It starts with a betrayal, doesn’t it? It always does. You get sold a bill of goods, a beautiful, fraudulent story about a future that’s never going to come. With the wife, it was “’til death do us part.” With this job, it was “Senior Project Manager,” a big, shiny title and a promise of being the king of your own little shithole.
And for a minute, you believe it. You’re the golden boy again. You remember that feeling, don’t you? Back at that Sedona company, they were going to make me the Vice President, give me a goddamn plaque at the Christmas party. I’ve always been the golden boy. It’s my curse. You shine, you take charge, you get things done.
And then the micro-management starts. The quiet, polite, and completely castrating little cuts. The slow, steady erosion of your own goddamn authority. It’s the same quiet, ugly music of a dying marriage. The part where she stops laughing at your jokes, where every decision you make is questioned, where you’re the king of a house you’re no longer allowed to rule.
And the games they play, Christ. The beautiful, passive-aggressive, and completely transparent little chess moves. My current employer, they’re a goddamn master of the form. “James,” they say, their voices all bright and full of a beautiful, phony enthusiasm, “we’re hiring a new assistant project manager for the next project. We want you to train him.”
And you just have to laugh. A real, ugly, gut-shot laugh. Because you see the whole goddamn board. The old assistant, the one you were supposed to be managing on this project, he’s the project manager now. He’s running this show, and the next one. And he’s the one who’s really going to be training the new kid, your replacement’s replacement. You’re not just on the sidelines anymore; you’re not even in the goddamn stadium. You’re a ghost, haunting a project that’s already forgotten your name.
I am so far removed from this whole goddamn operation that I might as well be in another country. And I sit here, day after day, and I can feel my own life just… zipping away. The slow, quiet, and completely irreversible hemorrhage of time. Every day I spend in this chair is another day I’m not on a beach in Vietnam.
And why am I still here?
The same goddamn reason I stayed in that joyless, loveless, and completely soul-crushing marriage for six years longer than I should have. A quiet, respectable, and completely bullshit calculation.
Back then, it was for the kids, for the house, for the beautiful, fraudulent picture of a family. Now? It’s for the child support. That last, beautiful, ugly, and completely unbreakable chain that finally rusts through on November 11th. I’m doing my last few months in this prison so I can walk out with a clean rental history and an extra ten grand in my pocket for the getaway. It’s a pathetic, beautiful, and completely necessary little compromise.
And the review. Jesus. The review was a masterpiece of corporate gaslighting. It was a marriage counseling session with a woman you know is already fucking another man. You sit there, and you listen to their quiet, polite, and completely meaningless feedback, their list of your “opportunities for improvement,” and you just nod. You say, “No problem.” You say, “I’ll work on that.” Because you both know the whole goddamn thing is a performance. They’re just building a paper trail for the execution, and you’re just trying to get to the end of the session without flipping the goddamn table.
And then, after all the quiet, respectable bullshit, what do they do? They give you a five-thousand-dollar raise.
A goddamn raise.
That’s the beautiful, ugly, and completely insane genius of their particular brand of psychological warfare. It’s the wife who tells you she hates your guts, that you’re a failure as a man, and then asks you what you want for dinner. It’s a quiet, perfect, and completely mind-fucking little piece of machinery, designed to keep you confused, off-balance, and chained to the goddamn wheel for just a little while longer. Anyone with eyes can see I’m shut down, that I’m not performing, that I’m just a warm body in a chair, waiting for the clock to run out. And they give me a raise.
So what’s the final view from the bottom of this beautiful, empty bottle?
It’s this.
This isn’t a job. It’s the ghost of my marriage, come back to haunt me in a clean, respectable, and completely soulless corporate costume. It’s the same quiet lies, the same passive-aggressive games, the same beautiful, slow, and completely predictable rot. It’s the universe, that old, drunk, and completely sadistic bastard of a comedian, giving me one last, beautiful, ugly, and completely honest look at the cage I’m about to escape from for good.
And this time, I’m not just walking out the door and sleeping in my truck.
This time, I’m burning the whole goddamn house to the ground, and I’m not looking back.
