“Right now is a good time to start.”

He laughed harder. “There’s a catch.”

“Do tell.”

“You’ll have to agree to go to at least one consult with a professional therapist, and then I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

I hung up.

I’ll figure this shit out myself...

GILLIAN

~BLOG POST~

One year ago...

If you ever want to know how to crush someone’s spirit, the recipe is fairly simple: One-part unemployment, two (part-time) jobs that won’t officially begin for thirty days, and three parts moving into a rundown Brooklyn apartment with a random girl you met off Craigslist.

Stir well. Serve cold.

I never thought I’d say this, but New York City has officially lost its luster for me. That blinding brightness I once admired is now tainted with the darker shades of hopelessness everyone tried to warn me about.

I can’t walk down Fifth Avenue without feeling like a failure, and those dazzling dreams I used to dream don’t feel like possibilities anymore. They’re all daunting delusions of grandeur.

For a split second, I considered returning home to Boston—telling my family that they were right. I thought I could sit in my old room and figure out another direction for my life, all while ignoring their incessant put downs and relentless repeats of ‘I told you so’. But yesterday, when my older sister called me and said, “I just bet Dad another thousand that you’ll be back by this Christmas.”—I decided I’d rather deal with my new hand in life instead of folding.

All of that said, I’m deactivating this blog today. There’s no point in blogging for an audience of trolls, or posting things that will only be seen in the far, unvisited corners of the internet.

I probably won’t have time to blog anyway. Between being a “domestic engineer” (a nice word for housekeeper) and a floating reserve flight attendant (a nice word for “flying waitress”), I’ll be laughing at the irony in all this.

And since my college degree is now practically worthless, and I’m blacklisted from most of the places I’d actually want to work, I leave this blog with this:

FUCK YOU.

Fuck you, New York City.

Fuck you, New York Times.

Fuck you, you know who you are.

And fuck you, Kimberly.

Fuck. You.

Write later

Write never,

**Taylor G.**

1 comment posted:

KayTROLL: Who is this audience of “trolls” (plural) that you speak of? I’m still your only fucking follower...

GATE B8

Portland (PDX )—> Dallas (DAL)—> London (HTW)

The alarm clock in my hotel room sounded at exactly 6:00 a.m., and it took everything in me not to cry and wish that this was some type of joke. With every muscle in my body still aching, and my feet so numb and sore that I could barely feel them anymore, I would’ve killed for a few more hours of rest. Or at least another assignment...

Being assigned to work the first class cabin at Elite was the ultimate prison sentence, and unless there was some type of divine intervention soon, I was certain I wasn’t going to last too much longer.

For four weeks, I’d completed all the over the top wine and cheese services, the five course meals, and the ‘check on the first class passengers every twenty minutes’ rule as I flew from Portland to Ft. Lauderdale, Seattle to Los Angeles, Atlanta to Beijing, Beijing to New York. Not to mention the numerous stopover and layover cities in between.

I’d rushed through the terminals in the newest set of mandated heels—a full inch higher than before, and forced myself to smile as I encountered the rudest of passengers. Adjusting to the constant time zone changes, I was shocked that I’d managed to keep my frustration under wraps, especially since I’d been paired to work with the one supervisor everyone told me was the worst.

“The Hawk.” Miss Connors.

Obsessed with perfection, she scrutinized my every move, monitored my every breath. According to her, the bobby pins in my hair were always “too aligned to the left,” my beverage pouring skills “resembled those of a blind waitress,” and I was not “worthy” of sharing her line that featured so many “trips of luxury.”

She was always around. Always. And no matter how many times I tried to do things “The Elite Way,” she would insist that I was doing things “the wrong way.”

My only reprieve from her came when we checked into our separate hotel rooms. While most of the crew hung out at the hotel bar or left to explore the city, I stayed in my room and collected as many hours of sleep as possible. And no matter how many nights I vowed to dream about something other than Jake, my mind always overruled my intentions.

Images of his kissing and fucking me intruded on my most innocent thoughts, and I still dreamed of the way his lips owned mine. I tried to move on, to take Meredith’s advice and “try someone else,” but no other man quite compared. The attraction was only half as intense, the sexiness of the conversations never came close.

After my alarm sounded for a full five minutes, I rolled across the mattress and turned it off. Then I grabbed the room phone and dialed zero.

“You’ve reached the front desk at the Dallas Airport Marriott!” a woman answered on the first ring. “How may I help you this morning?”

“Could I have a few more coffee pods?”

“Absolutely!” She was too cheery for this time of day. “Decaf or regular?”

“Regular.”

“I’ll have someone send it right on up!”

I wrapped myself into one of the hotel’s robes and sat in the corner chair, preparing to slowly wake up and spend the few hours before my next flight watching mindless television, but my older brother’s name suddenly came across my phone’s screen.

I hesitated before answering, not sure whether I should talk to him this early or not.

Brian wasn’t as bad as my sisters or my parents, but he never stood up for me either. He would laugh at their put-downs, but offer me a sympathetic smile right after. He’d fill me in on his life—with no air of arrogance at all, but he would never even try to act as if I was working toward something good in my own life.

Before his call could go to voicemail, I took a deep breath and answered. “Hey, Brian, what’s going on?”

“What’s going on? What’s going on!”

Ugh...

It wasn’t Brian at all. It was my oldest sister, Claire.

“I’ve called you two times a day—every day for the past two weeks, Gillian. And not only have you refused to return the calls or even considered the thought of texting back, you answer right away for Brian. I wonder why that is...”

“Probably because Brian isn’t a bitch...”

“What did you just say?”

“Nothing.” I cleared my throat. “Is something wrong?”

“Brian changed his mind about the proposal. Instead of doing it here at home, he’s going to propose to her in New York since that’s where they met, and he really wants you to be there. So, make sure you’ve taken off from your little job, if you haven’t already, and if we can’t find a suitable hotel, we’ll need to stay in that Lexington Avenue apartment you brag about so much. Have I already mentioned that you need to take off from your little job?”