I am sad. More than that, I feel broken and betrayed. The man I thought was the one has decided he wants to be with someone else. I know I am just one of the millions of women that this has happened to, but it doesn't make it easier. I have never met a man before him that I even thought I could have a future with. In 34 years, I have met a lot of men, but never one who was a match until Lars. I was sure he was it. The fact that he'd rather be with Allison (who I am sure is very nice) hit me out or nowhere. One day I was getting advice on where to stay for our trip together to Scotland, the next day, I am trying to cancel my ticket. So sudden and my life is changed. I want to not hurt. I want to be able to take this physical pain I feel in the middle of my chest and make him feel it. I want to hate him, but I can't. I can't even communicate with him as I know my hurt will force me to say things I will regret. Why can't I just hate him? Why do I care to not say all the things out of hurt that I want to say?
They say that God is in control of everything and that all is as it should be. I don't understand how that can be. How is it that no man has ever loved me? How is that the plan of a loving Father? Shouldn't he want his daughter to be loved by the right guy? How is my pain part of a better plan? I don't know the answer to anything. I don't know anything any more except for the fact that my pain is real and my relationship wasn't.

I think about how much my life has changed in one short year. I was desperate to get a job, and now a job I have. I had a fantastic manager for several months. However, she has moved on and I am now stuck with Professor Umbridge as a manager. I'm not kidding. She really is.
It'd be one thing if I didn't love my company and my job. But I do. I have to find a way to work with a woman who is so insecure in her knowledge that she makes and sticks to arbitrary positions even when she has been proven wrong. She has the "because I am the manager you must stick to my decision" policy. She has to write a policy and procedure, or as I like to refer to them, "educational decree," for EVERYTHING. I'm sure she'll enact a schedule for 15 minute bathroom breaks before it is all over.
The worst is that everyone outside the department thinks she is God's gift. She has taken self-promotion to an art form that Don King would be envious of. I feel like the guy in the cartoons who found the singing frog. He knows it sings, he has seen it sing. However, when anyone else sees the frog, it ribbits with the best of them. That's how I feel. I know she is a lying lady. I've seen her lie. But no one else has seen it or can sense the con artist in her.

The job situation is still a situation. However, I am trying to keep my chin up. I have decided to use my time to help others. I am going to volunteer at the hospital. Now after watching 24, volunteering at a hospital seems insanely dangerous, but I am reckless like that. So if you hear that some terrorist group has let off a nerve gas or engineered virus in Lakeland hospital, just know that I died NOT being paid :)

The job situation is a tricky one for most people. Schools give us unreasonably high expectations of the kind of offers that await us upon graduation. We are told that our earning potential will be such and such percent higher after receiving degree X. The day of our orientation to the MBA program we were told that we'd be "a fool to take a job for less than $50000 after graduating." Now I couldn't fathom that much money back then. I can't fathom any money right now. Odd isn't it? The kind of desperation we get into after feeling so rejected by the world. The problem is that I am not financially desperate. Yes I have lots credit card debt that I would love to pay off. That has been my goal for the past year whilst searching for a job. The reason I so ardently search for a job is really to regain the confidence in myself that I have had torn to shreds by the faceless HR people in the country. I used to believe that I wanted to get married more than anything. This last year has made me realize that that was entirely untrue. I want to be self-sufficient more than anything. I want to be the best at whatever career I am finally brought into. I want to save money, buy my own house, adopt another wire-haired dachshund, and learn to be thankful for the bounty that God has given me. That is where the heart of my dilemma is. It is so hard for me, a gal with the scars from the pox of severe middle-child syndrome, to not look at the gifts given to others and not to myself. I am a bright woman who would be an asset to any company. Yet, for the life of me I can't get any job. I am an extremely loving girl. Yet, I have never had a guy in love with me. I see all girl after girl given both of these things and yet both are denied me. How can I not get angry at God? How can my human failings and misunderstandings not get the best of me leaving a bitter shell of the person I want to be. I know that God provides all good things, I know that God can do all things. It therefore stands to reason in my mind that since God can provide me with my hearts, that since He has access to much more than my mind can contemplate, the reason I don't have these things is that God Himself is a cruel being who creates in us our hearts' desire, and then refuses to give it to us. That He sits on His clouded throne and like the Emperor in Return of the Jedi taunts us with "you want this, don't you?". Like me telling a child how great a piece of candy is, creating a desirous frenzy in the child, and then making the child watch as I give it to another child who had behaved rottenly all day and who just spit out the candy onto the new rug anyway. It is so against my nature to look at the non-conventional things I have been given and see how exceedingly lucky I am. How is it possible that I have vacationed in more places than the majority of the world could ever fathom? God. How is it possible that when I last had a full time job I could barely make ends meet and now that I have no income coming in, I don't have to worry about money? Obviously God because where else could it all come from? I STILL don't have any idea how He has made it work. All I know is that I probably look like the biggest loser of my entire graduating class on paper. However, I realize that I am probably the biggest success of all of them in reality. I know that God is doing great things in my life. I know that I am getting life experiences that most girls can only read about. I am getting all of this, BEFORE I am given the traditional things that others are given. After realizing all of this, how can I be angry at anyone. I just feel sorry for everyone who isn't me.