“You have been doing a fantastic job, no one could have done this but you.”
“This project is only being held together by you, you know. You are the one that is keeping things moving.”
“In my ten years-“
“In my seven years-“
“In my twenty years-“
“-of managing a project I have never seen anyone handle as challenging a project as this one and succeed as you have. Ever.”
And with each of these words, it’s little slices of agony.
In the past two days I have been told more accolades than twenty Monaco trips’ worth, and yet each time I hear it I want to put my hands to my ears and scream. It’s like hearing little karmic razor blades raining around my face and neck, and I want to put a helmet on my head and protect my brain from thinking anything remotely positive about myself. I am not positive. I am not worthy. I go home and cry at night from the sheer stress, I fall to pieces inside when people ask me to decide issues that affect my project and that affect the future of my company.
Above all, I want to look at them and scream: Are you fucking kidding me? I got laid off! That's right! I am fucking worthless to any company and I lost my fucking job once. You think I am not scared of falling again? Well I am! Don't say nice things to me, don't say nice things about me, I have no right to them as I lost my goddamn job almost two years ago! Do you understand? I can't get on a ladder as I can't be unprepared to fall again!
Walking around the location of the demo on Monday night in my business suit, I was so utterly and completely stunned that my rocket mis-fired. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t understand how it was possible that my baby, my rocket, this single greatest source of effort and hope could fail.
Luckily, it didn’t fail in front of the board.
But it did fail in front of Third in Charge.
Third in Charge asked me to stand up and speak to the board, to explain my lovely rocket, to tell them how it works and my thoughts on it, on how the project was going, on our visions of the future. And in this small task, I swore I would not let him down.
I would not let him down, even if I had let myself down.
After many hours late into the night of rocket practice, I finally allowed myself to be led into the room I would be staying in that night. A kind man with a round pumpkin head led me up two flights of stairs.
“I’m sorry, Helen, but you’re in the attic, in the former servant’s quarters.” He said apologetically, leading me around the house built in the 1600’s. Servants quarters? I don’t mind. Fitting, really.
When we got there, he opened the door. It may be the servant's quarters attic, but my room was larger than the home that Angus and I live in. A five hundred year-old four-poster bed dominated the middle of the room, flanked by a Georgian writing desk and an Edwardian cedar chest. The man led me to my bathroom, which was a whole other room within my room, a room which was down some steps. I walked into a completely modernized bathroom larger than my entire downstairs, with an enormous Jacuzzi bath so long I couldn’t even lay out and touch the sides, a TV, and an enormous walk-in shower with taps from 1922 and rain bars all down the sides, so a shower would be equal to a waterfall.
It was possibly the poshest room I have ever stayed in in the short history of my life so far.
I asked him if he could provide me with some wine, and with a Lush bubble bar I sunk into the Jacuzzi bath with wine and “ER”. I lit the candles that were provided on the side of the tub. From time to time I looked out the windows in the bathroom, at the dark and misty gardens that seemed to stretch on for miles below.
I slept fitfully, the wooden shutters thrown open, the ghosts too busy trying to sort their lives out to stop and help keep the duvet on me, too busy walking the hallways to rest a fellow troubled soul.
The next morning the "good luck" text messages start coming in early from my team. I had only told a few of them that the demo had been pulled, as I knew that they had been working hard on this, too, and I didn't want to depress them as well. I get in front of the board and, in my black business suit and armed with my hopeful dreams, I explain how my rocket works. I get many questions from men as calm and kind as my neighbor, and I answer them and try to insert enthusiasm about my gerbils at the same time.
Later that day, Third in Charge calls me and tells me I did a wonderful job. He also tells me that next week I will be demonstrating my rocket to the CEO of Dream Job, and two weeks after that he and I are off to show the rocket to a CEO of another company, one I'm pretty sure you’ve heard of. Not only that, but the board liked me and that I have to go back next month and present my rocket to them again, and this time I'll once more have to actually launch it. I am told that one of the board members is in Parliament as well, and leads a “new talent” program that he suggested I be a candidate for.
And through it all, I am petrified and not worthy.
Tuesday I leave the board demo and go to another work location to keep working. The project issues are coming fast and furious for me now, and I sometimes don’t even have time to catch my breath before the next horror or decision comes along, sometimes to the tune of decisions that reach into millions of pounds. By the time I get home to Angus, I am a wreck. He welcomes me into the house, carrying my bags and telling me that everything is ok.
But I am crying, and the tears just do not stop.
He has a bath drawn for me, complete with candles and a glass of wine. I slide into the bathtub, grateful to get away. He makes me dinner. He takes care of me. He loves me and helps me, but no matter how perfect he is, he can’t keep the morning from coming.
Wednesday was a trip into London to go over the rocket’s time plans. A four hour meeting over hundreds of lines of Microsoft Project turns into a battle. It is a fraught meeting strung with tension and struggle for the future. At one point, someone disagrees with one of my decisions.
“Jeff would never stand for this. He’d throw a tantrum and get this done!” yells the man.
I feel every fiber of my body stiffen. I am immediately outside of myself, looking in from the doorway. Everyone in the room freezes and looks at me. I watch myself turn my head up to look at the man.
”Jeff isn’t here. But I am, and this is the only option. I am doing what I think is right for the project and what is right for the rocket. This is the way it is, and I am sorry that you don’t agree with it, but there is no alternative on this one. We really do have to do it this way.”
I watch myself, wondering how it is that my neck looks so long, that my eyes have such dark rings under them. I watch my eyebrows lean in and my eyes narrow. I watch people stare at me while keeping their heads down. I realize that they are afraid of me.
“The next person who compares me to Jeff again will be on my shit list for life.” I swear. The guy apologizes, but not before the wind has blown out of my sails. Leaning against the doorframe, I watch myself for a long while before I let myself back in. I am amazed that I look so tired and so defeated.
Jeff comes back next week, and I am terrified about that, too.
After the meeting we all go to a pub. The drinks are flowing, and the project managers and I are talking merrily, playing with a new mobile phone that one of the guys has given me. The new admin, a cute blond named Karen, leans in to me.
“Helen, can I ask how old you are?” she asks.
”Sure, Karen. I just turned 31.” I say, swilling my white wine.
”Ohmigod!” she shrieks. “I thought you were in your late twenties!”
“I’m flattered, Karen, but nope. I’m 31. You?”
”I’m 24.” She rushes breathlessly. “You know? I was told to be careful around you. That you are very, very strong and very intimidating.”
”Really?” I ask. I turn to two of the guys near me. “Is that so? Are you guys scared of me?”
One of the guys swigs back a gulp of his pint. “Not scared, no. Intimidated, sometimes. You’re a pretty tough chick. We all really, really like you, but it’s true that we definitely don’t want to make you angry.”
”But you don’t make me angry.” I reply. I am confused. "Do you really think that I'm that tough?”
”Absolutely,” interjects the other one. “You know what you want done and we are anxious to make sure that it gets done. You are always so in control.”
Karen looks at me. “I’m not scared of you. But I swear you’re my role model. I want to be just like you in business, like with the snappy comebacks and the decision making. I want people to be intimidated by me. Maybe you can teach me!”
She swigs back her vodka tonic, and all at once I am older than I have ever been in my life. I am someone’s role model for a person I am not. I am not strong. I am not intimidating. I am fucking chaos inside. The pub session turns out to be very deep indeed, with people talking about the project and how hard it's been, but how glad they are that things are moving forward, how much they like the team.
Later at Waterloo, Ron and I are waiting for our trains and eating Cornish pasties. I tell him how weird it was for me that Karen wants me as her role model. I can't be a role model-I got laid off. Role models don't get laid off. I tell him how I don't understand why people are intimidated by me, that although I may seem in control, I'm often not.
”Helen, you sell yourself short.” He says briefly, sinking his teeth into his Cornish pasty. “You are fucking great at this job. You just need to believe in yourself.”
I brush pasty from my mouth and watch Ron catch his train home to his fiancée and baby.
And when I get on the train I spend my time crying, as I simply have no idea who I am or how I am surviving doing what I am doing. From time to time the shadows behind the window reveal a pale reflection of myself, and the dark shadows on my face make me think of someone who is much older than I am, much more fraught that I thought I could be. I have a 24 year-old thinking of me as her role model, when the truth is she couldn’t have picked a worse choice. I’m fucking crazy. I’m scared.
I have no idea how I wound up here.
And I have no idea how to escape it, either.
- H.
Posted by Everydaystranger at April 28, 2005 08:07 AM | TrackBack .