Sundae of despair? hahahaha

Erm, my poem the other day... I'm rather proud of it, if truth be told. If you think of it as a newborn baby being left to die, well, then it is nothing more than a big pool of nasty. Substitute "work project that I put my heart and soul into" for "baby" and you have a jagged hole in my heart rather than actual blood, guts and death.

In a nutshell, I helped launch a magazine that was doomed from the start. Before it even came back from the printer's, before the baby was even born, the powers-that-be decided it would never run again. And they never even told me, deeming me not important enough, I guess.

I knew it was in trouble, for many reasons, but that knowledge doesn't stop me from grieving. A pile of the mags sit on the far corner of my desk, looking pretty and happy as a newborn baby. And yet they're a dirty secret that nobody wants to talk about. There will be no launch party, no website, no champagne, no hearty congratulations, or cigars. No "good job" from the boss. No apologies. Throughout the day I steal glances at them, feeling ridiculously sorry for them and their abandonment, thinking "you deserved so much better." To me, they really are like a beautiful newborn baby that has been forgotten on the delivery room floor.

I'm very quiet in these early days of summer. I have drawn within myself, metaphorically pulled my knees to my chest in a futile stab at self-protection. I have so little ability to find my natural enthusiasm, the buoyancy that usually floats me through the days. The one thing I am seemingly successful at is alienating almost everyone I come into contact with. For a person who prides herself on being happy, on "getting along," this is almost too much to bear.

Funny how the kicks come when you're already down. When you think you can't take one more thing, that's when a letter to the editor arrives and calls your writing drivel. Or that's when your kids start fighting and one kid calls the other kid a douchebag on Facebook. Or the car breaks down, your e-mail account gets hacked, you step in dog poop in the front yard and the cat pukes on the chesterfield. You know other people in the world are suffering much more than you are, that your problems are minor and few, that you're damned lucky just to be alive, so you add guilt about feeling sorry for yourself on top of everything else. A fat glossy fire engine red maraschino cherry of guilt plopped on a sundae of despair.

Writing that just now makes me laugh at my own foolishness. "Sundae of despair?" Seriously. Who writes this crap?