I'm Free to Do What I Want Any Old Time

I've been feuding with some old bit at work. We're like two aging hens poking around in the same coup all day. You might see some feathers flying at some points and others, I'm just clucking around minding my own business, trying to stay out of her way. Well she poked me one too many times recently and I started fighting back, not just blocking but actually throwing some verbal punches. Maybe it shocked her. I know it did me. I don't even remember now the order of events but it was about 3 or 4 separate incidents and now we don't look at or acknowledge each others presence, which is super hard to do by the way. We were never 'friends' and I found myself constantly defending against her Brooklyn bullying personality until it became almost a necessity to keep her close. I hate hurtful gossip and she always was very quick to spread others' misfortunes. She always started the day angry and her vibe was abrasive and negative. She hated her mother and I've always found that to be a bad sign of character. I tried every morning to start the conversation with outside work things like what I made for dinner or something on the news. But each time it went straight to what someone had done at work the day before or why our boss was an idiot. But she liked me for some reason after a few very long years of standing up to her shit. Maybe she admired my chutzpah because she knew she could crush me with one hand if she wanted. To her I was something that fell off the turnip truck. Bad New Yorkers always assume midwesterners are naive corn-fed ignoramuses, so we always have the one up on them. So I loved shocking her with all my lost innocence and she seemed to respect me over time. And because she was around my age and she actually understood many of my references, I worked on her too to override all the bullshit and just talk like normal women. I longed for a buddy at work. I was determined to mold her into a viable coworker that would help me to look at my work not as a big yellow women's prison but a respectable job that I'm good at with people that are interesting and positive. This never worked for any length of time and in reality many of my coworkers are not interesting at all and have no depth that I can find or lust for life other than getting new hair or nails. Some have sad lives filled with too many unnecessary doctor visits and imaginary conditions. My hope with the new older guy being fun ended with him telling me the story of a quadruple suicide at his last job and began with him finding his coworker dead on a chair. He told me the story with so much matter of factness that I had to double back and make sure I heard him correctly. At least that's arresting but now he kinda creeps me out and I've avoided him after he also told me he and his wife spent all day laughing and smirking at his wife's mother's funeral. The only other guy in the department calls me Miss A***, like he's from the south but is not, just raised by his grandmother and obviously thinks of me as some old spinster? He's super polite. P thinks I should just bite the bullet and apologize to this cow. I think he fears retaliation. I'm thinking maybe this is just natural order. She wins the battle of good and evil at that damn place. I've paid my dues. I've tried so hard. I'm not going back to pretending its fun or okay to eat and breathe negative thoughts all day. That can be like a cancer. I'll stay lonely I think. There are others like me there, all sitting alone in the staff cafeteria, quietly grazing on our feed with our heads down. We all fight through our days at that place, a bully in each compartment. Some asshole making our lives miserable. I see it in some of their faces. Some of us even talk about it. What does any of this have to do with a turkey bacon and tomato grilled cheese with tator tots and cherry pepper? I wish I knew.