Heart-Broken

I don't think I'm adjusting to the changes at work very well. I've been working hard. I've been coming in early and staying late. But still somehow I feel unsettled and out of sync around here all of a sudden. If this was all merely about shouldering my burden and getting a bunch of work done it would be one thing, but the unsettling feeling is coming all from politics. I kind of feel a bit like a pariah, like it's high school all over again. I was very awkward and unpopular in school. My social pain was so much that I just held on and counted it as limbo time until my real life could begin. I figured that once I became an adult, everything would change. Well, that is and is not true. I certainly became a lot more poised. I learned how to find people in life that I could count on (for the most part). I figured out what was important and what wasn't and if someone didn't like you, well, who needs them anyway? But still, I find the parallels in real life to that horrible time in school all the time. It's particularly disconcerting when I come up against it in my work environment because then there is really no escaping it. I can't just shrug it off and go play elsewhere. I've always felt like my department here was a good team, but lately and more and more I feel like it's become a popularity contest. Just little things make me feel snubbed. For instance: a colleague who moved to Seattle a few months ago is in NYC this week and so an email was sent around about people going out after work with her. No problem. I wasn't sure if I was going to go, it being a Tuesday and all, but it was nice to have the option. No more word was said about where and when, etc. But I was here working away around 5:30 - 6:00 PM or so -- I had been in the same spot, the same position literally since 8 AM. And I hear the Director of my department come around to the cube across from me and ask the guy who sits there (Mark) if he was going to come out with them. I heard her mumble where they were going to be and that they were leaving then. Do you think she popped her head into my cube? I was sitting right there and I know that she knew it too. I hate this shit. I feel like it doesn't matter how hard I work, if I'm not on some arbitrary "A" list then I am just a working-slug-piece-of-shit-nobody. It wouldn't be as a big a deal if this snubbing was coming from a colleague, but this is the Director of my department. This is the person who determines whether I get a raise, what projects I get to do, and even whether I have a job!It's like high school all over again and I can't stand it.