Jilted Woman

I can't help but feel like a jilted lover this week. You know the story; boy meets girl, falls in love, promises unyielding fidelity only to be tossed out on her ass. Even though I managed to survive the DISD RIF, I'm still working my ass off for someone who really could care less. Not only that but I'm not sure if I'm losing $4,000 of my income only to have to go back in time two years ago, like I'd never gotten that bright, shiny piece of paper from Texas A&M University that says I'm worth more than day labor. 

Just like that wronged woman, I'm still there, but not the same. I'm changed. I no longer see a partner who wants the best for me and who can do no wrong, I see this bastard of a man who'd crawl in bed with whoever he wanted and throw my ass out on the street regardless of how good I've tried to be.  "It won't happen again," he says. Just like the woman who has accepted her man's infidelities (or I suppose it could be the other way 'round) I shrug my shoulders in apathetic disbelief, because I realize I have no where else to go. 

Maybe the more poignant (albeit dramatic) metaphor is that scene in Schindler's List, where Helen Hirsh (the young girl who waits on the sadistic Kommandant) has resigned herself to die because "there are no rules." I'm a Jew standing in front of the gas chambers of another round of compensating for someone else's mistake. After all, losing my job would kill the life I've built. I try to play by the rules only to find out they're different for me than they are for the asshole across the hall. It doesn't matter how hard I work. I sometimes wonder, just like young Helen, on the outskirts of a conquered Polish city, when the bullet with my name on it will come from the balcony, just because it happens to be my turn that day. But then on he upside, Helen survived, there's something to be said for that.