Completely powerless….

This week was a hard week at work. To understand why I found it difficult, we first need to rewind back to last summer. To cut a long story short, I had an altercation with a colleague. I was doing my job in my own way, which didn’t suit them. He rang me unexpectedly and was being dismissive and condescending and did not understand or want to see things from my perspective. As a result of this, there was a rupture in the relationship that was not properly dealt with or repaired. From that point onwards, they felt unsafe to me. Since then, I have done my very best to avoid them.

But this week they ramped things up again, with fake corporate deadlines emerging and chasing me with pinging messages, because they knew I would decline their call. But in the end, I complied with their request anyway, because I knew it would result in a messy situation if I didn’t. So I complied. I felt like I had to do things in a way that felt disorderly to me. I felt like I was doing things that I didn’t have the time or freedom to think about or speak on. I felt like I lost all control. It was like reliving abuse again.

I went to bed that night and my head just kept replaying the events of the day again and again, strategising the worst-case scenario and just feeling smaller and smaller. Completely powerless. One of the worst feelings for me is pretending that I am OK when I’m not OK, and hiding my pain instead of being able to show up with it. It reminds me of times when I was a child and would emotionally feel like I had been beaten black and blue. I would cry myself to sleep at night. The next day I would show up to school, put on my uniform, comb my hair, and look presentable as if nothing had happened. Nobody would ever notice.

And whenever someone did notice that perhaps there was a chance that I was not OK, it was better for me to respond with a smile and pretend, because rejection or abandonment from a person was never worth it.