You know you're in a bad situation when you come home from work, and the only thing you can think to yourself is Thank god I'm finally home where I am safe, and Do I really have to go back tomorrow? It's sad, in a way. I used to love my job. I loved the money, the thrill, the rush when something went right used to flush my face and give me momentum into the next project.

I'm in a situation where I was not set up to win, and all I can do is barely keep afloat. I keep trying to put positive spins on situations, but when I add everything up, the position I'm in right now makes me want to go to the bottle so I can drink the day out of my mind. I don't go to the bottle, so instead I come home, go upstairs, and sit on the computer playing mindless games as if they provided some sort of escape. I think the worst part of this is that I'm stuck. I've been cornered and am clawing at the walls for a way out.

There's no where for me to go. I won't say my industry is completely sexist, but there is some of that element in the workplace. I'm in the situation where I'm also working with people who have children my age, and I can see them thinking to themselves one of two scenarios.

1. What on Earth is she doing here?
2. God, I'm old.

I see it in their eyes, but when I try to articulate that I'm completely aware that I know they're thinking that, I get called incompetent.

I love that word. In-com-pe-tent. It says so much about the way people think. It's not that I'm not enabled, it's that I'm unable to do the job and shouldn't be here. It should moreso be UNcompetent, the lack thereof of competence, but instead "in" is the suffix someone at Webster's or Rogert's decided. The word is a complete oxymoron, almost like myself. So when I see these people think that, that and that I somehow don't care, it's laughable.

I care too much, but no one sees that. Every comment, every stab at my back, hurts more and more. I equate the feeling with that same way you feel when someone pulls you aside for the talk. Your relationship is ending, you know it, they know it, there's no way out of this conversation. It makes your stomach turn; you're a little nauseated and taste the saliva thickening at the back of your throat. You're not good enough. You do something wrong. That calendar invite you sent out was mis-formatted. How careless of you. It's the final straw.

Over time, these perceived careless acts amount to a bag of acts and misdeed with which they stone you. It just compounds over time, and though you try and you try to get things right for just once... Alas, the deck is stacked against you in this game, every single round, every bet, every stay, and all you can do it sit there and take it. Hold back your tears, the relationship is headed to it's end. You can beg for pity, for redemption, but that will only go so far.

In every relationship, work requires two people, sometimes more. Right now, I'm caught in the middle of a love triangle. Well, more a hate triangle. Everyone is trying to get a piece of the action and they don't care who they strike down or how they do it. You hear things through other people, your supposed bedfellows... and they just don't add up to what you heard first hand. Nice to your face, schemers behind your back- it never ends.

So now I'm home, and my first husband has come home from his job. He doesn't feel like I do about work. He holds no passion, no drive, no desire to do well and be rewarded. It's just a job for him, and I am his wife. Sure, it makes him angry sometimes... but it doesn't strike him in the heart and soul. I wish I were more like my husband, and able to just think of it as just a job.