Thank you for all your sweet messages to my last journal post. I realize how it must have sounded coming after so many sarcastic / funny posts about online dating. This past weekend was just one of those triple whammies that knocks the wind out of you, leaves you sitting on your ass and wondering, "What the HELL just happened?"

1. I was fired from my job on Friday. So, this definitely deserves some backstory: I was hired to be a junior marketer / graphic designer for a company with no marketing department. In other words, I *was* the marketing department. I have never learned marketing in my life. But my Boss was willing to pay for the courses required to teach me, and he admired my design abilities. Needless to say, I was slammed with work. It wasn't awful work, but it lacked direction and purpose, and I felt like I was flailing around most of the time, trying to get things done. Realizing the workload was too much for me alone, Boss hired another graphic designer. This was great, except HE WASN'T A MARKETER EITHER. So it went from me flailing around to the two of us flailing around. Boss then decides to hire someone to manage his budding (and drowning) marketing department, much to our relief, and hires his... wait for it... girlfriend.

Now, forget that there's a huge sign in the break room that reads "NO FRATERNIZATION." Forget that Girlfriend is an insurance saleswoman, AND STILL HAS NO MARKETING SKILLS. Forget that Girlfriend has decided she does not like Rima, because Rima makes people laugh even when things are shitty. Girlfriend decides she wants Rima's desk. So Rima and her fellow graphic designer are relegated to the storage room to work while a new "marketing suite" is built next door (as a gift for Girlfriend from Boss). 

Rima still keeps her good spirits, because hell, she has a job that is paying her. She's healthy. Her children are healthy. She does not live in a war torn country where babies are dying. But Girlfriend doesn't care about those things. I overheard her hiss, "Why does my fucking phone still have Rima's name on it????"

Damn. It's not enough that she has me working in the storage room? FOR SOME REASON, I shrug this off as silliness. (This is when I should have quit, really.) But stupid me, I have this RIDICULOUS faith in human nature, and can't fathom that Girlfriend would go so far as to have a single, divorced mother of two children fired for her own ego.

Yeah. So.

Then, the glamorous new "marketing suite" was done, and I was understandably excited to be working in an actual office, as opposed to a storage room. On Friday, March 27, I began to move my computer to my new office. Girlfriend tells me coolly, "Rima, why don't you wait until the end of the day to do that?" Fine. I work the rest of Friday in the storage room, then at 4PM, move my shit to the new office. I am *just* getting done plugging in all the cords and wiping down all the surface tops when she calls me into her office. In a clipped, brusque tone, she tells me I am fired and need to collect my things and leave immediately. I am in shock. When I manage to ask, "Why?" She answers, "You're just not good enough."

My dearest DA friends, how I wish I had that moment back right now. But at the time, I was in complete shock. I had been busting my ass to make the marketing department function for two exhausting months. And yet, here I was, getting fired, by the Boss's girlfriend. My supervisor. 

2. My Ex decides Friday, March 27th, is the perfect time to announce that he has a girlfriend, is serious about her, and wants to introduce her to my children. DAFUK. Let me just say that I sent him an urgent email saying, basically, "Congratulations, FUCK NO YOU'RE NOT."

3. I had a second date with someone I genuinely liked, and got stood up. I wish I was kidding about this. After all that had happened to me that day, I was looking forward to going to dinner with this man. We'd been communicating frequently in the past three weeks, and I felt a connection to him. I warned him prior to dinner that I'd had a doozy of a day and looked forward to telling him about it. Aaaaaaand he disappeared. I was ready by seven and waiting, waiting, waiting... When he returned neither text nor phone call, I called it quits. MOTHER FUCKER.

Hence, my desperate, tragic journal post. I apologize if any of you were worried about me. I'm not the type to slit my wrists. I have two little girls who need me, and I'll be damned if I leave them alone in this heartless world. But still, it was a lot to handle. 

Again, thank every single one of you. You have no idea how much your comments meant to me.

so desperately alone. 

Grab a drink and enjoy.