Hi, ya, it’s me, okay, well. I do have the last part of grievances saved in my drafts because I still haven’t finished it. It takes a lot of stamina to go back  to that mental place that I was in, so I apologize. However, given the current covid pandemic and the fact that I am essentially in quarantine until my new job starts, that might be coming out soon! However, I would like to prioritize my novels, given that I actually anticipate something coming from those some day. But let me get to the current state of the union.

Back in June of 2019, my contract at the health department ended and I was not rehired. I will likely address that in a future post, but I mention this now only to illustrate why I was unemployed from July to November. I was applying to several jobs throughout that time, with very few getting back to me. I did get at least one or two interviews, but heard nothing afterward, which was very discouraging. Finally, my mom heard through the grapevine that supposedly our pharmacy was hiring; all I pretty much needed to do was call and ask for the manager and he would set up an interview (purely out of formality) right then and there. I was really hoping for a better paid position, as I had been making $21 per hour at the health department, but the fact was I was unemployed and understimulated. I reasoned with myself that working at a pharmacy should at least be somewhat dignified as it was somewhat related to my field of study, so I went ahead and called to set up the interview. I printed out my resume, dolled myself up, dressed professionally and headed over to the pharmacy. The manager didn’t ask many questions; he mainly just summarized the work I would be doing and then told me what my wage would be, which was less than half what I made at the health department and would be still even less than I made while working at the student center, even after the raise. But I didn’t have any other options; I was forced to accept.

It was a full two days after I had the interview before John finally called me back. My mother was deeply concerned because he had told the other girl who had interviewed that day (she called to schedule after I called, but scheduled her interview sooner) was told she would start the very next day. I can only assume that John didn’t want to train two techs at the same time, so he spaced us out by a week. Looking back, I wish I would have tried to reach out to her and ask what her experience was, if only to prepare myself for what was coming.

At Riverview Pharmacy, their motto is “Let our family take care of your family” or something along those lines. Yes, I would say that at least 97% of the customers at the pharmacy received great service in comparison to the other pharmacies in the area, but internally… let’s just say if we are to consider the employees to be a family (though some literally were), they are a dysfunctional family at best. I don’t perfectly remember my first week, but I quickly learned quite a few things about this pharmacy, not only about the actual work, but about how the employees conducted themselves. I would say, especially about how they conducted themselves. There were two which were most glaringly obvious, which if anyone who work(s/ed) there happened to read this or if someone who reads this ends up working there will be able to point out immediately: Mo and Ellen. I do see the irony of this being a second person with such a name to have a presence in a story on this blog… not to detract, but if I find one more worthy of a rant then that will be a name to add to my caution list, right under anyone named Brooke. Anyway. Let’s start with Ellen, because she was not great but she was not nearly as bad as Mo. Ellen is the part time pharmacist at the pharmacy. She’s an old cat lady; there’s no two ways about that. I think that might be why she is the way she is: all she has apart from the pharmacy, really, are her cats. I think she has four of them. When we started wearing masks due to corona, she had a cat face printed one. Being a cat lady is not what makes her bad, though. That could make her endearing, if it weren’t for the fact that she “plays both sides” as it was described by one of the other pharmacists. What he meant by this is that she can be very two-faced and hypocritical; constantly being critical of everyone’s work (except for the manager- she is HIGHLY comparable to Dwight Schrute in that way), but then making many more mistakes than she ought to have been for such a seasoned pharmacist, which she would also regularly brag about. She was very self-righteous and had a superiority complex. I only remember her owning up to any of her mistakes on one occasion, and she was off the clock at that time, visiting the pharmacy on her day off (I know.). Otherwise, because of the way pharmacies operate, she would always very conveniently place all of the blame for any mistakes which were partially on her on the other party, most often a tech, and most of us were pretty new to the entire industry. She would play herself off as someone very saintly and considerate, but I think she was trying to get an ego boost from making herself superior to everyone except for the manager, whom she idolized. Unfortunately, this unrelenting insistence that she was always right would cause a lot of friction because she was most certainly not always right, sometimes to the point of interfering with a good deal someone’s work, which they would have to redo. I have seen her on a least a couple of occasions get into spats with the front end certified tech because she essentially treated her like she was stupid and had no idea what she was doing despite the fact that she is very knowledgeable and has worked there for several years. After a particularly bad screaming match, Ellen was venting to the people in the breakroom, which was unfortunately where my purse and coat were, so when I got back there she attempted to vent to me. I heard the fight, but I was not there for it, so I told her that I didn’t want to dwell on it, but that must not have been a good enough hint that I did not want to be associated with that drama in any way because Ellen continued on.

However, in the grand scheme of things, I could have dealt with Ellen and had no issues at the pharmacy had it not been for one other person: Mo. Yikes. When I started at the pharmacy she had a boyfriend, but they broke up during my time there, and let’s just say that although I had never seen him at all let alone the two of them together, seeing the way she is around us made that breakup unsurprising. Now, I am certainly no therapist, but if I needed to quickly double my net worth I’d bet a great deal of money that she has, to some extent, some undiagnosed bipolar. My skin has been horrendous since I started working there, and I think I was getting stress acne almost exclusively from her. I am 24 and I felt like I was being micromanaged by someone who was younger than me. She was constantly looking over my shoulder and criticizing the way I worked despite the fact that I had just started and nobody had given me any training. In fact, she was meant to be giving me training, but it seems that her idea of doing so was to cut me loose and then yell at me when I inevitably got it wrong. She gave me some of the worst anxiety that I have ever experienced in my life, and furthermore she did so with no regard to how anyone felt about the way she went about things. Because this is so fresh and recent, I can give several pointed examples. Near the end of my time at the pharmacy, there was an instance in which Dee, Mo’s mother and the certified tech in charge of everything pertaining to the back room, was swamped and could not take a phone call, so being as I was up front that day and therefore manning the phones, I took the call. This person (I can’t remember who it was and therefore can’t commit a HIPAA violation) was trying to order some test strips and lancets because they had run out. This is typical; I could take care of this. I went to their profile in our system and saw they were out of refills, and when I went to send an electronic refill request I saw that Dee had already sent one the day before. Now, doctors often take a few days to respond to these, but regardless I asked the pharmacist in charge (who is almost always up front) what, if anything, I ought to do. He SUGGESTED that I print out a hard copy of the refill request and fax it over. I want to make it clear that this was not an order, but a suggestion, and furthermore I did not know how to do this and we still had our own work to do up front. So I decided to make a note of this and put it on Dee’s desk because I knew that by the time I would be able to crank that out, she would be back at her computer and be able to do it herself, if that’s what she thought was best, but seeing as it was her patient and she was the one who knew everything about their situation it would be best to leave it to her, especially considering that she had already sent an electronic request. I told this to John and he agreed, but unfortunately Mo was lurking in the aisles and decided that, despite the fact that she challenges John’s authority frequently and will readily argue with him despite the fact she is not even a college graduate yet, I had no right to refuse a command from him (which is not what I did) and came up to scold me about it, interrupting her own work to do so. This, however, was all for nothing, because when I asked Dee about it later she said she had already called and taken care of it! Essentially, even if I had done what John had suggested, I probably still would have gotten chewed out by Mo for stepping on Dee’s toes! That’s how she is! To be honest, I really love Dee; she is very motherly and caring and kind. I don’t know how her children ended up the way Courtney and Mo did. But that’s just one incident with Mo.

One incident that made me the angriest was a day probably within my first two or three weeks working at the pharmacy. That day was hectic; there was a long line of people waiting to get their medicine and I was the only person at the checkout counter. They were supposed to get completely new, modern system at the pharmacy at the beginning of April this year (2020), though because of the whole coronavirus thing that has gotten pushed back to who knows when. So what system were we using while I worked there? Practically everything is manual. The labels print out with barcodes, but we never use them because we don’t have a barcode scanner; everything has to be input manually, which is time consuming, and is not helped when there is a long line of customers. Furthermore, you quickly run out of bills and coins in the cash drawer. There is a little metal box that sits on one of the medicine shelves where we keep filled prescriptions awaiting pickup, but aside from that nobody had yet told me as of that point where you were meant to get more money. And that day, I ran out of pennies. Frantic, I asked the closest non-busy person where the pennies are: that person happened to be Mo, who was waiting for counterspace to fill some prescriptions of narcotics that she had from the back room. Any prayers or hopes that I had that she would respond reasonably must have fallen on deaf ears, because rather than helping me or at the very least telling me where to find the pennies, she instead yells (in front of the patrons, I might add), “Why are you asking ME??????”, indignant that I would ask her, the person meant to be in the back room, what to do rather than asking the other three techs who were swamped with work. I want to again clarify that Mo is the tech who has been there the longest and who, at the time, was NOT busy, as she was waiting on the other techs to give her space to fulfill her last task. Flustered and borderline panicked, I tried to figure out what I should do in order to ring out the woman at the counter, who was waiting for the remainder of her change which I could not provide. Mo eventually did show me where the pennies are, but by the time I got back to the counter the woman was tired of waiting and said it was fine and she didn’t mind losing a few pennies. I think it was the next customer that told me to take a breath and calm down, as I imagine I probably looked as I felt: like I was barely holding it together. Indeed, that is the only time in my entire professional career that I had been on the verge of tears because of something at work. I am normally very good at keeping my composure, but Mo had a way of blowing past people’s boundaries, both personal and professional, as though she had a right to treat people as badly as her little heart desired.

Happy FEST day, kids!

I am coming to you LIVE from the DePaul student center! I am a crew member and I am currently on duty right now. It is currently 7:46PM, and Brian, my boss, just let us know over the radio that if we pegged 7:42 for the first arrest of the night, we are the winner. He also just announced he’ll be staying by the east entrance, so I should have a good amount of time to type this out on the computer that’s labelled, “SC [Student Center] Use ONLY. No Web Browsing or Homework!” Oh well, what Joe doesn’t know won’t hurt him. I’m going to be done with school on the 9th, anyway. I don’t care if he fires me at this point. I’m out of here.

Okay, so, back to the story from last night. So like I had said, Buck* had just become a part of the CCM community in the second half of spring quarter freshman year, so she was relatively new. I think it was Sophomore year that she began to hang out late at night with a group of people from in there, like Ben and Andrew and Piere* (Ere/Air* for short) and some others, I’m not 100% sure who at this point in time. If I could change another thing, I wouldn’t change that she had spent time with them, but that I would have joined them. I think she might have invited me once, but I never went with them, probably because they mostly just went to Devil Dawgs which I couldn’t go to considering I was newly vegan. I think she did want me there, because at that point, as I said, she and I were each other’s best friend. I feel, though, that not being included in this part of her life made it simpler for her to divorce herself from me completely later on. Sophomore year was still pretty good otherwise, though.

One night, the Devil Dawgs gang was hanging out extra late, so Buck* asked everyone in the group if someone could put her up for the night. They all ignored her as though they hadn’t seen her message. How kind. I had to work that night, but I told her if she could wait until I got off then I could put her up at my place. I sent a group message to my roommates and two of them said they’d be fine with it. The third (the second random roommate, if you remember the story from before) never responded. Well, Buck* needed a place to stay, so I figured it would be best to just ask for forgiveness later if it upset her. So once I got off at 1AM Buck* and I walked to McCabe and I signed her in and we went upstairs and I put her up on the couch before going to my own bed. Before I fell asleep, the third roommate comes barreling in, her two friends in tow. All of them obnoxiously drunk. They were very loud and I had to move Buck* to my room due to their unannounced visit. I had to have her sleep on top of the covers of my other roommate’s bed. What got me is that she hadn’t even tried to let us know that they were all coming even though we had put that in our roommate rules. So essentially my having roommates made it much more difficult to host people because I couldn’t trust that everyone would stick to the rules we all agreed on. However, remember how I told you yesterday that Drisella* had her own room in Clifton-Fullerton again?

Well. Buck* actually ended up getting a job as a regular crew member, so she needed a place to stay. Since I had introduced her to Drisella*, they made plans that Buck* could stay with Drisella* on the regular, because Drisella* had no roommates to worry about notifying. By nature of this regular time spent together, the pair of them became very close to each other, and I realized only too late that they had become closer to each other than to me, though I suppose this may be partially my fault because Winter quarter that year was by far my worst academically because of a mix of orgo (word of advice: unless you are 110% sure and dead-set on becoming a medical doctor or a chemist, do NOT take organic chemistry! This is coming from someone who thought gen chem was easy- orgo exists to kill your spirit.) and my entry into the world of netflix, which I binged to my heart’s content. I spent most of my time in my dorm room watching The Secret Life of the American Teenager and Once Upon a Time, the latter of which became and continues to be my new obsession.

It was also around this time that we really met Hele*. I distinctly remember we had met her before, but I don’t truly remember her before the day I think Justice* brought her to the epiphany party. Justice* walked ahead with Drisella* and Buck*, and I followed with Hele*. I remember this moment distinctly. I said, “So how have you been?” and she looked me right in the face and sheepishly said, “Do you even remember my name?” and I was very taken aback by this. I think it is something of an unspoken rule that you do not ask this to people who sort of know you, especially if they’re being friendly, because we’ve all been there where you forget someone’s name, and we all do the same thing: we wait until someone else says their name, and then we make a point to remember after that so we don’t have another near miss, and if we’re the one whose name was forgotten we politely ignore it until they learn your name. In my case, I even let a girl who lived down the street from me call me Erica for years, though this was in part because I thought it was funny (sorry Jenna, haha). But no. It’s not even like Hele* had some very traditional foreign name to be proud of- she has the name of an old white lady, Helen*. She called me out anyway. I was embarrassed. I thought it was Melissa or something, but it turned out I had it mixed up with some other average looking white girl. Nonetheless, she spoke with me at the party as well as Buck* and Drisella*. She began to hang around CCM a lot more despite the fact she’s very much against Catholicism, which I would come to learn the following year. We all got to know her just a little bit better during that time, and she even came on Women’s Retreat, which was now a camping retreat like the men’s.

However, the closer she became to Buck* and Drisella*, the more she came to annoy them. See, Helen* was the type who liked to kiss and tell, and she wanted to have relationships with other girls who relished in gossip, too. Buck*, Drisella*, and I aren’t really like that, at least not on the same level she wanted to be on, because it was a bit more of a wannabe thing for her, though she seemed to have a “fake it ’til you make it” mindset. At that time, Buck*, Drisella*, and I weren’t really into that. I, for one, am demi-asexual, and I subscribe to a certain Catholic way of being which dictates that love should be grown organically from a friendship, not forced out of infatuation, so any relationship I may come to have will be slow to come and will be a slow-burn because I will really need any man (or woman or person of other gender outside of or in between that binary- I do currently identify as heteromantic but I have never explored this so who knows? Just God) who wants to be romantically involved with me to know my entire heart, and know all of me and know that all of me is what he wants, so that if we do get married I will feel safe allowing him to become one flesh with me and that he would also want to truly be one flesh with me, as God intended for us when he created humankind as we are. Buck* is a bit less intense about it than me, as she is still kinda boy-crazy and does kind of care more about boys who she is infatuated with (any boy who isn’t physically unattractive and is nice to her) than the friends who have been there for her by her side the entire time they’ve known her (I’m a little salty), but she still is pretty Catholic and believes in doing things the Catholic way, which is waiting until marriage to have sex. Drisella*… I think she has a very contorted understanding of relationships should work. I understand that she herself has a mental disability, but her understanding is odd at best and concerningly contorted at worst. She definitely sees potential SOs as objects, and I think even the boyfriend she has now she doesn’t completely see as a person; he’s very quiet. I can’t imagine dating someone who I would not feel comfortable disclosing my sexuality to, yet here she is, having a sexual relationship with a boy who she doesn’t trust enough to disclose her non-heterosexuality to (I’m not going to disclose her sexual identity and forcibly out her, but it stands to be said that she has one which she is afraid to come out about TO HER PARTNER). How romantic. I do not think that a relationship in which you are not fully trusting of the other person should exist. That is just a disaster waiting to happen. But she still does seem to believe in committed relationships. That much cannot be said for Helen*.

Helen* seems to want her life to be like an American high school drama series. Like a soap opera. She wanted to sleep around and kiss and tell and fight and cry and be über passionate (dramatic, in a theater sense) about all of it. As many of us know, that is the sensationalized view of life portrayed by the media, and she was eating it up wherever she could find crumbs of it. So when she caught wind that Drisella* was kindling what might potentially be a romance with another friend of ours, Helen* lunged at this information and practically begged Drisella* to give her all of the juicy details of it, from what Drisella* has told me. This, however, caused some panic for Drisella*, who was not completely sure how she felt yet. She didn’t want it to be a huge deal like Helen* was making it out to be (though I’ve since come to suspect it is also partially because he didn’t fit her image of her knight in shining armor), so she decided against dating him at all. In addition to this, apparently Helen* would constantly ask Buck* where she was hanging out, which Buck* hated. I can understand both sides on this one. On one hand, yeah, I can understand that it would be uncomfortable to have someone wanting to know where you are all of the time. On the other hand, I’ve been there, and Buck* herself has put me into a position of feeling a need to know where she and all of my other friends are because I am being left out. I understand fighting to not be left behind and forgotten, or even worse, being left behind intentionally. I get it. Buck* doesn’t seem to, and neither does Drisella, so near the end of the year I innocuously asked Buck* where she was over facebook messenger and was met with mean backlash by Drisella*, who was manning Buck’s* phone because she was the passenger in the car. She told me that I was bothering them and that Buck* was angry with me for asking. This upset me greatly and I cried, because ouch, all I did was ask where she was and suddenly I am a terrible burden who deserves Drisella’s verbal abuse?

I didn’t. And I don’t. And I feel very stupid for not being able to stop her from putting me in a position of being abused by someone again. As much as she thinks she does, she has no right.

It is the end of the night now. I might work on this a bit tomorrow while I’m working at 826. Come visit, if you’re so inclined. All proceeds go back into the non-profit tutoring program to keep it free, so you’ll be doing a good deed by buying the taco-printed socks you’ve always wanted, you saucy millennial. Until then, keep it real kids. You don’t have to sugarcoat the truth, but it doesn’t have to be cold and hard, either. Be kind. Use “I” statements. Love one another.

A demain,

Cara

Hello blog I forgot about for a very long time,

Lots to mind dump. I still don’t have a therapist although I likely could very much use one. However, I feel that honestly the biggest contributor to my current depression is my struggle to find people in my community who I can depend on, who care. This is where many of my grievances lie, so this will likely be a long blog post unless I get too tired to finish, but I have my doubts that that will happen. So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn and probably some hot tea because this is about to get juicy. My biggest question, though, should you feel inclined to help me out, is whether or not a therapist would even be able to help me find good friendships with people who are willing to be close to me. Also, just in case someone DOES happen upon this, I will be changing names of my DePaul colleages in a manner which I think is relevant and makes sense to me. I’ll put an asterisk next to their names, but they should be relatively easy to tell).

Essentially, there has been a pattern throughout my life in which I become friends with a person, become close-ish to them (close to me, idk about them now, as Drisella* has planted that seed of doubt with her gaslighting), but then right when I begin thinking we’re going to have a strong, lasting bond of friendship, they fade away, sometimes even literally ghosting me. This happened with Brooke, this happened with Rachel, this happened with Amanda, this has probably happened with some others who don’t stick out as much, and now this is being done to me by Buck*. And it is super fucking frustrating. I’ve gotten it into my head that I am cursed, because I have tried many different things but I always get the same outcome: they ghost me and wait for me to fuck up, then use my fuck-up as an excuse to bail, and bail in the meanest way they can. Perhaps I just have a tendency to make friends exclusively with mentally/emotionally abusive people, but if that’s true it is bullshit; it’s not even remotely fair. I come from a past of abuse, and I know that I will not be able to completely heal from that until I get some therapy, but like how cruel is it that if because of that I just keep cycling through friendships with people who will just chew me up and spit me out while everybody else gets to have healthy, close, positive relationships without even trying? Why? This question keeps following me through life like a sinister shadow, haunting me , overtaking me on dark, lonely nights when I am left alone with my thoughts, which is far too often. I dream of one day having a group of people who truly care for me and want the best for me, and who would be willing to be there for me, and who want me around, who think of me as part of their group, who cherish me as a friend, who like spending time with me, who think of me when they want to spend time with someone, who will include me, and who I would do all of these things for in a heartbeat. And perhaps the people who hurt me are somehow cruelly preying on this. It does tend to go south only after I introduce them to my other friends. So I lie awake terrorized by thoughts and haunted by questions, wondering if they’ve all been plotting against me and if they secretly hate me. The former is obviously absurd. I wonder ceaselessly about the latter.

Thus, the grievances. First, with myself. I won’t go into my haunted, twisted, contorted psyche, but I know that I have done things wrong and I am far from perfect. I know that, although undiagnosed, I am afflicted with mental illness which could be distorting my view of these matters to a certain extent. I might even be guilty of some of the things I will be accusing others of, making myself a bit of a hypocrite. But these things I am willing, albeit ashamedly, to admit. I’m not sure I could say as much for some of the people I will be discussing below. But I have the humility to admit that I have done things I shouldn’t have and haven’t done things I should, and should it come up then I will discuss it.

So I suppose there are many different places to start off from, and I am now getting the feeling I will NOT finish this story in one sitting, but I’ll get through as much as I can. Drisella* and I were both lonely and desperately seeking friendship, and we became friends with each other. I joined up with a bunch of organizations, she joined up with none, and I could probably count the friends she had freshman year on one hand, whereas I can’t even remember meeting everyone I did freshman year, which was made very apparent to me when her current “boyfriend” Dean* pointed out that he had also been on the Freshman Connection Retreat freshman year.  Drisella* and I hung out a lot freshman year, which she now says was not as often as I remember (though I think that is another way of her trying to gaslight me). Additionally, I had an eating disorder which she either blatantly ignored or was too self-absorbed to notice, whereas Erin noticed it very quickly after I moved in at the beginning of winter quarter that year, despite us not being remotely close. I say Erin’s name straight up because I feel she deserves a mention. She and I were not close and I always felt like a stranger in that room and I was worried she secretly hated me (though I don’t think that’s true), but I think that Erin is a good person who is caring and compassionate, although I tell people that I was incredibly intimidated by and afraid of her despite the fact she is half my current size (I say this because I was afraid of her. She had an intimidating demeanor. I’m still afraid of her but I do believe she is a great person). Anyway. Drisella* somehow didn’t notice this, or if she did she didn’t care to mention it (care at all). I joined many different organizations and tried to connect with many different people on some level, but I was so concerned with my eating and my image that I think I missed out on some great friendship opportunities, especially the one I could specifically have had with Joseph*. If I could go back, I would have done it differently. I would have invited Joseph* to come hang out in the Belden study room while I still lived there; he lived just over in Munroe. I was a clueless, scared, lost little freshman, and I wish I would have known that pursuing those popular types would never lead anywhere. I wonder how they could always tell I wasn’t going to be one of the cool kids.

I made some friends that year who I got sort of close with but none as close as Drisella*. She and I had classes together every quarter, so we would sit next to each other up in front. This did not make things much easier for her, though, and she ended up flunking enough courses that she has to be here an extra year, though she says it is because she changed her major. Sure, that’s part of it, but I know the whole truth, Drisella*. I also know she lies about things, most notably sleeping through one of our finals winter quarter of that year. I tried getting ahold of her when the final was starting, but she didn’t pick up. I couldn’t do anything more for her. She contacted me later and let me know that she slept right through the exam, but later on she told me it was because she had a migraine. This obviously confused me because she had told me she slept through it initially. I asked her about it, and she added that the migraine had happened in the wee hours of the morning, and that because of it she had slept through her final once she got back to sleep. What gets me is that I’m not a snitch, so I don’t know why she was bothering to lie about it. I still won’t because I’m not enough of a sociopath to ruin her college career even though she’s being horrible to me. Why? Because I’m not horrible, despite what she’d have you think now. But let’s move on.

It was nearly the end of our freshman year when I met Buck*. Buck* was a commuter student who was even lonelier than me. The moment I began talking to her in the CCM office before the Women’s retreat that year (before it was a camping retreat), we virtually did not stop until we both had to go home the next day. Within weeks she and I had become two peas in a pod. It was great. And while I’m at it I’d like to throw a callout at housing services for by far being the absolute shittiest branch of the school. Fuck you guys, you are a huge part of my problems. Here’s what went down with housing: First of all, bitches, y’all had been sitting on that permanent room since winter break, yet you couldn’t have let me, Sam, and Angelica know until we had already settled in? I moved my desk and everything. Then literally the Wednesday after we moved back in I was hanging out in Drisella’s* room and I get an email that says, “You got a new room! Congratulations! Move out by Sunday. We will provide you no assistance and we will not open the elevator for you so you and your mother whose knees are shot get to carry everything up the stairs :)”. Wow! How efficient! On top of that, and I blame myself partly for this, but you forced Buck* to pay you for an entire quarter’s rent in McCabe despite the fact that she had never lived there because she forgot to cancel the 4-weeks housing she had requested. What a dick move. But the worst you did was screwing me over with the housing signups for housing sophomore year. Drisella* was originally going to room with two other girls, but because there were no 3-person rooms in centennial they decided to give her the boot and just room with each other, whereas when the same happened to me Ethel and I decided to go with a 4-person room and get a random 4th roommate. Now, here’s the thing about the room signups: you CAN change it, but you have to be absurdly specific about what you’re asking for. They gave us flyers that said you can do “room reassignments.” You MUST SPECIFICALLY ask for a ROOM REASSIGNMENT or the SMUG, SNOOTY bitch woman who works in housing services will do all that she can to prevent you from getting the room reassigned. Drisella* asked if she could be in our room given the circumstances. I remembered that room reassignment was a thing and I told her of course she could be in our room. If things had gone THE WAY THEY WERE SUPPOSED FUCKING TO, I think my life might have turned out differently, but no. So Drisella* and I go back to the signups and I ask if she can switch to our room. But I did not specifically say the words “room reassignment,” so we were forced to wait forever just to get up to the lady who told us we were asking for something very difficult and impossible and which would cost us all $1000 each because we’d all have to cancel our housing and sign up for different rooms. She told us to come back during the lunch break. Lunch break comes, they won’t let us in because they’re having lunch. Drisella* has to go to class so she fills out a proxy form so I can make decisions on her behalf. So I wait in the line again and when I get up to smug bitch-lady she won’t let me use the proxy form because Drisella didn’t circle her building preferences, which she hadn’t felt the need to do considering she was going to be moving into a room we already had in McCabe! So I had to go pull her out of class, and when we got back I actually said the words “room reassignment” to the dude who was in charge of the line, so he let us streamline and skip the waiting and go over to smug bitch lady, who smirks and says “Awe, too late, I already made sure to give the extra bed to someone else!” That woman was so rude. The WORST, though, is that halfway through the summer our rando roomie cancelled her room so it was effing pointless anyway! Housing services sucks and is inefficient and unhelpful, and also there were a LOT of spiders in that room in McCabe. Their rules were stifling, they’re all bad at their jobs, they’re shady, and I know the school is gutting a lot of employees this summer so I’m hoping that for the sake of future students who will have to live on campus that at the very least smug bitch lady will be replaced with someone who is actually willing to be a decent human being.

Anyway, my thing is that if Drisella* and I had successfully moved her into my room for the following school year, I think things right now would be a lot different. Instead, here is how things went down: Drisella* got her own room in the freshman dorm again, I help her pack up, we all go home for the summer. It was a very nice summer. I was newly vegan, having used it as a tool to break off of my eating disorder, and I was living the healthiest lifestyle I ever had. I drove myself to Evangelical Training Camp (ETC) and had an absolute blast with the group of people I was there with. I felt so in tune with and close to them during that time. We returned to school, and after a few days I started feeling the best that I can remember feeling in my entire life. I was on top of my school work, I was on a spiritual high, I had good friends and a good community, everything was looking up. Buck* and I still were two peas in a pod, and I tried my darnedest to convince Drisella* to join me in CCM, which she was adamantly avoiding doing. Joseph* and I had just begun co-leading a small group with another boy, Rafael*. During that time, I felt so at peace. It was the best time in my life thus far. I tried to go even further and rid myself of my worst habits (they’ve since become worse, not due to my efforts to break them off). I began working at the student center, so I actually had an income. Drisella* finally gave in and walked past the threshold of CCM, which has arguably been the best decision she’s made in her entire college career. I introduced her to Buck*, and I wanted us to be the three musketeers. The three of us became our own little squad, with me being in the center of it. It was wonderful. But it was doomed.

Joseph* confided in me that he was going to take a romantic risk and promised that he would tell me if it went well. I was a young fool and thought he was going to ask me out. Well, that’s not what happened, and he asked someone else, which is completely fine, except he never told me like he had promised to and I had to find out from someone else that he had begun dating someone. He also hurt the feelings of our friend Jessica* in the process, because he is also not the brightest and he said to her, “well, I didn’t think you and I were that close that I should have told you about it.” She had had a bit of a crush on him, so with that statement he kind of crushed her, and soon she made the decision to leave our community and her job in the office, which left me frustrated because I had applied and interviewed for the same job and they had chosen her over me, and look where that got them! I’m still a bit salty about that; they should have just hired me in the first place, and that also would have made things different in my life, but I digress.  Rafael*, too, began dating someone, a leader of a different small group. Again, fine, except they began flaking out on leading small group to instead be alone with each other and wouldn’t even answer my texts asking what the plan was for our small group meetings. They straight up lied once, too, and said they “forgot” that we were having small group. We do it every week. You didn’t forget. I somehow was able to hold out and carry the small group through the rest of the quarter, but because all of my other co-leaders had either flaked out or couldn’t do it anymore (such as Joseph’s case), our small group was done for the year and did not return winter quarter. I was angry at all of them for doing me so dirty like this.

There’s more to tell, but it’s 3 AM and I am tired so I will leave it like that. Maybe I’ll get back to it in the morning, but I’m leaving it off here. I’ll try to remember the big CCMer group that Buck* was a part of and how close she and Drisella* became without me. But I will let you know it is all downhill from here. It has gotten worse and thus far has not gotten better. There are some happy moments, but altogether life is worse, which is evidenced by my current state of depression. I’ll try to dish more dirt tomorrow. Peace out, kids, and don’t be sluts.

Love, Cara

Apparently, this automatically puts up your first blog post for you with instructions to edit or delete it. Huh. I am editing it.

For anyone who doesn’t know me, I’m a senior majoring in Health Sciences and minoring in community service and food studies. I want to do public health work with a focus on Nutrition when I’m done with school. Where do I begin with that? I have no idea.

I haven’t decided whether or not to go for my master’s. I will need to bring my grades up a bit before I’m even eligible.

I am a part of Catholic Campus Ministry and all of my closest friends and most of any of my friends are also a part of it. This is because the office is able to provide a very strong and tightly knit community which is not so readily available in other places on campus. But I am not against having friends from other places, I in fact welcome them! I would like to have more and closer friendships because I am insecure in the ones I have 🙂 Why? I don’t know. Maybe I should be. Maybe it’s just what I’ve learned. But I feel like I should be closer to people and I am not which is very disappointing.

Side note, if anyone DOES read this and that someone knows how to get good yet inexpensive psychotherapy in the city please let me know. I would go to the counseling office but I have been told by trusted sources that they are unhelpful. Bonus for the therapist- I have already done a lot of introspection and have basically done half of the work for them, I just need help with the other half because I definitely cannot do it on my own or else I would have already. However, I am very good at compartmentalizing, so I will be fine for now 🙂

I should probably take a shower soon. I have 1 class today at 1:00 and I have a LOT of homework to get done, most of which is late. I also have to work at 5 so I’m in a bit of a time crunch, but I am a procrastinator so that’s why I am still on here, although if you are a future employer it is okay because I do not procrastinate on my actual work! I get it done very promptly. I had an office job over the summer and I finished everything in almost 1/3 of the time I was expected to. Just tell me what to do and give me a good amount of time which takes into consideration everything else I must do and I will be very good at it. I am just not good at getting all of the work done for a class which gives work as if they are my only class for the quarter. No, Craig, the average student here is a human who has 3 other classes! You cannot operate as though we are robots who live for your class, and frankly someone who is that self-righteous should NOT be teaching an ethics course. Anyway, for the future employer, you can ask any of my current or past employers. I might have made small mistakes once or twice, but I got right back on track and did a very good job.

I just remembered I have to fill out my performance review because Brian said I’m due for a raise. So I’ll go take my shower and then go to class and do everything else and compartmentalize my anxiety so… it’s a day.

Godspeed,

Cara