Not good.

12:30pm
Peggy takes her break, leaving Sarah to fill by herself for a while. Sarah is a bit loopy however. She tells Keith that if the big bosses show up, that she could just go lock herself up in the back room, like a hillbilly family locking up a child they don't want seen. I suggest giving her a stick to chew on while she's back there. Keith is not amused.

12:45pm
Peggy returns from break and the great lunch debate begins with me. It doesn't take long to decide. Meanwhile Sarah is walking around with a mangled paperclip sticking out of her watch. Never did get this one explained to me.

12:55pm
Keith complains about the turbo fan being too loud and turns it off. He's the only one who ever complains about it. Says that it's so loud that he can't think. I ask him why he's trying to think anyway. Evidently, Keith thinks that the comment was some sort of attempt at a joke and compliments me on the quick wit. I just stare at him blankly.

1:05pm
I leave to get lunch. Find out that it's like 120 degrees outside. At least it feels that way. Find out just how weird it is to order a might kids meal from McDonalds, even if it isn't for myself. Damn that Sarah.

1:30pm
Listen to Joe in the backroom complain about how no one knows where the big bosses are. Some curses after there's a loud crash. Rose walks in and starts talking to me about something. Wasn't listening. Why do people talk to me on my break when I'm reading the paper?

1:55pm
Keith disappears again. Roberta starts wandering around as well. Jim continues to crack jokes about me. Sarah's laughing uncontrollably about something. Evidently I missed the memo about doing crack before heading into work today.

2pm
Joe gets the first of about 100 phone calls between now and the time he leaves around 5pm. It gets a bit annoying after a couple of minutes.

2:30pm
Discover that Peggy doesn't like her water bottle being knocked over. Attempt at turning a container that she was using to dump pills in upside down fails as well. I get hit. I feel like everything's normal again.

2:55pm
Renee shows up, Roberta walks away again, Keith also walks away, and Sarah's making, well, something out of plastic.

3:10pm
Jim starts singing a really filthy christmas song about me. It isn't very nice, but it is funny. Why is he leaving us?

3:15pm
Roberta returns, says something that she thinks is hilarious (no one else even smiles), then goes on break. Keith returns from whatever he was doing. Sarah reveals what she was working on was making a ring out of a plastic bag. It looks...disheveled.

3:35pm
Sarah asks me to help her trim her "ring." It's too large and might weigh her hand down. I hold strands of plastic while she cuts it off. At one point, I get poked in the finger by the scissors, prompting me to back away for a short while.

3:50pm
Sarah shows Keith her "bling bling" failing to impress him. Jim just looks at her funny. Peggy takes her second break.

3:55pm
Jean arrives at long last. Jim greets her with a very bad insult. Jean laughs hard. It's quite a scene. Keith is gone again. I've given up looking for him to actually help me at drop-off.

4:15pm
Evidently Keith leaves for good, leaving me by myself for the rest of my shift. Not that I had any help earlier. Sarah is still parading about with her "ring," laughing too hard. Jim's trying to grind on Jean. It's not working.

4:30pm
Take my second break after learning that the big bosses aren't going to show up (what a surprise). By the time I get back, Sarah's winding down and it's getting busy.

5:27pm
Minutes before I'm supposed to leave, three people walk up to my window to drop off scripts. Four more come from Jim that were doctor call-ins. Two more come from the drive-thru window. I guess I'm not leaving when I was supposed to.

5:40pm
Catch up the pile of scripts that had backed me up and decide to stay until six when Alison was due in next. Sarah's sitting on a stool at the other terminal entering a fake prescription for Vicodin ES. The girl is crazy.

5:50pm
Jim starts making fun of me like there's no tomorrow when he realizes the next time I work with him is Saturday afternoon. Jean and Sarah try not to laugh, but can't help it. His jokes are that absurd about me.

6:03pm
I finally get to leave work.

It was an interesting day. Between Sarah being as loopy as she was, Keith being a freak about the visit we never got, and Roberta doing pretty much nothing, there was a lot that kept the day moving. I find it interesting that Joe and Keith did freak about the visit so much when we all kept telling them both that no one was going to show up.

Keith was especially freaked about the hickeys that Sarah had. The tip jar thing was funny though. Sarah was amusing today. It was nice to work with Peggy again.

I still have to decide what to do though. I don't know what's going to happen in this store in the near future, but it probably isn't going to be good.

---

Some things occur that you can't control. Some things occur that you can't control when you really don't need them to happen. Some things can potentially ruin something before it's even, well, something.

Molly is probably the only person who'd know right away where I'm going with this. Last night we had another talk. Well, it was more like me talking about what I needed to say and her saying whatever popped in her head. But they were things I did need to say to her, things that she should've known about me in the first place.

What we talked about will remain between us. The basic idea is that she did meet another guy. She doesn't know where it's going to go, but she just wants to be friends first. As is the case with me. What I explained to her was how I can become depressed and tried to convey to her what it's like to deal with me in that situation and how it affects me. I also made it clear that I was at fault for most everything that's happened.

She told me not to do that, but that's something she'll learn about me with time. I will take the fall when things don't go well. I will invariably point to myself and say that I should've done something different. I take responsibility for my actions when I feel I did something wrong, or didn't do what I should've done. I think she learned that about me last night.

She knows how I feel about her. I know how she feels about me. It's not the same. It's not necessarily because she couldn't ever date me. It's as simple as her needing to be friends for a while first before that possibility can even arise. I made the mistake of trying to push the issue with her. Yes, she may have led me on a bit, leading me to believe that she felt more than she actually did, but I feel like in a sense that I failed to respect her wish to be friends first.

There's really no way to tell what's meant for us. There's a possibility that we are meant to date. The same holds true for us just being friends. It's up to me to realize and respect what she wants and let things take care of themselves. If we are meant to date it will happen. If we're meant to just be friends, then I think I've found one hell of a good friend. It also holds true if she's meant to date this other guy, it's something I have to accept. The bottom line is I can only be myself and be there for her like I've said I will.

The attraction to her is always going to be there, but that's an area where we think and feel differently. Whereas if I'm physically attracted to a girl and like who she is, that's all I need. Molly needs more than that. It's another thing that I respect about her. The girl holds true to what she feels and believes. She doesn't waver. It's rare to see that in anyone.

I explained my chemical imbalance and my depression to her. I wonder if she realizes that I told her things that I've never told anyone else, at least not on the level that I was telling her. I still wonder a lot about her in a way though. She doesn't talk about how she feels much. She never really has. It just must not be something that she's comfortable doing.

The hardest thing is going to be trying to balance just being friends with her with the intense feelings that I do have for her. I know I can do it, but it won't be easy. It's hard to just suddenly stop liking a girl so much, at least enough to where things can stabilize into a solid friendship rather than a relationship.

I will admit this though: I was tremendously hurt initially when she told me she had met another guy. I was almost upset enough to text her back and tell her not to bother talking to me for a while. However, something changed that indicated a couple of things to me. I suddenly felt that if I did that, I would regret what I did and risk losing her completely, something I can't even begin to fathom doing.

This indicated two things for me. One, I treasured her that much to where I wouldn't be able to handle not being able to talk or hang out with her period. Two, my depression was lifting. I was able to think about the situation from her side and realize what I needed to do. I didn't overreact. I calmed down. Like I normally would.

Even two days earlier I would've told her I didn't want anything to do with her if she had said that. Not because that's how I would've felt, but rather, that's how my depression would've made me feel.

The truth is I want her as a friend. I need to establish that with her first. I want her to look at me as someone she likes hanging out with, likes talking to, and knows she can trust to talk about things. I want to mean something to her in that regard first. If anything more is meant to come from that, then so be it. If not, then that's what I have to live with.

In the mean time, I have to make certain that I don't shut out other women. As much as I can't reall picture trying to get to know another girl with the purpose of dating, I can't sit her and bank on me winning Molly over somehow and dating her. That would be foolish.

I've been foolish enough as it is. I can't afford to do that.

She already knows that I will be there for her. I told her that and I mean it. I will support what she does no matter what it is. I intend to be a good friend to her. I have a small circle of friends and I think it would be great to include her in that circle. It's a very exclusive group of people. Not just anyone can be part of it.

As it stands now, my mood is so much better now than it had been. I think I am fighting through the depression finally, and I think a lot has to do with our talk. I really think that even though I found out things that did hurt, it in a strange way actually helped me.

I know where I stand with Molly now. That's all I needed to know. That's all it took to clear my head up.

The girl means a lot to me. Now it's time for me to show her who I really am.

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