The Good Desk

A couple months ago, I wrote about how my boss was being transferred, leaving me with more work but also with one less reason to contemplate throwing myself off the Forth Road Bridge.

Among the many fringe benefits of her leaving was the possibility of getting "The Good Desk". This being the best seat in the entire office space. An end desk with the privacy of a filing cupboard/wall at your back instead of the chattering admin staff. A desk next to the window with a view of the...parking lot. Well, OK, you can't have everything. Compared to my present desk situation, which is a veal crate in the middle of corridor, it's positively palatial.

It's been two months now since Wheeze went, and still the desk is vacant. Why should this be so is, I think, partly due to the inability of the three contenders (myself included) to be pushy enough to try to claim it for their own. This is such a weird British thing- the need to appear polite while meanwhile behind the scenes all sorts of Machiavellian machinations are taking place.

Anyway, so I was sitting in my dark hole the other day, looking longingly over at the dappled wood, the sunlight plains of the Good Desk, and I thought to myself,

"Maybe if I tell them I am infertile, they will give me the desk."

Immediately thereafter, my brain recoiled in horror and repulsion. Ugh! Ugh! Abhorrent notion in every way! How could brain think such a thing!

Then I promptly switched into therapy mode, where I try to work through my impulses in a calm and reasonable fashion, despite the intense feeling of mental uncleanliness. I came to the following conclusions:

1. We live in a compensation culture. Something bad happens, somebody is meant to pay. Or something good is meant to come out of it. Or if you suffer bravely and valiantly, one day, you will get your reward. Or be given a "quick fix". Having a bad day/week/year? Have a cookie. Have three cookies. Have the afternoon off. Have the good desk. My brain was simply repeating a pattern that I see going on around me day after day.

2. It's decidedly weird to be spending the better part of my waking hours experiencing something so intense and heartrending alongside colleagues who haven't got the foggiest idea of what I am going through.

I mean, I spend on average 8 or 9 hours a day in an office space with these people. Not a single one knows how difficult it is for me to get out of bed some mornings. None of them knows how many times I have sat in front of my computer pretending to work but really staring into space, wondering in anguish when it will be my turn to send round the digital photos of the new baby, to talk about car seats and paddling pools.

Nobody knows that yesterday I walked back from the cafe with my lunch, thinking I am so sad. I am so sad. I look like everybody else- I turn up for work on time, I smile, I make conversation. But I am dying inside with this sadness, and month by month it gets worse.

I am entirely aware that in the big scheme of the universe, my plight is not uniquely or even particularly deserving of sympathy. But part of me nonetheless wants them to know, for them to acknowledge, however superficially, that this is happening and I am struggling. Much as I fear the asshat advice and cutting comments, sometimes I just find it so wearing to pretend I am not pissed off, unhappy and sad about not getting pregnant. Who knows, maybe I would find out they have secret griefs of their own, and we can all stop pretending so hard that everything is OK all the time.

I know I won't tell. Because as much as I sometimes want people to know, I more often than not do not want all the side effects of disclosure. So all my feelings just continue to bubble under, producing brain farts like the one I mentioned earlier.

3. It's a really good desk.