"Stop! You haven't even heard the whole story yet!" I'm close to shouting. My mother, on my computer screen, is theatrically rolling her eyes and throwing her hands in the air in pantomime of, well, me, I guess.

It makes me angry. So angry. I hate how she jumps straight from perfectly normal to aggressive, to angry, to telling me I-told-you-so.

I try to tell her the story, the conversation I had at work, how the secretary (or She-Who-Knows-All, which is a more appropriate title) told me it was too late to ask for a raise, to ask for an upgrade, even though I didn't know there was a deadline. I was very disappointed. I was still planning on talking to my boss, but I was a bit crushed by the conversation. I wanted to share this experience with my mother, maybe to get some advice.

Instead I get this.

I don't get more than a couple sentences into the story and my mother is rolling her eyes and throwing up her hands in mock helplessness.

"I told you so, I told you so!" she snaps when I try to get her to stop. "I told you months ago you should ask for more!"

She doesn't understand. She doesn't understand this tenuous, terrifying industry. It's struggle, it's scrabble. How you can be fired ('laid off') with a week's notice and no reason. How there's always someone behind you willing to do it faster for cheaper and with a bigger smile. She doesn't appreciate how hard I've worked at changing myself so I can succeed. And I AM succeeding. Maybe not as fast or as far as I want, but by god, I am SUCCEEDING. I am one of the last from my graduating class. Almost all the rest have dropped out of the industry because it's just too hard.

"You don't understand this industry!" I shout. I just want her to stop, to listen to me. Not just to listen, but to empathize, to understand. To talk with careful consideration instead of all this, this theatrics.

But she doesn't.

"I do understand!" she insists. Her eyebrows drop. It's one of her anger signals.

"No you DON'T!"

"I do understand!" she pushes. She licks her bottom lip hard, another anger signal. "You always dismiss my advice out of hand! I have a good brain!"

She does, but her advice is usually pretty shit, so I don't follow it. Or sometimes her advice is good, but I get so wrapped in my net of social and professional anxiety, I don't follow it, and get another rounds of I-Told-You-So. My mother does not wrestle with anxiety or self-doubt. She doesn't understand it.

I drive her crazy.

~

I grab some scraps of wood and screw them over the rat holes in the walls of the cafeteria. More and more holes keep appearing. We have to throw out food when the rats find ways to climb and get into the cereal, the bread for toast.

It's hard to believe I'm working for one of the biggest companies in the world, on one of the biggest franchises.

~

"Let's talk about something else--" I say firmly, loudly.

"No, we're going to talk about this." I wonder if she knows she licks her bottom lip when she's angry. I wonder what my signals are.

My chest is hot. My eyeballs feel like they're coals in my skull. I want to talk about anything else, anything.

My brain feels disconnected from reality. It feels battered. I feel like I'm fifteen again.

~

I'm left alone to work. I like it. I'm sitting in a sea can, dragging huge silicone and MDF moulds off the shelves, numbering them, logging them, and then crating them in a big crate I've dragged up to the door of the sea can.

I can listen to podcasts, and be total anal with my paperwork.

It's alright. It's not very exciting, but it's alright. I like being left alone with whole tasks.

I like being trusted.

~

"Let's talk about something else," I say loudly and firmly. "NOW."

"Fine," my mother says. She's almost spitting.

I'm silent.

My eyes are red. I can see them in the little picture of myself. My face is so white. Unusually white. White and red.

"Well," my mother starts, and launches headlong into a story about my sister in law.

She is perfectly calm now.

The storm is passed.

She makes a joke, laughs.

I'm silent.

I can't laugh.

I am so close to tears. My teeth hurt from clenching them.

My mother asks me some questions.

I give one word answers. It's all I can squeeze out. My tongue feels thick and doesn't want to work for me.

She knows I'm upset. She can feel it.

It's making her impatient. I can tell, by the way her eyes thin a little and her mouth flashes to a line, just for a fraction of a second. Her words come out sharper.

Which in turn upsets me more. Why should she be angry that I am upset over the things she said?

If someone decides you've hurt them, it's not up to you to decide you didn't.

~

"Let's go out again," I write. It's the guy I went out with, the black fellow.

We've been writing. He's pretty funny.

I watch 50 Shades while I'm cleaning my room. It's pretty insulting, but the props are good (YOU KNOW WHAT I'M TALKIN' ABOOT, EH). I call my friend Lisa and quiz her on the props team. She tells me who did all the leather work, a guy we both know, and it doesn't surprise me at all. He apparently also coached the lead. That would, indeed, explain why his technique wasn't total shit.

Too bad it was such a shit movie. But are we really surprised?

They show us raw footage at work. It looks really amazing. It feels real, just for a moment. Then we'll go back to rat holes and freezing sea cans. But for a moment it feels totally real.

~

I'm so angry. I feel full of it, full of hot, crushing anger.

I don't think I can not cry, but I know the tears will just make her angry. Weakness, or something, or maybe she doesn't like to be reminded of the words she said.

I tilt the camera down so it cuts off just my eyes.

It lasts a sentence or two, then:

"Are you doing something else?" she asks. She's all mock confusion.

"No," I say tightly. I don't trust myself with more words.

"What's wrong with your camera, then?"

"I just tilted it down," I say.

"I can't see you properly," she says. She almost sounds like she's whining a little bit. I hate it. I hate her so much right now I can hardly breathe.

I tilt the camera back up.

"That's better," she says, cheerfully. It feels plastic. It feels like plastic that smells of fake strawberry, like girl's toys are sometimes made of. It makes me sick. "Anyway--"

"I gotta go," I say.

"What?" she says. "Oh. Okay."

She knows why. She ignores it. She doesn't apologize. She never will. Ever. She has, to my memory, apologized only once to me.

"Okay, bye," I say, and I hang up.

I hate her so, so much, it consumes me. It eats me from the inside out, like my intestine has become a snake, and scrapes out the cavity of my body, leaving nothing but a dry and bitter husk.

I lay on my bed and cry, and cry, and call my best friend.

I love her, my best friend. She tells me hard things when hard things need to be told, and she tells me everyone are bitches and I'm amazing when I need that too.

Sometimes ears are all that's needed. Sometimes mouths. Sometimes hands.

~

I go to the boss' office Monday morning.

"So," I begin, clenching my hands to keep them from shaking.

When the conversation is over he promises to look into upping my weekly wage by a full %30. No promises, but he doesn't dick around. If it wasn't a possibility, he'd tell me outright no.

I have hope. I leave with my fingers crossed.

I message my best friend the news, although it's the middle of the night where she is. When she wakes up she tells me I'm amazing and everyone are bitches.

~

Lisa messages me: "For what it's worth, I'm really proud of you."

I love her too.

I am blessed with the best of friends.

My mother emails me. No apology, no empathy, just home-town gossip.

I don't reply.

.

Rosie.

Before&After