Sunday, July 30, 2006

Law & Order: This is your life

I was just watching L&O:CI on Bravo and oddly enough, saw an episode I had never seen before. It was kind of a creepy episode, being that it began with a group suicide, but it just got more personal from there. The episode No Exit is really about something completely different ~ which any L&O fan knows ~ the opening segment is never exactly a linear connection to the actual story.

What the story really centers around is a young woman who killed herself after being crushed by the head of her company in full on hostile work environment, workplace harassment situation. Something I'm oddly familiar with...

The family filed a wrongful death suit against the company and basically everyone she worked with lied to protect the company and the suit was dropped. The episode hinges on the guilt felt by her supervisor who not only didn't help her when she asked for his help dealing with the man who was harassing, but also lied in his deposition for the lawsuit.

So this all gets me wondering, now that I'm a year away from not trusting myself around cars and garages, are there people who I left behind who feel guilt?

I didn't kill myself, but that was sheer force of will that kept me alive. It had nothing to do with what anything anyone else did. But I reached out to people, so many people, and asked for their help. I admitted my own weakness, my disease, and confessed that I was on my last ounce of strength. I never got any help from coworkers, human resources, senior officials, the grievance system....

Granted, I came out okay, more or less. I always do. But it doesn't make the fact that so many people refused to offer me a hand when I cried out any less horrific. Do they feel the guilt? I sure as hell hope so! They were too concerned with keeping the peace and covering their own asses to even consider tossing a rope in my direction ~ it speaks volumes to their character. I hope they realize that.

If there is somewhere on the web where people lacking basic strength of character are being outed, please let me know ~ I have a few names to add. It kind of breaks my heart, too, since some of them were people I kind of respected. But I guess you never know the true strength of someone until there's a crisis. Are they the person who steps into the fray and does everything they can or are they on the edge of the crowd trying to shuffle away before anyone sees them?

As a child I hated my mother for being the person who went into the fray. She was a nurse and it seemed like she was always needed and I resented her "on the fly" patients. Now, not only do I respect her for it, but I emulate it. I don't have all the skills to treat, but I have the knowledge to identify the problems, to triage and to provide basic first aid. I also, somehow, have become great in a crisis. It actually calms me ~ I have direction; things that must be done.

You're normally supposed to dislike those attributes in others that you recognize in yourself, but in this case, I despise the lack of it. If you have the ability and are in the position to help someone, and chose not to, then you deserve to live in whatever swamp of guilt swallows you up.

You know, I kind of left my old job and home without really telling anyone except my close friends where I was going. I never put a forwarding number on my home phone ~ just disconnected it. I got a completely new cell phone and ditched the email address that the work people had. Part of me wanted them to think I had just fallen off of the face of the earth or been committed or crawled back home to my parents' home. It didn't really matter to me whether they believed I had been destroyed or resurrected. Of course, I got a tattoo symbolizing resurrection since I knew where I was going.

But there's part of me that hopes that some of them wonder if I'm dead in a ditch somewhere and if it's at least a little bit their fault. They never felt the wrath of my mother or my father, although both were ready and willing to make the trip. You don't mess with their little girl. I'm perfectly willing to hold out for karma. It hasn't let me down yet.

Maybe it'll come in the form of basic persistent insomnia or a fiasco involving bears or possibly they could get the crap beaten out of them in the wrong section of Boston. (Seriously, I REALLY wouldn't have had anything to do with even though offers have been made.)



***I should probably mention that the bear thing and the Boston beating are probably fairly unlikely since they have already been reigned down upon worthy folks at previous times in my life ~ Karma's not only a bitch ~ Karma's creative!!

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