Dear Diary
I had a very vivid dream this morning.
I was at the house of a former lover.
I have never been to this man’s house in real life, and the relationship with him was over a very, very, very long time ago. So, although I thought, at first, that the dream was about me and him, it wasn’t.
All you misguided romantics out there who think that there is some kind of love that should be rekindled… chill. That's not what's going on here.
Anyway.
Let’s call him Bob.
Bob’s wife was there.
She knew about us and she was furious that I was in their home. I totally got where she was coming from. In her shoes, I wouldn’t have liked it much, either.
A young, single mistress is not what you need in your face at dinner time.
What the wife represented was a sense of threat.
I kept waiting for her to explode, to attack me. At one point, she was holding a dominatrix whip, which I thought was simultaneously scary and amusing, because of what it said about their sex life.
Their children were also in the house.
I remember a little girl looking at us, trying to understand. I felt sorry for her, but she wasn’t really my concern and, if the wife would just let me talk to Bob for five minutes like I wanted to, I’d leave and it would all be over and the kid wouldn’t have to see any of it. The very fact that the wife was MAKING a scene had involved the child, which irritated me.
There were three African American boys in the house. Stoic and quiet, they were foster children and they just sat at the dining room table, ignoring the fracas, eating their dinner. I felt sorry for them too. They seemed to be grateful to have a nice home to live in, and would put up with anything, holding their tongues, not causing any trouble.
Meanwhile I was trying to talk to Bob, to say goodbye.
This was the end of our relationship and I was never going to see him again. I just want to talk to him for five minutes alone to end it, once and for all.
The wife kept asking me to leave, so I walked out of the house without being able to talk to Bob.
As I left, I looked back, and he was wearing a soccer shirt. Soccer is something we used to share and, by doing this, he was telling me that there was hope that our relationship will continue.
So I walked away, with closure unresolved.
It didn't feel good. I wanted it to end... or did I?
What does this all mean?
Well, I thought about it on my journey to work today and, sadly, it’s not a romantic thing. It’s not even a personal drama thing.
It’s a work thing.
This is about getting a promotion.
The young daughter, trying to understand what is going on, represents my colleagues. My boss solicited their opinions on my potential promotion without asking or telling me, and so brought them into the drama in a way that was, I feel, in appropriate.
My boss is the wife, yelling at me.
She told me that I can throw my hat into the ring for the promotion, but there are no guarantees. In fact, she has expressed some doubts about me. Mostly she talked about the way I express myself… that I’m too direct and use phrases that aren’t PC enough.
Unfortunately, looking and sounding like a WASP doesn’t help me in America. People forget that I am foreign, and they don’t make allowances. Where I come from, the way I speak is the way everybody speaks. I lived there for the first 28 years of my life. I try to moderate my expressions, adapt my style, but it’s hard. I’m still working on it.
Also, my directness, openness and sense of humor are a big part of who I am. By asking me to moderate my self-expression, there is a part of me that fears that my personality will be stifled completely. THAT is what Bob represents.
He represents a time in my life when I was young, way down the corporate totem pole, footloose and fancy-free, crazy without consequences, embracing emotion with abandon.
And I have to say goodbye to Bob.
I have to stop making jokes, asking questions in a challenging way, expressing my opinion strongly.
The foster children are what I am afraid of becoming. Sitting quietly while everything goes on around them, not saying a word, just grateful to be safe, to have a home. Part of me wonders if I should capitulate. Be grateful to have a job.
But then there’s Bob, wearing the soccer shirt, standing in the window.
Because I can’t say goodbye to who I am.
I am funny. I am sarcastic. I am witty.
I am warm. I am open. I care about people I work with, in a personal way.
I am intelligent and brave. If something isn't right, and it's affecting our business in a negative way, I not only see it, I ask questions about it... I expose it.
So how do I walk away from Bob – this presence in my life that is inappropriate, that is causing trouble for me, that has the woman of the house (my boss) yelling at me and is part of creating a whole situation scaring the children (my colleagues)?
I don’t know.
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