The Day Goes On

And it just kept getting worse and worse after that. I went to the meeting of the Spanish section of the department, and that was a bad idea and a half given how the entire day was evolving. As one could have predicted knowing my degree of general luck, the conversation at the meeting concentrated on maternity leaves.

I was sitting there quietly, waiting for the discussion to end when a colleague decided it was imperative to involve me in the conversation.

“Wasn’t your maternity leave like that, Clarissa?” the colleague asked.

I ignored the question, hoping the colleague would let it go but when were things ever that easy?

“What about your maternity leave, Clarissa?” the colleague kept insisting. “Your maternity leave? Clarissa??? Maternity leave?!?!?”

I stared into my cup, at the wall, at the ceiling, but the colleague persisted like it was part of her job duties to badger me with maternity leaves. At this point, everybody was staring at me, expecting a story of a maternity leave from me.

So I got up and went to the bathroom, hoping people would get their maternity leave discussion out of their systems. But it was not meant to be that I should achieve peace even in the bathroom. The colleague followed me there. And then another colleague followed to see how I was doing, and the whole thing was unrelenting.

I know nobody means any harm but I don’t really care what anybody means at this point. For me the only way of dealing with this situation is by narrating it. So I narrated it here and now I will go and narrate it to people in person and over the phone.

I don’t really need any comments, I’m doing this for me and the act of writing is helping.