Nightmares of falling from the Arche de Triomphe and waking up in an asylum only to find out that I've been a heavily medicated paraplegic all along and that this has all been a glorious dream...
Haven't slept in three days.
My career counsellor spent today's paid-for-by-gemplus session telling me that my destiny lies abroad and that there's no such thing as "too good to be true" and that maybe I should spend some time meditating.
He was wearing a green silk tie that matched his green shirt perfectly, and we discussed the financial district and how I'm going to end up in social work anyway, because my heart hasn't stopped bleeding.
Haven't slept, haven't slept. Fell asleep sometime yesterday afternoon for half an hour and woke up falling, shaking, desperate for contact, for grounding.
Pulled my tired legs over each other and sat quietly with my hands on my knees and kept telling myself "the worst that can happen is that I come home, that I find myself with more than enough unemployment insurance to have time enough to change careers twice"
Broke into tears in David's arms later on, screaming that I didn't want anyone else, not in Paris, not anywhere, shivering, desperate, and him with his hands in my hair crooning "it doesn't matter what you do, you'll do it great" and my only thought "it's true, it must be a hallucination..." Nobody talks like that in RL. Except they do. You all do...
Fuck, I'm only twenty four, too happy to jump out of a perfectly working airplane, but terrified to sit down on one and transfer a suitcase half-filled with memories to the continent that I've been yearning to live in all this time.
Doesn't feel like I've earned it, y'know? One minute I'm bemoaning the city I live in and the next, the next...
... I'm being offered five weeks vacation and an appartment dans le deuxieme arrondissement.
I joined Gemplus because I was planning to work my way into a transfer. Instead, I get offered one off the bat without even looking the moment I turn around...
I believe in synchronicity, but usually when it involves sex and witchy psychology, not magic careers. Two words I've seen so seldom march side by side...
My mother disowned me again this afternoon, because I asked to bring David's daughters along to their trip to the zoo.
At least I get to sleep in tomorrow morning, past seven am for the first time since I've been unemployed.
This morning's interview was three hours long, my headache went away just under two hours ago.
I swear, they would've had an easier time folding me into a microwave and reading the emissions.
Drained, dripped, dry.
They laughed again at my salary expectations. "We pay much more than that" they said. They're located in Montreal, but the work... The work is terrifying. Hired out as a consultant every three months to their uber-insane clients, as an expert. An expert. A C++ and Linux expert to be precise. Training, they said. Opportunities to do exchanges with their offices in London, Paris, Bordeax, Berlin, Brussels...
I've been out of school one year.
Both companies are offering to help send me back.
Neither company has asked me to sign any papers yet, though, so not only have I got decision nightmares cropping up every time my eyelids droop but on top of that...
...there's that chance, that incredible chance, that they fall through...
Next week is going to be interesting.
In the meantime, I'm too tired to have stayed out with the Everquest kids who all drove into town for the weekend, too wired to climb into bed, my eyes are sore from hours of Diablo II and my e-mail account is clamouring for attention, from "SAY IT AIN'T SO" e-mails to more requests for interviews. Start-up companies, non-profit organizations, you name it.
And here I am already dreaming of donning a three-piece-pinstripe suit and joining the ranks of the Paris financial district.
I'm glad my tattoos don't come off, because when I got them somehow I knew... This was coming.
And I'm terrified that I'm so terrified.
But there's always GeekCorps which makes more sense to me than anything else.
Maybe after a couple of years in france.
Maybe right now if I lose my patience for pinstriped nightmares.
But one day....
It'll be either the DNI, OpenSourced something, or that.
It has to be, I've been dreaming to long to have it otherwise.