A Nicer Person

I refer to this woman at work as “The Millstone.” Maybe it should have been the Albatross. I’m not sure what ancient code I violated, but I’m pretty sure I’m being punished. How much invective, vitriol, and vituperation should I accept, really, when I’m fairly certain I’ve done nothing wrong.

I’ve been Trying (yes, with a capital letter, I’m that Earnest about the whole thing) to be a Nicer Person, and the Millstone is the inspiration. Not because I think I deserve her denunciations, because I don’t. They aren’t, even, usually about me. She’s angry at someone else, but she can’t yell at them, so she yells at me instead. It’s terrible fun. I think she thinks it means we’re “friends.” Really it means that when I hear her clopping down the hall in her sandals, I want to leap from behind my desk and shut my office door. Or at the very least ask, “What now?” with a withering glare. Instead I rearrange my face into blank pleasantness and answer every comment with a noncommittal, “Uh-huh.” Yes, I’m pretty sure I’m headed to sainthood.

So why Nicer? If I’m already so terribly nice? I never understood the expression, “Wherever you go, there you are,” until I met this woman. She could win the lottery tomorrow (come on, fingers crossed, big money!) and she still wouldn’t be happy. She couldn’t be: She doesn’t know how. She’s the victim of everyone and everything she can’t control (read: the entire universe), and the least little thing sends her into an infuriated panic, about how awful and monstrous every damn thing is, every last person.

I recognize a tiny sliver (read: a generous slice) of myself in her need for control, in her constant feeling as though she never has any. There’s a paradox there, a paradox I am learning to understand, from the Millstone, who, it turns out, is a terribly motivational teacher.