So I am sure most of you have heard of Timehop. It is an app that lets you look back at your social media history for the last few years and relive the past. It is a fun tool most of the time. It lets you relive fun things that may have slipped your mind. Little moments of joy, peeks into the biggest joys of your life, or successes, also lets you know if you are straying from your ultimate goals.
With most “time travel” things it does pose that risk, bringing you back to bad memories. I’ve relived deaths in the family, loss of friends, memories that are tender. Right now I am batting through what ended up being the last month of employment with the job that led my healthy lifestyle so far off the rails I cannot even begin to describe it. Aside from the weight gain I incurred with that job, despite trying things like changing gyms, and different food plans I was the worst on my mental health.
I am watching little flashes that I let be public on social media, that didn’t nearly display the horrible state that I was truly in. Yesterdays timehop showed me a post about Mark. Mark was the man who passed away as I started my job. A friend. A friend whose job I stepped into, I got the job because he was at death’s door with lung cancer. He drank, and did pills to numb both the pain of the cancer, but also the pain of the job. He told me not to become a lifer in the job. I still hear his words in my mind, I remember my last visit with him before he passed as I sat with him and his daughter sharing laughter and wisdom, kindness and fear.
I am so thankful that I am not where I was a year ago, but I am sad for that part of me, the part of me that allowed myself to be made a victim by my employer. Treated poorly, by being disrespected, not trusted to do my job when I did it better than anyone that had been in the position before me.
I look at timehop and see the epic meltdown backbuilding. I feel the anxiety in myself… I right now in present day feel it. I shouldn’t feel it… but I feel it with a bit of laughter, along with all the fear and stress. When I left that job I did have a backup plan. It wasn’t a fool-proof plan… and it was a plan that too would fail… The failures have led me however to a place where I feel that I am finally happy.
I should be able to let go of that pain at this point.
I feel almost as if I am dealing with some sort of abuse syndrome, because I can’t let go. Part of it is probably because my husband still works there.
My husband makes it a point not to involve me in the politics of the office, but does pass along to me that I am missed by my coworkers. I have in fact received countless texts and calls, even now approaching a year later I still receive texts and calls asking me to please come back and ask for my job back. As if I was fired and did not leave on my own accord. I often think, if they had paid me more would I have stayed… and the truth of the matter becomes, the way I had been treated, or perceived being treated could not have been outweighed by even a doubling in my salary.
Has my mental health recovered at this point? …I fear it has only partially recovered. I worry often about my employment status at my current job. I was finally brought on full-time in December, so I am no longer a temp with the company which means stability for myself. I work with a great team of people, and company with values and a mission that match my own. The fact that I have the ability to effect lives and help people, even if I can’t directly do it, means the world to me. It takes more than one person to do it, and a team can effect change. I do still worry about those I left behind at my former job, when I get texts complaining about *whatever it is* be it the working condition of a vehicle, the hours, the attitudes etc I simply say perhaps it is time to move on.
We all have to reach our tipping point on our own.
unfortunately I can see that I reached that tipping point, the boat flipped, and I climbed back on to try to save everyone… and that was just simply the wrong thing to do. You can’t save everyone Kris, especially when you yourself are so lost. My heart hurts for the old me… but is open for the opportunities in front of me.
I am on Day 12 of eating right and tracking my food. It is nowhere near the years of tracking I had as a streak before but every record starts with two in row and I need to start somewhere. So here I am… water, coffee, yogurt and my iPad finding a voice in the darkness as the clouds start to clear.