The magic word...
I worked for this one guy at this one place and then he left that job and became a manager at another place. Before he left, he let me know that if I decided to leave he would have a job for me for sure.
The upper management were pissed at me for not undermining him and setting him up for failure before he left the first place, so some months after he left I did resign and talked with him.
The new crew was great. All very professional people and super competent at their work. They were people who had very different experiences of life and education so, in addition to my own work, I also functioned as the editor of important emails, composer of office memos, and generic, “Hey, Skellington... How do you spell ____.”
It was cool because my knowledge and education didn't make me better than they were, but they were aware of what I knew and they were not intimidated by that. Rather, they called on my knowledge to help us all do our work more skillfully.
We were having a rough day one day. Most of the computers had gone down and the one that was both working and connected to the system that predicted our workload for the night was telling me some pretty scary things about what could might be coming down the line to us.
I was seated at the computer, typing away like a hacker character from a 90's film. Six of my coworkers were huddled in around me and we were all looking at the data that was predicting utter clusterfuckage for our evening. When I saw what was happening I said one word very softly.
“Cock.”
All six of them leapt back and gasped, staring at me with real fright in their eyes.
Okay, this was a freight terminal. I was surrounded by cargo handlers, truckers, and those who manage and coordinate with those people all the time. Our language was consistently crass, vulgar, rude, and ungrammatical. And yet they all reacted like I'd committed some kind of sacrilegious war crime by saying cock?
Finally, one of them, the toughest, the secretary who whipped everyone into shape and dealt with people to whom and from whom money and service exchanges were expected. She spoke up in a soft voice. I think her hands were trembling. “B said that if you ever said that word it meant that things are seriously bad and we are really really really in trouble. Skellington, are we fucked?”
I thought about it. I can give a Shakespearean stream of cussing in iambic pentameter and rhyming couplets detailing a person's flaws and the physical attributes of his mother with no time for preparation and for no actual slight. I regularly spouted poetic snatches of vulgarity to vent my frustrations and to add to my physical strength when moving heavy things. And yet, when the very worst happens and I realize that we are well and truly fucked, it's like I see the giant schlong that is boning up my day and I name it for what it truly is. Cock. The discrete point of the piercing that is what means fuck. I name it and I recognize it as real.
B was right. I'm impressed but not surprised that he noticed that and passed on the warning before I joined the team. Because of that warning, everyone authentically knew how bad the situation was and we all buckled down and put all we had into keeping everyone safe in spite of the unrealistic goals and impossible schedule imposed on us from above.
Today has sucked gangrenous balls because I accidentally did emotional heavy lifting last night, got poor sleep, and forgot to take any of my meds until almost 5 PM. I feel tired and irritable, but I also feel heavily dissociated, derealized, and depersonalized. I feel like I'm using mind control to steer the muppeteers who are manipulating the Ur Goh and Skekgra muppets that I am in the world and those two are putting on an elaborate puppet show to get this essay typed out.
I was in the market, far away from my meds, when I realized that I hadn't taken them this morning. I was wearing a mask and I was in the oatmeal section so nobody heard me say “cock”, but I did say it. And when I said it, I saw the point of the issue that was fucking me. Knowing that there was a cause and it was something I would be able to ease soon was great. Knowing that the hole in my reality was caused by the tip of a sword let me see that the whole world was not a nightmare.
There was a perfectly good reason that I felt the way I did and that the rest of the world appeared to be the way it was.
And then, realizing that my mind was altered, I was able to trim my sails and tack into the wind and keep going on with my day.