After four years of grieving mom dying of covid & being in a constant state of chaos being triggered and overstimmed and overwhelmed by everything, after four years of diligence and sacrificing personal experiences, I caught COVID.
How this came to be is a combination of conditions:
1. My boss insisting I attend a mandatory meeting with 30 people in an enclosed conference room for 4 hours—when I have been avoiding crowds for sustained periods of time and have medical documentation justifying my working remotely 2 days a week.
2. My inability to advocate for myself by pushing back regarding this because of the fact my boss has only perpetuated this dynamic wherein I feel and believe I am a problem, and by pushing back it would have only contributed more to this dynamic.
3. A half century of both, a fear of failure and people pleasing as a byproduct of my C-PTSD, which was brought on by decades of narcissistic abuse from mom. I was unable to make my mother happy, and by extension, I’ll never make my boss happy.
It is convenient for me to blame my mom, and have a white hot hate-on for my boss, for this. I lack sufficient conflict resolution skills necessary for me to navigate challenging situations like this. Convenient & a reasonable conclusion; however, I am weary and fucking bored of this trope, blaming mom, and of course suffering because I feel disempowered to advocate for myself.
I caught covid a month after being diagnosed with a DVT in my leg, so I was already distracted and overwhelmed before the situation regarding the mandatory meeting presented itself.
In the 88 days since my DVT diagnosis and 40 days since testing positive for covid, not once has my boss nor my office manager bothered to ask me how I am doing. In fact, when others are brave enough to inquire, my office manager tone polices me when I dare to respond.
The ultimate conclusion I have come to is neither my boss nor office manager gives a shit about my health, well being, or comfort—just as mom didn’t give a shit.
Each day I manage to drag myself to the office, it is as if I were trying to work up an appetite to feast on rotten meat. And unlike all those years of family gatherings I avoided, I cannot avoid work. I need my job and its medical insurance which sadly I need more and more with each passing day.
I have been unhappy since roughly day 45 of my initial 90 day probationary period, and I’ve attempted to extricate myself from this trap of misery by interviewing for jobs elsewhere, to no avail.
I have tried to change my perspective to muster the fortitude to keep at it, and I have yet to make my peace with it. So, it is imperative I change my paradigm, and try yet again to find a new job.
Just as I felt as if I never fit in, in my family, in school, in church, always an outsider looking in—I don’t fit in at my job, and I am tired of being a square peg being judged harshly that I am a fish who is being judged harshly for my inability to climb a tree.
