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There's a marketing manager position just now open at the organization I work for. I've been given to understand that I'm not invited to apply for it. Since there has been an almost total lack of feedback of any kind during the 13 months I've been working at this org, I don't know if I'm not considered for the marketing manager position because they need me in the position I'm in, because I'm so wonderful in the position I'm in, because all they remember from my resume is the last year of "freelancing" and not the 20 years of management experience before that, or because I'm stuck in the low-level role I'm in until I die or retire like M who has had the same job and the same job title for 25+ years now.

When the position announcement showed up in my Google Reader early this morning, I started sobbing. Out loud. The feeling of failure was so intense.

I knew in November 2011, I was taking a job that was several rungs down the ladder from where I last was. I knew it and I knew it would grate on me. I also knew I had no choice. I couldn't have held out for much longer. I was very lucky to get the job when I did. It was like manna from heaven, even though I knew it was not the quality of manna I had once known. I don't know what I would have done had the job not come along when it did.

I knew it would be hard to not be a manager after all these years. I didn't know that I'd be treated as one of two slightly feeble-minded minions by a boss who interrupts and corrects me as if I'm a 19-year-old intern.

And now that a management position has come along, I'm not even considered. I wasn't even important enough to be told that we were hiring. I mean it. It's a 3-person department; don't you think someone could have mentioned to me and M that we are adding a 4th person?

I have to come up with a plan and carry it out. I can't go on like this.But I have never been fatter, never been uglier as I am now. My knees are shot. I'm afraid to get into the elevators at work since one of them broke down when I was in it a few months ago. It doesn't help that it caught on fire a few weeks after that and the whole building had to be evacuated. I've been dragging my fat, asthmatic, arthritic-kneed lame self up the stairs every morning ever since. I don't seem to be improving, either. I have to stop at every landing still.

There's a guy at work who told me a few months ago, not long after he was hired, that he plans to spend 2 years at the org we work at. I was taken aback. Then I admired him for having that timeframe and that focus.

I need to get to that. One more year to lose weight, to get back in the elevator again enough not to appear a freak at the interviews.

I need to get some options. I need to feel like I have some control, instead of just being slapped around.

Honestly, just below the surface I am screaming, ALL THE TIME. It only bubbles over sometimes, but it is always there just under the surface. It didn't used to be. It didn't start with the layoffs. It started when I lost the house. And I know the exact day when it got exponentially worse, and that was the day I gave the little black dog to that couple in Stockholm, WI. I can't even type the little black dog's name. Not even now. He was much better off. If I'd been fostering him and they'd been potential adopters, I'd say that the couple, their income level, and their house were perfect. Ideal. But I wasn't fostering him. He was mine. And I had to give him away. And I had given him a really cute, unique name, and he then became theirs and they changed his name, and he was mine..I remember backing down their driveway saying to myself It's okay I still have Buddha I still have Buddha I still have Buddha but for how long?

I guess I just can't get over it. I just can't feel safe. I've got my phone set to remind me to say this affirmation that's supposed to help:  "I am safe. I love and approve of myself. I trust life." The phone beeps, I say my lines, faithfully. But nothing ever feels safe again. One sentence from Deb at work and I could be back begging for shifts at that asian factory, holding the Caesar's pizza sign for hours, not able to get inhalers, hiding the car, stealing toilet paper, telling the temp agency I had no college education so they would give me temp work stocking shelves.

I just can't seem to get over it. And it's been  a year at the job and I think all I've achieved is to have held on, by my fingernails. I've not progressed. I'm actually worse, physically. I'm afraid of elevator doors not opening and that weird tilting thing that's happened a few times while I've been driving at night has so terrified me that I can't even imagine driving any distance at night, like back to Maiden Rock to see that Rustic area with the creek I loved so much even. How many times did I drive from Maiden Rock to St. Paul at night, or from St. Paul to Maiden Rock at night, and now I'm afraid to. I don't know if I need to have my eyes checked or I have some sort of unusual, intermittent vertigo. But it only happens at night when I'm on the freeway. Never during the day or on regular surface roads. If it happens, once I turn off the freeway onto a regular surface road, it goes away.

I don't know. I've got to get a plan together. I must take control.