I probably shouldn't hit the SEND key on anything when I'm in this sour of a mood, but I feel the urge to document this anyway.

I guess it's so that if the dark cloud passes, I'll look back on it and be reminded that I came through stuff like this.

I have one more month to go before I pass the probation period. And now the politicking has apparently been going on in earnest. There is at least one person, who shall remain unreferred to by any specific identifying info in this post, who (word has gotten back to me) badmouths me to other coworkers every time there's an error.

Including HER OWN errors. She actually tried to push off three of her own mistakes onto me, and said that I did them. (Behind my back, that is. Not to my face.) Fortunately, our manager saw through THAT and told the chief of staff otherwise.

But it ticks me off. Why am I still dealing with this kind of crap? Four years of aggravation, looking for work and fighting off a few major depressive episodes into the bargain, weren't enough? Now I have to be THIS-CLOSE to having something dependable (if there is such a thing in the working world anymore) and someone's trying to pull it out from under me?

For no earthly good reason?

This same person has religious screen savers and inspirational quotations about Jesus and God's blessings posted all over the cubicle that includes the front desk. (Yeah, I know -- process of elimination should make it really easy to pick out who I'm referring to, if you know the general setup of the place where I work. But I have no desire to phrase myself in such a way that, say, a search engine would ever pick it up.) So what am I to make of someone who's got "Jesus" this and "God" that all over their workspace, but is two-faced to a co-worker?

Sometimes, like today, I wonder what is wrong with me that I can still be surprised at the spite people are capable of. One would THINK, after some of the stuff I've been through and/or witnessed in my life, that I'd have learned by now that there IS no lower limit on the depth to which people will sink.

And you'd think I'd have realized long ago that people don't NEED a reason to mistreat someone else. They don't need some logical explanation for what they're doing. If they feel like doing it, they will. PERIOD.

So how long will it take for the feeling of betrayal to wear off? What does it matter? Two can play at the "friendly to your face" game. The main difference is, I have no need to tear someone else down. All I need to do is withstand this next month of probation without screwing up or strangling a certain detractor, and I'll be fine.

I'm so sick of having to fight for every inch of progress I make. I don't even remember what it felt like to have job security anymore. It's like I dreamt it a long time ago and woke up to find it wasn't real after all. And after today's little kick in the head, I don't expect to feel like job security can actually exist any time soon, either.

This is the same kind of stress that caused my freakin' blood pressure to go out of control last year. Karla lent me a little home BP monitor when I first went on blood pressure meds. I'd better start using it on a regular basis again.

The dark cloud needs to pass soon, though, because I'm TIRED of feeling like this. Four years is way more than enough.