Melanie

Miserable Melanie

My crazy aunt and homoscidal cousin are back here living with us again. My happiness lasted for about a day and a half….

Damn hard day today was.

I had to go into work early for a client I never massaged before. He was a man with a Groupon – he bought his massage from an online deal site and if I had one of my therapists massage him, it would’ve only cost me $3.

I pay my therapists $10 when they don’t have any clients, and $13 an hour for online deal clients (I know it sounds cheap, but we’re not massaging many deal clients anymore).

So, I went into work and saved myself $3. I resented being there – I loathed it. I was only there because of a technical malfunction. He was a big black man with thick dreads and he kept his shorts on so I couldn’t massage anything above the knee (because his shorts were in the way), he didn’t want to put his head in the face cradle which made it hard for me to massage his neck and shoulders – and he wanted his abdomen massaged. His thick dreads got in the way of massaging his neck. Basically it sucked. He was really nice though…

When the 60-minutes were up and I told him his massage was over, he looked up at me and said, “I thought I had 90 minutes?”

I’m the one who booked the appointment and there was no mention of it being 90-minutes.

Damn. I massaged him all over again in a half-hour. He liked it though, so that’s what’s important.

I worked a lot this week and kept reminding myself that starting next week, my new therapist will work Tuesdays and Wednesdays for me. I’ll be free. I always think I’ll be free, but no matter how many therapists I got working for me, I seem to always get booked.

I went home after massaging Mr. Dreadlocks and watched some TV and tried to relax without letting my crazy aunt and cousin eat at me little by little with running water and weird OCD grunts and my aunt saying “I love you, I’ll be right there” to her 45 year old son plugging up his ears and humming to himself – no he has no mental retardation.

“I can’t do this. I can’t do this.” I opened my laptop to look at apartments.

“20 more members. I need 20 more members and I can afford one.”

I started going crazy. Members. All I could think about were members. I need I need, I want I want. I started spiraling into that dark place of hopelessness. My whole world revolving around members.

“I need to pay my debt first. I need more members to pay off my debt.”

“I’m stuck. I’m stuck here.”

I closed my laptop and took a deep breath and thanked the lord I was going to Thailand. I thanked the lord for giving me 128 members. I thanked my new therapist who’ll be taking over Tuesdays and Wednesdays for me. Thank you thank you thank you!

I went back to work for my last two clients. One of whom being one of my favorite people to massage. I made a full recovery out of the spiraling darkness. How the hell do I do that? My resilience never ceases to amaze me – seriously!

But then I got smacked in the gut hard with a dagger of a fist.

My new therapist: “I have to tell you something and it’s not good news, but not horrible either.”

Me: “Are you pregnant?”

Before she responded to that, I braced myself and remembered to remain calm. Breathe, just breathe Mel. Is asking an employee if they’re pregnant considered sexual harassment? Probably.

New therapist: “No, I got offered another job with benefits at a hospital and I need to cut my hours. I can only work Tuesdays starting on the first.”

Me: “Oh….”

New therapist: “I feel bad because I asked for all those new hours.”

Is that why you feel bad? You don’t feel bad because you’re only giving me a weeks notice and I’m going to freaking Thailand in two weeks?!

I didn’t say that, but I was screaming it in my head. On the exterior, I was calm and understanding.

No no no no oh please god no no no no.

As soon as she left, I went on the schedule and blocked her shifts off before anyone else can book with her online. Of course she had clients booked up until Dec 22, of course. And of course she works Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday – why wouldn’t she? Without her here, I’ll only have one therapist working weeknights for all of December while I’m in Thailand. And we are BUSY. We’re actually doing phenomenal here as far as clients and money goes – this month felt like a gift from god monetary wise. But money means nothing if clients aren’t happy.

“I have to find someone ASAP ASAP!”

I went on zip recruiter to repost my job ad, but my initiation price expired and the price they wanted went up to $100 a month. WTF zip recruiter?

I grabbed my old pile of job applicants and sifted through them instead.

“no, no, definitely not her, eh, nah, wait who’s this? Oh yes! Oh please oh please god….”

I found an application from a girl who applied here in April when we first opened. I loved her and wanted to hire her but I held back because she didn’t seem confident enough.

I rolled my chair back over to the desktop and typed her up a pleading email. Well, not horribly pleading, but pleading enough. I sent it.

I waited 5 minutes. I waited 10 minutes. I was just staring at the computer screen.

“That’s all I can do. I can’t do anything else about it tonight so I should just go home.”

But I didn’t go home, no. I texted her instead. She replied with:

And once again, I made a full recovery back into feeling fantastic. She’s willing to put in her two weeks at her other job tomorrow. Words can’t explain how thankful I am.

The girl who cut her hours, honestly I didn’t think much of her anyway. She’s one of those athletic types, you know what I mean? Running, lifting, drinking kerotine or whatever it’s called. I don’t get it. I’m not saying she’s a bad person, just one of those types who have absolutely nothing in common with me. It’s always the athletic type that I have the least in common with. It’s weird because I really like karate and I run to my car in parking lots.

The person I have the most in common with? My 22 year old puerto rican male therapist. I adore him! He ran track in high school, but he did it for fun because he thought he was the fasted kid ever. We discuss video games and how much we don’t like dating. And he has a true bona-fide love for people just like I do. I can see it just by the way he treats people – he really cares. He treats old people with genuine kindness. Not to mention he’s a goldmine as far as clients re-booking with him goes.

Male therapist: “We’re like the same person you and me, it’s scary.”

Me: “Ha ha, I know!”

This new girl I’m hiring, I feel like she’ll be a narcissistic supply for me, you know what I mean? One of those people who feeds ego’s. All my other employee’s make me feel good about myself, sure, but then you meet someone who looks up to you and they hang on your every word more so than normal. It’s not about love, but admiration and inferiority.

When something inspires you, it’s because you want to find that same hidden gift inside yourself. It’s not real love, but a key. Once that lock is opened, the love for the thing that once inspired you is gone and you’re left with nothing but love for yourself. I know this is true, trust me.

And once you’ve opened the gift inside yourself, you want to keep it by never returning the power back to its source, so you push the original owner of the key down into inferiority. Gaining power is what happens. Stupid ego…

This is why celebrity gossip can crush a career. Why oceans of people can tear a person down who once stood so high. If celebrities, politicians, or any type of leader can make a mistake, that means they’re no better than the rest of us. All their greatness gets transferred over to the people judging them. It’s inspiring to know that great people are no better than the rest, so we keep the offenders far below our stilettos until we get inspired by a new target that is far more superior than anyone who has ever lived in our lifetime! And then of course, ruthlessly crush them when they fail.

Martyr’s…I guess it’s part of our evolutionary process.

Truthfully, ego-feeders annoy me because of this. But they have no idea what’s going on, so they can’t help it.

Whenever I’m admired I always I have the thought in my head, “find your own, don’t take mine.” Because that’s what it feels like. It feels like taking someone else’s gold nuggets without bothering to find your own.

I end up sounding rude, impatient, or being in a generally bad mood.

It’s a good thing I don’t have many admirers. It’s a shitty thing to be admired.



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