Growing into the Job, Post 583c: Two Solitudes, cont (Patreon)

Thurs Nov 21st, 11:18 AM

I promised Ani Chou I’d try to do this twice a day, I said morning and nighttime. She - with that tolerant smile of hers - said that was fine, which I’m learning is therapist code for ‘you’ll do it when you’re ready, which is probably sooner and more often than you think.’ I shrugged, but here I am journaling again, and it’s not even lunchtime yet. 

She was right.

I got to see some patients this morning - good for me, I know, feeling useful. But I’ve got a little downtime so I’m sitting down in the “hot desk” room - which used to be my office but is now a generic little shared workspace with some computers. I thought, all things considered, that it was better for me to be here than at that little desk Melissa had set up for me in the corner of her office. The chair I tend to sit in here in the shared office, though, had been adjusted for me - lowered, I think, for me by someone - without anyone mentioning it. The office is basically humming along the way it always has, except it doesn’t feel like it’s waiting for me to tell it what to do anymore.

That’s the thing I keep noticing these days: nothing needs me.

I passed Aubrey in the hall earlier. She was such a petite little thing but Jesus she’s so hot now, six-one at least, thin and leggy like a runway model but with those enormous knockers which today she had buttoned into a simple white blouse tucked into high-waisted slacks. I noticed before I meant to but her tits jutted out like a shelf and her buttons were totally gaping. She's always had a crush on me - I know that. Used to bring me coffee with little notes, blush when I thanked her. But now? Now she smiled at me like she knew something secret, that her figure was impossible to camouflage, and that I would have to struggle not to turn around to watch how her hips swayed when she walked past. 

She was talking with two girls from Coronado - also so much taller than me, of course, and with the womanly hips, tiny waists and enormous breasts standard issue for each of the women that had gotten out of that bus, shipped in to fill out staff ranks of the recently expanded Far Horizons. They all moved like they owned the place, confidently unhurried, laughing easily.

They glanced at me as I walked by - warm smiles, a twinkle in their dimples. But it was Aubrey that caught my eye and smiled with a little nod, and for a moment my chest did something strange. Not panic. Not excitement. Relief. Relief like seeing someone else arrive to take over a shift you’ve been working for too long. Like they’ve got your back. She didn’t ask me anything. Didn’t even slow down. And the world didn’t crack open because of it.

That’s what keeps throwing me.

So, Journal: for most of my adult life, I’ve believed - quietly, without ever saying it out loud - that my value was in being the steady one. The person who absorbed chaos so other people didn’t have to. The man in the room who could be relied on not to fall apart. I didn’t need to be admired. I didn’t even need to be liked. I just needed to be necessary.

But walking through the clinic this morning, watching women make decisions, redirect systems, comfort patients, move people and sometimes furniture - I felt something unsettlingly close to peace.

No one was looking to me for permission, or guidance. And I didn’t miss it.

That’s the part I’m having trouble sitting with.

Because if I’m honest - and journaling, apparently, is about honesty - I’ve felt this before. Long before Melissa. Long before Far Horizons. Long before my body started betraying its own dimensions.

My mother died when I was very young. I don’t remember her, not really - just some fleeting images. What I remember is the after. The way my life became a series of transitions between women who loved me - sometimes fiercely, but always briefly. My grandmother, then my aunt. Nurses. Teachers. The mothers of friends who fed me and straightened my collar and kept a hand on my shoulder when I stood too close to traffic.

Men, in my childhood, were mostly abstract. They existed in the background, or abandoned me altogether like my father. My grandfather at work, then dying in his sickbed. My uncle at the edges. The women were the ones who knew where things were, who decided when it was time to eat, or sleep, or stop crying. They were gravity. But they were no replacement for a mother, especially mine who now occupied an almost mythic place in my psyche.

I don’t think I ever named that until now, or realized that safety felt like being handled.

When I was a kid, I devoured comic books. I used to tell everyone my favorite was Mr. Fantastic, because that was the correct answer. A man of science. Stretchy intellect. Leader of a team. It made sense.

But the ones I reread until the spines cracked and pages wore thin were always the same: uh, She-Hulk was an early fave. Even the villainesses, later - the women who didn’t apologize for their size, their strength, their certainty. The ones who didn’t ask permission to reshape the world around them.

I told myself it was admiration. Then curiosity. Then, eventually, something I didn’t want to look at too closely. I went through a lot of Kleenex. 

But sitting here now, and thinking how I was just minutes ago out there in the thick of the clinic, it hits me with uncomfortable clarity that the women I work with are all becoming superpowered. Every day, it's like I'm surrounded by the hot supergirls from my comics - towering with heroic figures to weaken the knees and abilities that then bring them to the ground. The empath Aubrey, earth-mother Lakshmi, Randi the Mouth. I imagine Josie wrapping the serpents of her hair around us, Shanette whispering a siren song until we forget how to fight. Others, all of them, all of them.

And Melissa… god, Melissa. The epicenter. Her body adapting, growing stronger, bigger, more capable with every day. Melissa the Ultra-Woman...

I can't say I haven't imagined it. Or, uh...thrown the idea into TalkGPT...

The way she could crush a man without trying - or hold him so gently he never wants to leave. Shake a building ‘til it trembles to the ground, and make everyone in it want to watch her as she does. It's terrifying, but fuck if it's not the ultimate submissive dream: overpowered by busty superwomen who could lift you with one hand, smother you in softness that’s both heaven and hell, use their powers or their bustlines to bend you to their will. Strength that makes you feel small, safe and owned and a little scared? Part of me - the part I’ve buried deep - has always wondered what it would be like to just give in, let them overpower me completely, their impossible abilities and even more impossible curves turning me into whatever they want. A pet. A plaything. A willing worshiper.

This isn’t a deviation from what I am. It’s a recognition of who I’ve always been. And the problem isn’t that my life is changing. The problem is that it’s changing into something that fits me too well.

That thought scares me more than anything else I’ve written today. Because if this were harm - if this felt like injury or violation - I could fight it. I could rage against it. I could marshal principles and ethics and professional outrage. 

But what do you do with something that feels like - what’s the word? Alignment.

What do you do when the loss you’re supposed to mourn is something - a role, I guess - that you never actually wanted?

I keep thinking about something Lakshmi said this morning, casually, without drama: that sometimes strength doesn’t disappear; it just moves.

At the time, I nodded, because that’s what one does in conversation. Now I’m realizing how deeply my body understood her before my brain caught up.

I am smaller right now, smaller than ever. But am I weaker? I feel…placed, like someone’s had my little chair ready for me here for a long time. And like I have a job to do, sitting in it.

I’m going to stop here before I convince myself of anything.

—J