This can't be worse than the first.

According to my laptop clock, it's twenty-three minutes into the second day of 2008; yesterday, at this same time, I was throwing a temper tantrum and crying hysterically on my bedroom floor while my parents were screaming at each other and my boyfriend lay helplessly in bed, eyes wide and mouth agape as I incessantly blamed him for the ruining of my new year's eve. If I'd have had some alcohol, or shrooms or acid, I could say that it wasn't my fault that I was being a monster. The truth is, it's been more than forty days since my last period, I've taken four different pregnancy tests that have all come out negative, and I'm worried, confused and anxious. If I were still in therapy, my therapist might say my anxiety is an extension of my subconscious need to fix shit that I keep putting off. I guess I don't need therapy anymore; I can figure out and respond to my problem all on my own. Yay for me.

It's now one o'clock in the afternoon, and I'm starving. My refrigerator's stocked with name brand holiday leftovers: Pepperidge Farm stuffing, Country Crock buttery mashed potatoes, etc. Even the stuff that's been prepared from scratch has the mouthfeel of food that's void of soul. My brother, the cook, is in the living room, having just woken up. His brattiness has tempered since he's gotten home, and he offers me a look of sympathy as I walk in through the front door. "You're home from work already?" he says, sweetly and sincerely. I nod, blinking to convey that I'm holding back tears. Behind my mask of MAC foundation and heavy eye make-up, I'm too numb to cry, but I don't seem to have a voice. I tip-toe to my bedroom, careful to avoid my mom, who is washing dishes in the kitchen, and I lay in bed. Letting my mom see me would mean having to answer her questions - why I'm home early, if everything is okay, if I'm hungry - and I'd have to lie to keep her happy. Goodness trumps honesty in this house, and happiness is a thin veil that we all wear: artificial sweetener meant to keep one another out of our doldrum ho-hum collective reality. We are all great albatrosses, the weight of our family-love wringing one another's necks.

Our satellite service got cut off a week ago. For days, my father - who sleeps on the expensive-looking black leather sofa in our living room - would tell us about a mythical pop-up that appeared in the middle of the sixty-inch flat screen of our TV and ask him during the wee morning hours to pay the satellite bill. Dad humorously told us that he first hoped he was imagining it, delusional from back-to-back 24-hour work days at the hospital. Then the pop-ups happened more frequently, till finally our satellite service was cut off and we started shuffling through our dvds and padding towards the computers for sitcom and dramedy distractions. My folks were planning on cutting off the entertainment once Abie and I were done; now they have one less task to take up their sleeping time.

I got another bill from LabCorp today. I owe them thousands of dollars, and every time I get one of these bills I shudder and hope they'll stop existing if I throw them away. I don't have enough money to pay even a minimum payment on them, and every time I'm faced with that knowledge, I think back on two years ago, when I was flush with cash and able to buy my folks a retirement house. Two years later, I can't even afford to buy furniture for the place, and I'm depending on the kindness of my friends to get through my financial and emotional hang-ups. I'm laying in bed, propped up on a Calvin Klein pillow, surrounded by clothes that no longer fit me, bills I can't afford to pay, and an ominous feeling that there are unfinished issues that I must conclude as soon as possible. I feel like I have a good sense of "what is what" when it comes to life, and more specifically, my life, and I want to get started with the living, doing, fulfilling aspects of existing. I want to make money, advance income brackets, fulfill my personal potential and feel like that's what I'm doing. I know instinctively that going through the motions is a necessary and vital part of making things happen, but I know through experience that it's the most boring and slow part of the process. It's the part that I wish were over right now.

But first, I need to get another job, since this morning I was fired.

Now, more than twelve hours after I left off on this post, I'm finding it hard to remember exactly how I got fired. I remember feeling out of place in the office, thinking that I don't belong in a real estate office in Richmond Hill, deciding that I'd better grin and bear it. I was yapping about how happy I was about my impending health benefits, and was confused to see my health care paperwork gathering dust on my boss's desk. I'd handed her the paperwork on my first day of work two weeks ago, and she promised to get it done so I could get proper medical care as soon as possible. Those were her words - "as soon as possible." She'd said them to seem concerned, and even at the moment they hit the air, they'd sounded strange to me, but I'd shrugged off my feelings as paranoia.

I asked sweetly about my health paperwork, and my boss gave me a look of disdain. Maybe, I thought, she was still hung over from New Year's, and she didn't feel like dealing with my sunny office disposition. So I said very plainly, "I was hoping that my health benefits would be processed by now. Or at least already handed off to whoever's supposed to process them. But I noticed that they're still on your desk. Is there any reason for that?"

She blinked unapologetically, as if she were resigned to believe that whatever monstrosity leapt next from her lips was my own doing. "You're doing a great job here, but I don't think you'll be with us long enough to use your health benefits."

I thought she was kidding. I'd never been fired before, and I couldn't fathom the thought - especially from a place that was quite obviously below me. I furrowed my brow. "Excuse me?"

"You said at your interview that you're leaving the country in April."

"Yeah, that's right. And I was assured that I would still get all of the benefits from being a full-time employee - and that it was okay with everyone if the position was only temporary."

"I'll be honest with you," she said, her features stern and solid. "We've found someone who can stay past April, but we're going to let you keep the position till the beginning of February."

"That's very kind of you," I said, embarrassment creeping into my face. I walked away from her, aware that I wasn't going to get health benefits, that the job paid too little and was good only because it was easy and close to home. I thought of the job opportunities that awaited beyond this one, the fact that I've never been without a job for more than three weeks, my impressive four-page resume.

And this is what I was reduced to? Settling for a meagerly paying wage at a mediocre real estate firm whose employees couldn't even manage their quarterly reports without my expertise?

Rage consumed me. Anger engulfed me. Pride - possibly arrogance and hubris, too - blinded me. I was overwhelmed by the feeling that I must have done something wrong. Why else would they renig on their promise to keep me till my departure? Only ten minutes had passed since my boss had told me the news, and I couldn't stand it any longer. Maybe the Me that I was six months ago would've been too afraid to hear a negative reaction: that I'm really a slothful and disobedient worker, that I'm wasteful and inefficient, that I'm a slow learner - but I now have more faith in my abilities, and I can now stand false criticism.

I let the rage swell within me and continued to stare at my computer screen. There was no way that I would let my boss be proved right: I had to show that I'm worth keeping.

But then a thought formed in my head, as I stared at the quarterly reports that very few people in the office know how to do: I'm better than this. I can get elsewhere what this job gives me. Why do I have to show my worth to these people who are obviously beneath me?

So I walked to my boss's cubicle, knocked on the door, and looked my boss dead in the eye. "I'll be honest with you," I said, smiling sweetly, "ever since you told me that I'll be fired, I've found it hard to concentrate. I just want to know why you're letting me go, when you initially told me that you're fine with me leaving in April."

She nodded gravely, as if she were about to impart the secret of life to me. This was privileged information that she was imparting, and I had to be aware of that. I nodded. She mentioned the owner of the company, talked about him at great length in praising words, and then veered into a segment about his sixteen-year old niece, who's looking for a job. I nodded my head understandingly, all the while a million blood-soaked scenarios playing out in my head. Violence runs quick in my veins when I feel I've been wronged, and as much as I want to be a pacifist hippie, the truth of the matter is, it feels right to me to inflict bodily harm on people who do me wrong.

The rest is a blur. My boss and I talked for an hour about how she got into real estate. I talked about my resume, my work experience, my present educational situation. She told me about her daughter, who's my age and doesn't know what she wants out of life. I told her that it's common for people in my generation to have lofty aspirations and no real direction; she seemed comforted. She thanked me for all of the hard work that I'd exhibited in my two weeks, said that I'd taught the trainees and administrative assistants more than she'd bargained in my short time in the office, and said that she was sure great things are in my future. I thanked her for her kind words and went back to my desk. Crappy pay is still pay and my family needs help getting by - but I couldn't sit at that desk, working like a drone to make barely enough to pay our monthly utilities. I went out for my lunch break and didn't come back.

I've lined up promotions gigs for the next couple of weeks, and I'm looking for another desk job. I'm simultaneously reading three books - one by Al Franken, one by James Frey, and one by Neil Gaiman. There is a huge rat living in my house that I'm trying to kill. One of my best friends is going to be deployed to the Middle East in a couple of months. I haven't talked to another one of my best friends in more than a year because of my emotional hang-ups. My grades at Brooklyn College have to be settled once and for all, so that I feel like I'm leaving on good terms with myself. I think I might have carpal tunnel syndrome. And on New Year's Eve, as the minutes of 2007 ticked off and the new year rapidly approached, Rob's cousin was proposing to his girlfriend of thirteen years, Rob was sleeping in my bed in Queens after a night made sleepless by his first ear piercing, my parents were having a gigantic fight, and I was frantically searching for a live stream of Times Square on the internet. Traditions were broken: my mom wasn't her annual jolly, jubilant self, chasing away evil spirits with pom poms, bells, and tambourines; the Times Square ball wasn't on the television screen, counting down the seconds as I made a wish for the new year; I wasn't full of the idealistic and naive hope which annually fills me with good cheer.

For the first time ever, crappiness flowed uninterrupted from one chapter to another, and I was powerless to edit the events as they unravelled. I cried, I bitched, I moaned. And even though I knew that it was pointless, I let myself build up my moment of fury and supreme irritation because, in truth, all emotions are rendered pointless and meaningful with the passing of time and the introspection of artists. In that moment when a tradition was broken, my carefully constructed view of the way things ought to be was broken a little bit more, and my song of childish innocence gave way slightly more to an orchestra of adult experience. Romance and hope became a bit more alien; cynicism and skepticism invaded a larger part of my world. And the joyous version of me who's able to discover magic in the mundane, the part of me that's responsible for imagination and wonder, morphed into something altogether too stuck in "being real." When I cried, when I bitched, when I wanted to make someone (Rob) feel my pain, it was only because I had no audience to understand my suffering, to acknowledge what I was acknowledging, to sense the passing of time and the alteration of my character into something I don't entirely know or understand.

Some people slip through many versions of themselves without ever realizing that they'd been something else. Others only acknowledge their development after twenty, thirty, forty years. I drag myself, kicking and screaming, into a heightened sense of what is capable of becoming a better reality. Aware of the grand standards I've set for myself, I am humbled, excited and mortified at the idea of reaching them. So abruptly, impatiently, unapologetically, vocations turn into stints and destinations turn into reststops. On New Year's Eve, I entered a new beginning and now as I'm typing about it, it seems far away and already I am far-removed.