Don't Hurt Yourself

Written by Beyoncé, Jack White, and Diana Gordon

You’ve survived a long journey home. It could be described as disrespectful, invasive, disorienting, but it’s just a normal commute home on the New York City Subway. Up the stairs, through the door, through the shedding over your coat, you find relief. Your physical body can finally find rest, but your mind is far from peaceful. It’s all jostled up from vigilance of having to take a late-night train. As you try to catch your breath, your eyes dart around, trying to find something familiar and safe.

Instead, they land on trash, beer cans, shoes, plates, underwear, crumpled-up amazon packaging, hair clumps, laundry, coffee-mold mugs, fruit flies, and a sedentary man.

He comes up to you to give you a kiss. The visual stimulation overloads your brain and explodes out your body. With a low growl, you push him away. His hurt puppy-dog face drives you out of your mind. There’s nothing he could say or do right now to stop what’s coming.

You rip off your shoes and fling them across the room. “Is this how you live, huh?” you yell, hoping it hurts. “Is this how you treat my house? Is this how you treat me?” accentuating each question by picking up some shit and throwing it on the ground. It was almost there anyway!

Too many nights you come home and can’t find an inch of room on the ground to walk, and you huffily clear the space. The era of passive is done. The era of aggression has begun. You allow your energy to erupt, screaming and throwing. He reaches past you to throw out a can, and you pick up the entire receptacle and dump it on the ground.

The shame comes quickly during your tirade. You’re terrible. You should be grateful he’s not worse. It’s not his fault. You’ll still have to clean this up anyway. The rage snaps back. It’s the consequences of his actions. He should love you enough to make your life comfortable. You deserve that.

Your internal argument escalates as he stupidly stands there not saying anything. You’ll make him talk. You pick up his mug and raise it high. “No!” he cries, as it smashes to the ground in a stunning explosion. He’ll probably never forgive you for that.

Having sufficiently expressed yourself, you feel good. Breathing heavy with tears flowing, you sink into the lumpy pile of laundry. The shame and rage have dissolved into weariness. It wasn’t even you who did that. It was the apartment itself come to life to seek its own justice. Trash flew around, dishes met their end on the wall. You were the vessel to rebel against its mistreatment.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T. Find out what it means to ME, JAY-Z!

Feminine rage is awesome. This expression is so natural to me, and I think is a natural consequence of being alive. I often have the desire to burn it all down and fuck it all up.

I often feel like a receptacle myself. It’s almost impossible to get out of the negativity cycle flowing between us all. If your job is to serve people, you’re on the receiving end of it every day. Sass, passive aggressiveness, unreasonable requests, demands, entitlement. When we clock out it gets passed to other servers, to strangers in our vicinity, to those we love. Those of us who try really hard to not let the hate loose just end up like emotional trash cans. But even the most calm and collected of us reach a point when we think, okay, it’s my turn to lose it. And it feels so good.

I just saw a video of a couple of young girls mid-breakdown after collectively quitting their serving jobs. I feel so much love and solidarity with these screaming and crying girls. Because if you treat us bad, you’ll only hurt yourself in the end. I hope the owners of that restaurant go broke.

sound warning!

@skunkprincess23The entire staff has quit if you were wondering #iquitmyjob #server #serverproblems #serverlife #serviceindustry #quitserving #ihatethisplace #ragequitter

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