We all have insecurities. We all feel less than what we think we should be. But do you value yourself?
Sometimes, I think I do. But there's always been this little voice inside of me that says I'm not good enough, says that I do everything wrong, and makes me believe I'm worthless. I've wrestled with it all of my life, and I don't think I'm alone in this particular fight. Most people seem to fight with their insecurities every day.
Through meditation, I learned to listen and then deny that voice and it's power. But since my routine has NOT been resurrected as I intended, I can honestly say that I've fallen back into the same insecurities.
Talking to a friend has helped me see why I don't want to be like this. He makes me feel crushingly insecure, but that isn't what opened my eyes.
It's his way of dealing with his own insecurities that showed me what's wrong with how I am now dealing with mine.
He once had people he confessed his problems to, but they shut him down and abandoned him when he needed them most. He once had people who made him hate himself. And then he finally kicked them out of his life.
But instead of dealing with the cuts in his soul that these people left behind, he let them fester. Now, he's become much like the people he refuses to think or talk about. Anyone mentions their problems, he shuts them down, because he believes everyone should deal with their own problems. Anyone makes him feel in the slightest inferior, he shuts them out, and turns that same feeling back on them.
I am the first to admit I have many scars upon my soul. But they are scars. Flaws in the framework of my inner self, but they have closed and healed. I haven't allowed infection to settle and infect the rest of my soul. And while more cuts continue to be added to the number, each one is carefully tended and given what it needs to heal.
This boy does not have that. His cuts have never healed, and if he doesn't change sometime soon, I'm afraid that he's going to die of them.
And trying to help him has shredded my self-worth like nothing I've done before. I'm finally to a point where I have to back off and tend my own wounds. I feel guilty, like I should keep on trying to save this guy from himself, but I know this isn't really my responsibility. But my emotions about myself are. And I need to help myself feel better again.
How can I help anyone else if I don't help myself?
Routine is the secret to success for me. I know it. I have proven it. I have lived it.
But it's so hard to put into practice.
I want to write every day again. I want to wake up and run most days. I want to feel limber and relaxed again. I want to remember calm, instead of trying to create it all the time. And I desperately want to see the progress I was making renewed.
So, my routine must return. But everytime I make a deadline for the day it has to be reenacted, I find some excuse to put it off another day. And another. And another.
Because tomorrow is a day that never comes. Saying "I'll do it tomorrow." is as good as saying "I don't want to do it at all."
The fact is, I want to see that beautiful progress I was making, but I don't want to put in the effort the routine costs. Which is funny, because it didn't feel like much effort while it was happening. At least, not until I added a whole bunch more to my routine.
But it's time to get off my butt and start this life change back up again. I'm tired of excuses and silly self-pity. I want to feel myself living again!
Here's hoping I can survive the ride.
So I disappeared after my nervous breakdown a bit. I know I'm not doing so well, because I can't write. I sit at the computer, pull the book up and just stare at it blankly for a long time. Not because I don't know where to go from here but because it just doesn't feel like the words are in me anymore.
Which is crazy. I know the words are there. I just can't seem to reach them.
But I have some good news. I read some pretty risque books on occasion, and since the rape I haven't been able to. But yesterday I made myself get a really rough one about a woman like me who was recovering from a severe rape who subsequently fell in love and found peace. Strangely, the book was better therapy than just about anything I've done so far.
My coworker and I are also getting along better. I had to go to our boss and report things, but we're dealing now. So that front looks better.
And boys are still hitting on me and pressuring me to go out with them, which I'm just not ready for.
Beyond the recent trauma, I have a hard time finding men who I click with. I guess I'm a little picky. I need to feel passion with them, need to be able to hold intelligent conversations with them, and they need to be able to call me on my crap sometimes.
Looks are not required. Appreciated, but not required. Money is not required. A nice perk, but again, I don't really care. I just need to FEEL when I'm with them, instead of having that cold logic dominating my personality.
I wish I could write my book again. I feel the words inside me, wanting to be unleashed. It feels like something is in the way right now, though. And I'm not sure if it's my personal problems or a story problem.
Anyway, thought I'd get on here and let you all know that I am coping and dealing with things in my own way. I don't like how depressed I've been lately and I'll soon be dragging my butt back out of it. But right now, I just don't have the energy to.
Tomorrow will be a new day. Right?
I felt this nervous breakdown coming. After all that happened in my personal life, and how my family situation has been going, it was inevitable. So when someone at work started disappearing, lying to me, backtalking me when I'm trying to train her, talking bad about me to my coworkers, and not finishing her workload at the end of the day when I'm required to get EVERYTHING DONE at work before I leave, I'm not surprised it happened.
Remember my anger post? Yeah, I was considering using my usual tricks to get rid of this lady before she pushed me over the edge. But I didn't want to be that person, so I decided to just play nice and let each of us go our own way.
And then this weekend happened.
First, it was Friday. I find out she's bad-mouthing me. Wonderful. Like that isn't going to infuriate me. And then my (big) boss comes around and tells me I have to finish an impossible workload before leaving work that night, and to get two FULL 3-high (that means it has three shelves that tower over your head) carts gone through, prepped, and binned in the back.
On a Friday. After having already spent 3 hours on the registers up front. With no one covering my department but me from 5:30-10:00 (I work in Jewelry, where they call you for customers every few minutes).
Yeah. That was fun.
And on Saturday they tell me the same thing AGAIN. Only this time, I don't have any easy things to work through quickly and make disappear. I worked all of that stuff Friday. No, all that's left is the hard junk. I'm working my tail off, again, and work like a crazy person to get this stuff done.
But I did it. Four carts are gone from the bins and they look FANTASTIC.
Now, I didn't do it all alone. My coworker, who is causing the problems, is out on the floor covering jewelry and running freight in shoes while I'm in the back. But she disappears again after her last break (for 45 minutes), and I need her to do a few things in that time.
This makes me kind of mad. But I drop it. I don't want anyone accusing me of "not getting along" with my co-worker.
So I go in today. And I am joyfully greeted with the news that I'm working jewelry today while the new girl works shoe freight.
I'm so excited. Maybe today will go better? After all, I'm not stuck in the bins all day today. Just have to get rid of any shoe freight she works that doesn't go out.
My co-worker has about 4 hours to complete 1 1/2 carts of shoes. I have nothing to do with it, and I only tell her that my other co-worker left a note for her at jewelry. She tells me she knows, but never comes by to see. Doesn't come by jewelry to check in. Isn't in the shoe department 80% of the time I go to check on her.
9:00 swings around. I know it's time for her to be gone. So I go to check on what she has finished. She's left 2 boxes out of freight that she didn't get done, and at first I think, ahh, I can cover that. But then I go to the back. And find that she's left all the picks she was supposed to work and the other cart she was supposed to get still back there.
So those 2 boxes are from the 1/2 a cart she was supposed to work when I arrived in the department at 2:00.
Now, if you have never run freight for shoes, you should know: this is ridiculously easy work. You take out big shoe boxes from the bigger boxes they come in. You take said shoe boxes to their designated display. You hang/set shoe boxes on shelves. And then you get rid of cardboard. Anything that doesn't go out, gets stacked in a pile.
That's it.
1 1/2 carts of freight should have taken an experienced worker 1 1/2 to 2 hours. An inexperienced one would take 3 to MAYBE 4. But not to have finished even half a cart in 4 hours? While I'm covering jewelry? And someone else is picking up the floor?
So I find a whole crap-load of work to do 2 hours before it's time for me to close. And she's just gone. Haven't seen her for an hour.
I lost it, folks. I had to cart back 1 and a half carts full of crap to the back and load them on the carts I have taken TWO DAYS to empty. TWO DAYS of climbing up and down ladders, scanning box after box, moving stacks of boxes around and over my head into uncomfortable places, hunting printers and making boxes for shoes to be put in, all done in sweltering heat because the back room doesn't air condition very well?
Did I mention our boss is coming back from vacation tomorrow and I'm responsible for making the bins look good? Or that I emptied one half of a 3 high jewelry cart while she did this (jewelry is difficult because you're near a cash register and people want you to check them out and it's a lot of small items packaged like nuclear weapons)? And served a whole bunch of customers who just wanted to check out? And did returns? And cleaned the jewelry department so that my boss doesn't come back to a COMPLETE mess?
Yeah, I know what I'm doing and she's only been here a month. Yeah, I expected to have to cover for her. Yeah, I know I'm supposed to have the heavier work-load because I'm actually experienced.
But what did she do for 4 hours?!? Shoes was a mess every time I came by to check on her. Only at the end did it look a little picked up.
So I rant and raved for a few hours. Cried. Stormed around the building like a crazy person. Complained about said co-worker at length. Left a note for my boss telling on her for what she did. I feel a little guilty for it, too. But only a very little. This whole thing has gotten way out of hand and I can't survive it just by sticking my head in the mud and ignoring it. I might lose my job over this, but if she wants to tell people I'm "just being mean to her", then I guess I'll have to take it. I can't believe people who know me so well would believe I'd actually bully someone like that. I can't even say a mean thing to my rapist. Why in the world would I waste my meanness on some random lady I hardly know???
This won't end pretty. I hope this is the only nervous breakdown I have to endure, but it really sucks that it happened at work. With people watching.
I usually like my nervous breakdowns a little more private than that.
