Leave Britney Alone?

I was watching some videos online tonight and saw something that hit home in a completely new way. You know on YouTube, where there's that "related videos" sidebar showing other videos with similar subjects or matching keywords? Just using that sidebar can sometimes get you across a wide range of subject matter. It's a valuable tool-you can find what you're looking for without knowing it.

Anyway, one of the "related videos" I ended up clicking on was "Someday (I Will Understand)" by Britney Spears. And what struck me was that she clearly had such high hopes for being a wife and mother. She was deliriously happy with her husband, she was about to have her first child (which was something she had talked about wanting since the early days of her career) and her life looked great.

From there I clicked on the interview she did with Matt Lauer in 2006. At that point the downward spiral was beginning. She was under criticism for her parenting, her marriage was clearly on the rocks (no matter how vehemently she denied it) and you could see the edges starting to fray on her entire world.

I'm not saying the girl was perfect. She shouldn't have driven with her baby in her lap, for one thing. She did make some big mistakes. But what mother can honestly say they haven't made some big mistakes themselves? How many of our kids have never fallen off a chair and banged their heads? How many of us have never tripped or stumbled with a child in our arms and come close to dropping them? Really, it's not something we as mothers like to talk about, but the reality is that we all do it. We trip, we bump into things, our kids fall down, and accidents happen. Of course, this is very upsetting. Even the tiniest accident involving one of our children is typically enough to send us into panic mode, rushing to the emergency room and bawling our eyes out. We try to prevent accidents, and when they happen we try to fix them.

The difference? Our accidents happen when no one else is looking. Britney's happened in front of a whole world full of cameras. And because people like to criticize others to make themselves feel better, she became ZOMG TEH WORST MOM EVARS!!! Honestly, when I saw the video of her tripping and almost dropping the baby, I thought "heh, I did that too. Poor girl looks traumatized." But evidently the masses thought, "BURN HER WHARBLEGARBL!!"

Fast forward a bit. Obviously I wasn't there, and I don't have a psychology degree, but I do have some strong opinions about what happened to Britney based on what I read. Basically, she married a douchebag. He left his other girlfriend with a small child and another on the way as soon as a bigger bank account and more potential for fame came along. Then he bled Britney dry. Clearly the girl was emotionally fragile to begin with. She just wanted a normal life, a husband and kids, and she made some bad choices in her quest to find that. Kevin saw that she was easy prey, and as soon as the babies came and the constant flow of touring income stopped, he started looking elsewhere. It seems that the general public was all too quick to forget the headlines from a couple of years ago- articles about Kevin partying without his wife, doing all kinds of drugs, running around with other women and leaving Britney holding the diaper bag.

What would a normal, non-famous woman with pre-existing emotional problems, a family in crisis, two young kids and a philandering husband do? Exactly. She'd probably lose her shit. So Britney got more and more unstable. In the midst of this, her marriage finally fell completely apart and Kevin suddenly decided to try to be a father.

Really? Um, dude, where were you for the last two years or so while your wife was losing her mind? And NOW you want to take care of your kids all by your lonesome? Nice work.

So the ensuing custody battle destroyed what little remained of Britney's grip on sanity. Which I think we can all agree is reasonable. If the whole world watched while my fuckwad of an ex-husband tried to take away the children he had wanted nothing to do with until it suited his purposes, I'd snap too.

To recap: girl with emotional issues marries gold-digging backup dancer with deadbeat dad history. He emotionally destroys her, then uses her emotional state as leverage in his divorce and custody suits. Girl is thoroughly discredited and has lost the family she so badly wanted, asshat looks like good guy.

Does anyone else see the problem here?

Now, I have no intention of becoming the next Chris Crocker. (Who is actually pretty great, btw.) I'm just saying maybe the girl deserves a bit of a break. And all of this hit home for me because I realized that I've been a victim of the same bad attitudes, on a much smaller scale.

You see, there was recently a certain group of people at work with whom I did not get along at all. I'll call them Sara, Danielle and Holly. These people knew that I was dealing with some issues from my past, undergoing treatment for depression and anxiety, and generally in a bad emotional place. They used this knowledge to pick at me constantly, provoking me until I snapped. The "snap" could take any form from crying at work to yelling at the perpetrators. Once I had snapped, they would run to other people saying, "see, look, she's unstable." This led to me being largely discredited at work, which led in part to the series of events ending with my six week hiatus.

This is all on my mind because I have to go back to work next week. I don't want to, I'm not ready. But financially, we just don't have a choice. I need a way to deal with this behavior, because I know it's going to continue. I've spent over a year trying to get it to stop, or trying to just ignore it and carry on with my day, but nothing has worked. These are the office "mean girls." Their whole MO centres around "plausible deniability." They would never do anything to me while any authority figures are around, so it's impossible for me to prove anything. I'm just completely lost.