Please Release Me

I went into Fireman Fred's office this afternoon. I'd spent literally the entire morning on the phone with Yentl. I wanted to take a hammer to my head. I wanted to hurt myself. I wanted to gnaw my arm off to get unshackled from her.

I closed the door. Fred said, "Uh oh."

I took a deep breath. "I don't want to freak you out. But please, I'm begging you, when The Yentl Project is in production, please let me go on to another project."

He sighed.

"I swear I won't leave the project half-done. And it isn't the vendors or Vendor Girl or Trevor or Former True Boss." Silence for a second. "We both know who it is. And I feel like I've gone as far as I can on the road with her."

Fred said, "We all know. Everybody knows. Former True Boss knows. But if you leave now, just to get put on a different project, everyone will freak out."

And this is my problem how?

He went on to give me a rah-rah speech and I accepted the fact that I was just being talked down from the ledge.

I have only known one other person who was slowly able to cut every strand in the considerable cord of my patience. She's dead now and I am not particularly aggrieved by it.

"She is making me crazy," I said when I walked out of Fred's office, my voice dead and flat.

And no one said anything to me when I went out to my car for half an hour and just sat.

Actually, I was writing. But to the rest of the world, I looked like I was just sitting there.

This woman is on my last, last nerve. One more thing before I can start to knit them together and I promise you, it will get ugly.