The Talk I Gave Myself When it was All Going Wrong

It was so apparent to me sitting there in that moment just how much I had once again fallen for the lie. I could feel my muscles ache, my emotions were a mess and I felt as low on energy as it gets. There were more than one lie I had blindly told myself that resulted in why I felt this way right now. The first one being, I could handle it followed by it was only for a little while. From there it got worse to include I have to do this for my family and it will be alright.

Here I was spending a short two day get away with the family that I swore I wouldn’t bring along my work laptop. That was just another lie as I looked in our hotel room from the patio and saw my green backpack that had my work laptop tucked inside. SIgh. It was like a weight I carried around constantly reminding me of how much time was being taken out of my life for the sake of a paycheck. Currently it felt like a boulder around my neck with the stress of political drama swirling at work, a staff reporting to me all concerned with their job security and me trying to figure out how to navigate us out of this situation so we would all have jobs. Just another day at the office right?

In reality, there wasn’t anything we could do as it was one of those situations where we were caught in the middle of two higher ups vying for personal empire territory. It happens and very soon we would know our fate from it. This is stressful at any time it happens but right now it was the culmination of several things strung together that caused me to wake up early and sit on this hotel patio watching waves slowly come in thinking about what a mess my life was again.

The stress at work had added on weight to my body from stress eating. I rarely moved away from my desk during the day to even stretch because it was constant, never ending demands that had to be done right now. I felt old and tired like I had been burned to a crisp from overcooking. This is where the guilt rolled in like a morning fog thick and gray. I had sacrificed my own health and well-being for this job because I believed in it. I worked late and on weekends to do the impossible because they said it had to be done right then and failure wasn’t an option. I hadn’t failed them but I sure had failed myself with extra weight, sleeplessness, exhaustion and lost time with my family. For what though because now my entire team and myself faced layoffs because someone else wanted what we had created for themselves.

I was mad at myself. Personal responsibility runs deep in me and I felt responsible for letting this happen. I thought I was doing right and following the rules only to find out there was another set of rules in backdoor deals that I wasn’t a part. I should have known better. I should have said no. The list of shoulds run through my mind for the thousandth time. I guess I’ll need to find another job soon. It always seems to come to that. When one goes wrong and this sort of thing happens it’s always those that gave it all that seem to have to be updating their resumes.

I had swore this wouldn’t happen again to me. That I had enough and it was going to go my way from now on. No more being caught up in this kind of thing that left me without a job and income for my family. How naive right? No more would I let a job ruin my health, take my family time and leave me with nothing when I became disposable. Even more stupid right? My own inner warrior was roaring at the injustices and wrongs but I sensibly knew there are sometimes matters we just need to plan to walk out of and leave the battlefield.