When Does It END?
How does it feel to live a life where there isn’t a single place where you win or where things happen the way you want them to?
If I’m talking about something and suddenly pronounce a word in a certain way, my colleague would stop me right there, make fun of me and then tell me how it should actually be pronounced. When we check Google’s pronunciation, she turns out to be correct. I’m the one who’s wrong.
If I’m working on something and there’s another colleague who’s good at coding and related stuff, someone might approach us with an issue. My solution might not work, while my colleague’s solution does.
Alright, let it be.
Now, at home, if I want something like a dress or an ornament and my parents disagree with my choice, but I still go ahead and buy it, I’ll eventually be the one who dislikes it. Either the dress doesn’t look good, I don’t look good in it, or the quality isn’t good enough. And I end up hearing the usual ‘We told you’ from them. Somehow, I eventually lose interest in it.
Even when it comes to financial decisions, somehow, my choices turn out to be the ones my parents aren’t happy with. They feel that my decisions aren’t good enough for the future, even when I’m personally happy with them.
This is how it is. Every single time.
When I made the decision to become a software engineer, it was a booming industry. Now, I’m an engineer, but I don’t know whether I should call the current situation a transition, an end, or something else entirely.
It’s not just about making decisions or getting things right. Even when I point out someone else’s mistake, I somehow end up facing the consequences.
If someone makes a mistake and I point it out to them, I should expect something bad to happen to me by the end of the day. It’s almost as if, even though they made the mistake, I’m not supposed to make them feel guilty about it. They should be held accountable for their actions, but somehow, I’m the one who ends up feeling bad.
It’s as though God himself favors their side and not mine, even when I’m right and haven’t done anything wrong.
People say, “If you want something, the universe will somehow get it for you.”
For me, it works in reverse.
“If I don’t want something, the universe will somehow make sure I get it or land me in a situation I never wanted to be in.”
If there are 5 things, for most people, at least 3 or 4 will go fine, and the remaining one or two won’t. They can somehow cope with that.
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But if there are 5 things, almost 4 of them won’t go as expected, and the 5th will be the breaking point. That is, even the 5th one won’t go as expected, and that’s when I completely break down.
And then people at work ask me, “You don’t smile that often, and you always have a sad or straight face. Is that to avoid getting assigned a task?”
I have no answers for them. Because they wouldn’t understand all of this even if I explained it to them a hundred times. In fact, these are people who are 15 to 18 years older than me. But they still choose to make such comments.
Some people cry and tell me about their problems. I tell them not to cry and explain that crying won’t fix things.
They reply, “I can’t be like you, without expressing my emotions, or just listening to someone and leaving it at that.”
What I want to tell them is that when a person is crying, the least you can do is speak to them in a consoling tone, tell them that they need to come out of it and encourage them to stop crying.
I can’t possibly say, “Oh! You’re sad about something? Cry harder!”
It doesn’t matter whether I cry or not. I can’t speak to people that way. The people who don’t react are often the ones carrying a lot of pain. People just don’t understand that.
Working in the corporate world has taught me a lot. It has taught me many things about life and fewer things about work.
In my life, juniors have always been disappointing, just like my previous experiences in school. I had already learnt that lesson back then. I thought at least things would be different in the workplace.
I thought being friendly to a junior wouldn’t have any negative consequences for me. But maybe I’m just cursed when it comes to this. Somehow, they seem nice initially, but they know how to take advantage of every small opportunity that comes their way.
They are much more mature when it comes to understanding workplace dynamics. They know how to be friendly with seniors who can help them grow and get promoted. They needed me in the beginning, perhaps just as a little support to help them climb the ladder. But eventually, I’m the one who gets fooled.
Getting a workplace friend has been a scam.
Because that friend doesn’t even introduce me as a friend to others but introduces me as a teammate. In fact, the dynamics with the seniors were also affected because of that friendship.
That person played things so safely that everyone thinks she’s nice, while I’m the one who comes across as problematic.
I wish nobody ends up like me.
