What if what people pride you for is really one of your major weaknesses? What if what people envy in your personality is what has kept you stuck…
Welcome to Wiggle Worm’s label of “resilient” “persistent” “strong” “brave.” I watched a video this morning that made me really think about why I really don’t easily walk away from challenging situations…and spoiler alert, it isn’t because it isn’t hard or doesn’t bother me.
Yeah, I don’t often give up when things get hard. Sure, I push through physical and emotional pain and say ‘I’m fine.’ But I don’t feel resilient. I don’t feel brave. I feel like I’m walking on eggshells.
Y’all, keeping going doesn’t always mean you’re doing a great job navigating a difficult situation. Sometimes it means you are terrified. As someone who values consistency and predictability, it feels safer to stay in a very unsafe and uncomfortable known situation than to make a change and end up in a very unknown situation in which there is no promise it actually will be better. That doesn’t sound like a positive trait to me…it sounds like being unable to prioritize safety over consistency.
It is scary to go a new direction. It is especially scary when that new direction holds no guarantees it will lead to something better. And I tend to be more scared of the unknown that might be okay than the known danger.
Right now I am understanding how this story has played out more than once in my life. I remember being in college and trying to figure out how to keep 989 happy to keep her from causing me more problems. In retrospect, like of course I should have gotten a new counselor, but at the time I felt like the best answer was to just keep trying to figure out how to get her to treat me with respect…like yeah, it totally didn’t work. Perhaps later I should have found a way to transfer to a different school rather than continue to be controlled by someone who, for example, tried to get me kicked out of school because I wrote on my blog that I didn’t like a particular CD…that apparently she enjoyed…like lol are you serious? You’re gonna complain that I am unprofessional and disrespectful because I commented on my personal blog that I loved being able to be a part of a new place on campus to relax but preferred to listen to my own music with my earbuds because I didn’t love the music playing in the space?? Like for real? Everyone gets to have their own opinions. And the quiet music in my earbuds isn’t taking away your ability to listen to the music playing over the speakers in the room. You let me live my life, and you can live your own…but nope, I continued to press on through it all because I was afraid of the possible negative consequences of going to another school where it might not actually be better. I continued to live in fear, trying to figure out how to express myself without inciting more attacks. I think the part of that situation that bothers me the most is the part where a club I led put on an event about stalking. I saw something that made it look like she was going and reached out to my advocate. I was ready to tell my team I was sorry but I couldn’t be there if she was going to be there. My advocate reached out to her and she said she definitely wasn’t going as she had another engagement during that period of time. Phew! Well, I walked into the room and there she was…Uggh…thinking perhaps she was just helping set up and was on her way out but also knowing that she might know I had specifically asked about her presence and decided to change her mind, I took a seat as far as possible from where her belongings were set down…and from this set up, you can probably see where this is going. Yep, she had traded places with one of the speakers for my event…and not only that, when she wasn’t speaking she moved her stuff to sit at the desk right next to mine. What was supposed to be a positive lunch event with my friends became a terrifying and isolating experience.
And then a couple years ago when I was in the worst job of my life. Being assaulted at work and terrified of it happening again was not a good way to live…and yet I felt like I had to get through the year. The known trauma zone felt better than leaving and walking into an unknown where maybe no one would want me because I was a quitter. And I’d fought so hard to be there in the first place. It was supposed to be my dream come true, so how could I just walk away?…
And that is how this girl doesn’t just walk away might sound super positive, but has been far from positive. Now I am learning to stand up for myself. I am learning to ask for help…but at my core I am still the girl who can’t say no and walk away. And that isn’t always great. I want to say I will never let myself end up in one of those bad situations again, but in reality, I have little doubt that at least on a smaller scale it’ll happen again. Lightning might never strike twice, but floods do frequently hit the same place again. I’ve never drowned, but it has been a long hard fight for many years to stay afloat.
Today as I was driving home I was so incredibly thankful for the kind people I called at the police department at approximately midnight yesterday evening last year.
That day I’d filled two U-haul’s with most of the contents of my apartment (which was about a half mile from the loading dock of that building) so I was physically exhausted. And the events earlier in the day had left me emotionally exhausted and overwhelmed. And I’d just got home from saying goodbye to my Bible study friends at around midnight so I was feeling the grief of separation, and I was also sleep exhausted. I walked up to my apartment and was just so terrified. I’d found out earlier that day that my attempts to stay as far away as possible from the bad people had failed. And that I’d been being tracked. And that pictures and videos had been snuck of me in leggings which I’d started wearing barely a month or so prior. I felt violated, but more than that I just felt afraid. I didn’t know what to do, but I found a business card from the police on the floor. And I called the number. And I didn’t really know what I wanted them to say when I called, but once I got through the phone tree I got someone who was kind. This person explained that they didn’t really have the staffing to send someone out immediately unless I really felt like it was an emergency but I could choose a time on Tuesday for someone to come out if I wanted, or if I felt more comfortable I could come to them. By the time these options were presented I already felt a little better, and the fact that these people were willing to come if I needed them made me feel safe enough to turn on enough lights to shower and get ready to sleep. I definitely did use the heaviest boxes to barricade the door, and I set up my make-shift bed of a fitted sheet, and pillow (and maybe the flat sheet, but I’m not totally certain I left a flat sheet unpacked). I didn’t get a lot of sleep, but morning came. The police people let me know they were still available and could come at the previously agreed upon time if I wanted. And I did want. And they were true to their word. And they were incredibly patient with the girl who answered the door wearing a mask and gloves and obsessively cleaning the baseboards (because not that they knew it, but I was afraid I couldn’t afford to not get my deposit back and didn’t want to have to fight a management company I knew wasn’t the most up and up). They let me give them a tour of the floor I lived on. They were basically just the soft people in a prickly world that I needed. I felt a little more safe. These kind people left me positive impressions of the police force. In every profession I know there are people who are good at their jobs and people who are not, but these people showed me the positive side, the side that wants to care for their community. I might not remember their names or what they looked like, but I will always remember the way they made me feel, and the way they took the time to go above the call of duty and talk patiently to this terrified girl who wasn’t even going to be a member of their community much longer anyway. They were a brightspot in a time that had a lot of dark. Looking back, I’d really like to be able to be that kind of person to someone else. Healing from trauma is never over, but every positive experience makes a difference. Every bit of kindness helps. I am so thankful for all the people who reached out when I was in that place.
(Sadie Hawkins Dance in my Khaki Pants – RelientK)
Lol, so I was reading the reviews on a lunchbox. And it was a good reminder that the average person is an idiot and half of the population is dumber than that. So this lunch box has a removeable plastic bucket liner like my own lunchbox has for easy cleaning. It I advertised as “heat welded to prevent leaks” and multiple people complained that if you dump the lunchbox upside down it will leak…like no kidding, it is a bucket. Ever made a sand castle? Same idea…the sand doesn’t stay in the bucket when the bucket is upside down. The lunchbox liner does not leak, but it is required to comply with the laws of physics. No felon lunch boxes allowed lol. And there was at least one person who gave one star because it gets sticky when you put pb&j sandwiches in there so now she’s gonna have to buy bags for her sandwiches…oh my…and these are the people we share a planet with.
99% unrelated…this might be incredibly controversial…but…I’ve heard for so many years how awful lularoe leggings are. From ugly to poor fit to holey to see through and beyond, everyone seems to hate these leggings. But then someone was like hey, I have these leggings I’m gonna get rid of, would you like them? And I’m not sure I even knew they were lularoe. But I’ve come to love leggings over the past few years, so of course I said yes. And most of them are super cute. There is really only one pair that I saw the design and was like yeah, I don’t love that. But then I put that pair on, and they actually do look really good on me. And even if they didn’t, these are somehow just as warm as any other pair of un-lined leggings, but are a lot thinner than most pairs, so they fit even under skin-tight dress pants to get a little extra warmth on cold mornings. They are softer than any other brand, and despite being used (some very well loved based on the appearance of the tags) when I got them, none of them have any pilling or holes, nor are even the lighter colors see through. Honestly, even the tags do not really bother me which is huge, because I will be the first to admit I can have some sensory sensitivities at times. Basically the only thing I could love more is if they were fleece-lined like my very first ever pair of leggings which I got on sale for like $3 at target like 3 years ago that started my love of leggings. But I might not even want that since that would make them thicker. I do agree that any business strategy that relies on people buying your product then begging their friends and family to buy from them at a markup is kinda sketchy, but the product is good even if the selling plan is less good. (Also will just throw in that I don’t consider myself a very large person, but I was really stretching the limits of one size fits all, so I think it would be a valid complaint that they didn’t fit if you were a bit overweight, but proportionally they were great – it’s not like they were tight some places and too loose others.
I almost posted this like two weeks ago but it was late and so I was gonna do it in the morning. And that night was filled with nightmares of the bad people from my old job finding me and therefore very little sleep and a lot of fear prevented me from hitting publish in the morning. I hate that they still have that power over me…but I’m feeling more ready now…and now I have more thoughts…
Since we’re talking reviews…HelloFresh. I had a coupon code for a box for like $13. I got about twice as many meals out of it as they listed it as by adding a bag of rice, a loaf of bread, a couple tomatoes, and of course lots of desserts because HelloFresh only takes care of main dishes. For $13 it was kinda sorta worth it, but not something I would be likely to do again. The recipes were all pretty basic things that could be made without even using a recipe. The proportions of ingredients are just, well, weird. Like I got <1/4 of a cup of rice to make supposedly two servings of rice bowls (nowhere near enough carbs, especially when it is a primary component of the meal), and for another meal two potatoes that were basically gemstone potato sized…but for chili I got over half a pound of turkey and a can of beans for two servings (WAY more than two servings of protein). I mean, I’m glad I did have that since the meal included zero carbs, but long story short, the meals are definitely intended to have something go with them to balance them out. I think the biggest strike against HelloFresh besides the crazy price point is that until you’ve given your money to HelloFresh, you can’t see their menu to find out if there is even anything you’re going to like available. I found a website claiming to know what the choices were going to be and poured over it to confirm I’d be able to find enough things I’d actually eat (hello, I am a picky eater who absolutely will NOT eat fish for example)…then I gave HelloFresh my money and the choices were completely different and it was a struggle to find things I could at least adapt if necessary to make edible. It feels a bit like bait and switch. Finally, as someone who always feels bad wasting food and also someone who hates taking out the trash, HelloFresh has another massive strike against them. The amount of trash generated from a single serving of HelloFresh is about the same as the amount of trash I generate total in at least a week, or possibly even a month. And now I have a PILE of packets of ketchup, mustard, mayo, and possibly other condiments that are just going to be wasted. It seems so dumb to include those things, because if you are someone who uses ketchup you almost certainly have packets left over from your last McDonalds run or you have a bottle of ketchup in your refrigerator that is more convenient than the packets anyway. If you are not a ketchup-user, you aren’t going to suddenly change your mind about how disgusting ketchup is when the packet comes in your box and the packet is just going to be thrown out once it finally goes bad. But then sugar isn’t included which baffles me. People who don’t bake don’t have any reason to have a container of sugar, and now you want me to use tomato paste and sugar to make my own pasta sauce instead of just opening a container of pre-made sauce and doctoring it to my taste? Like I would think we were just planning on super home-made if it weren’t that my other pasta sauce came out of the box ready to pour onto the pasta without even so much as the addition of oregano…lol…so basically my HelloFresh review is meh. It was more money than I would prefer to spend and generated SO MUCH TRASH, but nothing tasted BAD, so if you have the disposable income and don’t mind the trash and the figuring out only a few days in advance how to round out the meals, it isn’t awful, but for me if I’m gonna spend a little more for a trashier meal, I’d rather get a more complete meal at McDonalds that doesn’t require so much prep time. (Oh, and don’t bother with their instructions…why in the world would I chop everything first when the next step is going to be to wait for something else to cook? I am perfectly capable of chopping and waiting at the same time).
One completely unrelated thought: sometimes the kindest thing you can do is to set a boundary rather than agreeing. Yesterday, I could have said yes, but I instead chose no. No, I will not modify every order with a comment that Wiggle Worm has evaluated this order…Besides how much of my time that would waste an how confusing it would be as a nurse to know what to do if an order didn’t have that comment and how much nursing time it would waste re-acknowledging the orders after I add that comment, it was kinder to say no, because saying yes would have made me feel bitter every time I had to do it into eternity. Like seriously? The order that made this pharmacist request this was, of all things, a vitamin D order (that was still within the realm of normal vitamin D supplementation). And not only that, but the day it was ordered I had decided to do a great job documenting (because anyone who knows me knows that 99% of my interventions most days are a single word) and I’d actually documented the reason the patient was eligible for vitamin D supplementation, the expected dose, and the long-term plan for the patient’s vitamin D supplementation…and if that weren’t enough, I was also the one who verified the order…obvi I’d evaluated the order if I’d verified it…not to mention, this order had been active for at least a week by this point, and I’d been covering the unit most of the days so it was expressly my job to evaluate that particular medication at least like 4 times since it’d been verified. I don’t love change, but I do recognize that every hospital has their own documentation system…but no one else is expected to document anything like that and I’m not about to let someone convince the new girl that she should be doing things that way…
Recently on InstaGram I saw a short paragraph that at first didn’t make sense. It was describing that people who are abused/experience trauma tend to blame themselves and feel shame about the situation and may even be opposed to the idea that someone else may be to blame. Turning the trauma inward feels safer. At first it seemed odd…and then I thought back to my recent abuse experiences. And I definitely blamed myself at first in each situation. When a lawyer used the term “assault” and when a friend used the word “abuse” and when a coworker expressed that I deserved a more safe workplace, each of those things were kinda shocking. Did I know on some level that what I’d gone through wasn’t right? I’m honestly not fully certain, but over time I came to recognize that it was incredibly true that it wasn’t about me. I wasn’t the problem. LOL, like the text one of my bible study friends sent last night: It’s not about the Iranian yogurt!
And I feel like I’ve now said way too much and no one’s gonna wanna read this…A+ for the day if you’ve made it this far. Hashtag distance highfive 🙂 As much as I hate people sometimes, I also love people so many times, and right now as long as you aren’t reading in order to find new ways to hurt me, I love you for making it through the chaos of my thoughts this long 🙂 have a great day
Sorry I fell off the face of the earth again…August is not my month. One Sunday morning my laptop would not let me log in. It just spun and spun and spun. I went to church and when I got home (4-5 hours after I’d originally tried to log in) it was still welcoming me. I learned that the hard drive had died…which means bye-bye mr lappy pants…and it was hard because usually my dad would be the one I would call in that situation to help me figure out how to fix it or what to do next and just to talk about it. And even before this had happened I’d been struggling a little about my dad…so yeah, it wasn’t a great day.
A few weeks later I finally have a laptop again and am starting to come to terms with my entire previous life being likely lost forever. That is hard because it is really hard to lose things that you’ve had since at least 2011, as well as things you were still using like your budget (that you’d finally gotten re-caught up with that week) and your CV (that you’d updated just a couple weeks ago). It is also hard because it was a little bit of a reminder of leaving my job last summer when it didn’t occur to me that I may want to have any of my documents from my laptop there, and then have realized over time how many things I really wish I had a copy of…lol, I was told HR could get me whatever I needed…that was either a misinformed statement or (more likely) an intentional lie designed to frustrate me. HR had no access to anything, not to mention that HR at that hospital was less than ideal to put it lightly.
I also am not ashamed to admit I cried that day and later. My new laptop came in the mail. I had ordered a different one from Best Buy than the one that had been recommended to me from Dell, because it had slightly lower specs but also had a slightly lower price and that was an exchange I decided I was okay with. I had been a little hesitant to do that (and I find big purchases really stressful, and even more so when it is for something I don’t know a lot about – I just feel afraid that I am going to mess up). And I got the laptop out of the box and setting it up was stressful…
And I realized that I couldn’t remember my Microsoft product key so I couldn’t use word/powerpoint/outlook. I looked everywhere I could think of, and I found a 5-year limited warranty for the muffin tin I got for Christmas 7 years ago, and I found some other equally useless items, but I did not find where I wrote down that information. I do remember very clearly writing it down and putting it somewhere special to ensure that it didn’t get lost in case I needed it again. I even remember where that “somewhere special” was…the problem is that I’ve moved probably about 5 times since then which has led to things being moved around so many times that I haven’t got a clue where things are anymore. It seems like things have just completely disappeared. I thought that perhaps I had a receipt somewhere…and I did…and it showed I had paid an extra $10 for a CD backup of my download information. And you can probably guess that I definitely can’t find that CD either. Hashtag frustrating. But the biggest problem was when I realized the speakers weren’t working…
Over an hour at Best Buy later, the Geek Squad had determined they’d done all the things they could do for me for free and got permission to exchange my new laptop for an identical but different laptop…but the store was closing so I couldn’t check that it worked while I was still there. Luckily it did work.
Another thing made very evident when setting up my new computer. For some reason I cannot explain my new laptop could remember the links saved to my favorites – but not the ones that were actually saved any time recently…nope…it remembered the ones from somewhere between March and June 2020…so that was pretty much zero percent helpful, but it did show how tightly I hold to people and experiences that are important to me and how hard change is for me. I had a link to a prior employment’s email account I’d lost access to in summer 2017 for example, and a friend’s baby shower registry link for a kid who in 2020 would have been around 3 years old. I haven’t talked with that friend in years, but she is incredibly important to me, because she is someone who was amazingly inclusive during the time in my life where people were lucky to even get a few words out of me in person, but could get a multitude of written notes…it wasn’t a lot of people’s style, but I am so grateful for the people who recognized that even someone who really struggles to communicate may still yearn for community. I might be struggling to use my voice and big groups may be a huge barrier, but I was also extraverted and really needed people who didn’t mind someone practically clinging to them for survival in social situations.
Lol, this post was a lot longer, but then I guess I didn’t save it…but yeah, I am incredibly grateful that August is on the way out. September isn’t perfect – I can tell you a lot about where I was various days in September last year just like August 2019 is highly preserved…hashtag trauma…but I think I am doing well enough for it to feel less crushing. Most of the September trauma led to something ultimately better for me than would have likely happened without it. I learned that standing up for my patients and my team might put a target on my back, but my patients and team deserve that care. And I learned that good people will recognize my worth and do what they can to do the same for me.
(intervening semi-related but incredibly tangential story that I may very well have told before…one night a little over a year ago when I’d been at the hospital well into the late evening, a family of one of my PICU patients who were returning to the hospital after taking a break to take care of things at home saw me waiting to turn left and I’m not sure if it was because they remembered seeing me much earlier in the morning and knew it’d been a long day or if they would have done it regardless of the circumstances, but they stopped when they didn’t have a stop sign or really any reason they would be obligated to stop so that I could turn so I could get home. It was little and only marginally impacted their time to the hospital but made a huge difference for me because even after I spoke up about what hours worked best for me and got my end time moved up to 8:30pm instead of 9pm, those evenings still were long and kept me up at least a little bit late which added to the large sleep debt I’d been accumulating via grief. Also, I remember that family because at the beginning of their child’s stay, very likely because of the trauma of going from having a reasonably healthy child to one who is in the intensive care unit, they were somewhat difficult to work with, but by the time they were nearing discharge to a long term rehab facility (with their child still far from baseline) they were so kind, caring, and appreciative of the team. I never expect a thank you from families, but it always is meaningful to be recognized. I think sometimes it feels especially good when the outcome isn’t amazing…because when you were able to be involved in a big piece of the recovery you can feel some self-pride, but it is harder to feel good about your own contribution even when stepping back it really was significant when the outcome is that the patient is not going home in the condition you were hoping they would. I can no longer say I remember every single one of my patients, but I do remember a large proportion of them to some extent, and most patients while they are in the hospital I do get really attached and think of them as if they were my own children…which makes it incredibly difficult to let go. As much as I want my patients to be ready to go home, I miss them and worry about them when they leave. And I mourn the patients who do not make it. It was probably good for me this winter to be forced to completely disconnect and not be able to follow my patients from afar. I much prefer work life blend over work life balance, but I will admit that during PGY-1 I’m not sure by the second half of the year if I ever had even a single day I didn’t look at anything patient-related…sure, I took days off, but on those days off I was still too worried about my patients to not at least give a cursory glance over at a few of them throughout the day…I’m not someone who values or even desires leaving work at work. Caring for my patients really is my passion).
Anyway, I learned that I really am an excellent pharmacist with a great ability to interact professionally. Hashtag no more imposter syndrome…okay, to be honest, imposter syndrome tries to creep back in on occasion now that it has been a little longer since figuring out that I am incredible, but I am brave, I am a willing learner, and I am learning to listen to the people who recognize my value rather than those who are afraid of the shadows cast by my light. And I learned there are bad people in the world and you really can’t kindness people into becoming better people. Not being confrontational just teaches them that they can get away with their antics, and while you may not feel comfortable addressing the issue or even may feel uncomfortable seeking safety, that doesn’t mean it was okay for them to treat you like that.
I’ll end this with some advice I got from the internet…if life gives you lemons, do not make lemonade unless it also gave you sugar and water or your lemonade is going to suck. The internet also suggests squirting lemon juice in bad people’s faces and freezing the lemons to throw at the bad people, but I do not believe in repaying evil with evil. I believe in loving people even when they deserve the opposite. You may be exhausted of being the bigger person, but do it anyway. Prove to yourself just how big and strong and brave you can be. It might not feel strong and brave, but the people watching you will see it.
100% unrelated but a few days ago I watched a youtube video about this 19 year old who was fighting to get off the sex offender registry because if he knew it was a crime he wouldn’t have done it…like, um, lol…it was still a bad choice to have sex with someone you didn’t know and who was unable to consent regardless of whether it was a crime. There are reasons we have these laws…and then my very minimal trust in the American justice system was broken even further when at the end of the video I found out he was successful…the court determined that it wasn’t reasonable for him to have understood what he was doing wrong, and considering the girl has decided she doesn’t want to be characterized as a victim that they would take him off the registry…and I was like WHAT?!?! That is not how this game is supposed to be played. I understand that people can change. If his reason was that he knew better now and would never do it again then I’d understand taking him off the list, but with his reason being he didn’t know it was wrong, I do not agree. As a woman and therefore the gender more likely to be attacked, I do not appreciate the court determining that not knowing it was a crime is a valid defense. Our court system should protect the vulnerable and to do that they need to recognize that there are some things people should know are crimes…like would he have similarly gotten off as not needing to claim his felon status if he claimed to not know murder was wrong? Like where do we draw the line in what crimes are relatively okay to commit so long as you claim to not know you weren’t supposed to do that?
The end. You were probably tired of hearing my random stream of consciousness by now anyway…
I wanted to write this on Friday, but my brain said no. But now I am ready. My voice deserves to be heard. My story deserves to be shared. I might not know how to protect others from ending up where I was, but I do know that if my story can help even just one person in their journey out of a similar situation then it will be worth the effort to share it.
There are some days that change everything.
July 29, 2021.
It was a Thursday.
I was working on a continuing education presentation on pharmacotherapy and therapeutic hypothermia for hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy in neonates.
And then there was my manager telling me I needed to get my work done…like…umm…what do you think these research articles and my notes are? I was a lot more polite and professional than that, and I thought the conversation would be over…it wasn’t. Long story short, this soon became my manager inches from my face yelling at me for an hour while I was trapped in a corner of an office with no windows and no security cameras. There were threats and I was terrified.
I was not supposed to tell anyone, but I kinda did tell my program director. That started everything in motion for the rest of the past year.
While 95% of me wishes none of that had happened, that I’d heeded the red flags much earlier and chosen a different path…the other 5% wouldn’t trade in that experience. This resulted in breaking free of imposter syndrome. This taught me what I really valued in a workplace and to not take the little positives for granted. This taught me about the problems with the American justice system. This taught me why online privacy is so highly valued by some people. You can’t understand how important it can be until the just in case you were planning for nearly becomes a reality and you don’t know when it will happen for real.
Like y’all, I really thought I was over-reacting when I was planning how I would run to the nearest door, praying the occupants would answer, understand my explanation of the emergency, and let me in if The Bad People were spotted while I was away from home. I even had a brief explanation on a notecard for in case my social anxiety kicked in stronger than my adrenaline in that situation. And then I found out I *had* been found and people had taken videos of me. And I didn’t know since it had been like a month and a half since I’d ever thought I’d seen anyone (and had naively believed the claim that no it wasn’t her) to what extent their following me had been occurring…but I did know that my current address, and at least two past addresses were known by these people, so there was a really real risk to my safety.
I had a lot of offers from friends to come stay with them for the night, but I also learned even more deeply why people stay in dangerous situation and don’t, as people who don’t get it like to say, ‘just’ leave. As afraid as I was of being found at home, it also felt scary to leave home. I was afraid of what would happen outside the walls of my apartment where I didn’t have my own walls for protection. Staying didn’t feel safe, but neither did leaving. When I left for an in person interview and had to stay in a hotel overnight, I have never regretted more my decision to stay in one where the doors open directly to the parking lot. I had nightmares about being found there. Like I would totally stay there again now that my anxiety has become much less significant, but I still don’t go a day without fear of being found. I still have nightmares about The Bad People…especially this weekend. It is so hard navigating life when you’re trying to keep so much a secret from new people until you know and trust them…and I mean, there are some things you just can’t 100% avoid. It was really important to me to participate in welcoming students to campus at my pharmacy school, especially because I can see on their website they have made some positive changes, but it required a city and state to sign up…but it was a free text field so I was able to say ‘_____ area’ and pick a city near where I live and figure if they really can’t deal with keeping it vague they’ll let me know…and I mean, having a pharmacist license requires something be used as an address on file even if it isn’t my real address…but yeah…I never thought I would be the person hesitant to be in the group picture at a church event because of fear of being found. It is hard when you’re a Facebook lover who worries about making too many friends in case it gives away a current location…even if that location was only ‘current’ for a weekend. It is a hard way to live life when it feels like everyone you meet in life wants to know where you live and stuff and you barely feel comfortable with your closest friends who don’t live near you knowing what state you are in…
100% unrelated, but the youtube algorithm has given me some really heartbreaking videos lately…including this one: https://youtu.be/ohMin5KEL-g
And oh my did it pull my heartstrings, but it also was filled with so much truth.
100% unrelated again, but today I was slicing a jalapeno and it was probably the spiciest jalapeno I’ve ever encountered. Just touching the inside of it my fingers started burning. After washing my hands thoroughly multiple times I got on my computer…at one point like an hour later I touched my face and my eyes and ears started burning…like I don’t know how I’m going to make it edible with that much heat, but I also don’t want to waste an entire container of peppers, tomatoes, and jalapeno over one overly spicy jalapeno…
I am very aware that this post will be incredibly dangerous to post and could potentially put me at risk, but I’ve been thinking about it and I feel like this is a story that needs to be told, and I’m currently feeling brave. I have survived hard things and I have conquered big challenges. If I have to do more hard things I know that God has a plan in it. As hard as things have been, God has been with me through each step of the way even when it seemed like I was incredibly alone.
Like I’ve discussed previously, I think I needed the things that happened this fall to recognize that I didn’t need residency to prove that I was valuable. I needed the events that happened to learn that I didn’t need a “normal” career path to earn the position I wanted…and if I hadn’t learned those lessons and been able to speak to that confidence I wouldn’t be where I am now. (And recently I attended an ASHP webinar on imposter syndrome and learned one of the pharmacists in my small group was in a role I’d been told was not possible without two years of residency – and she hadn’t completed even one year of residency). That was incredibly validating to see also that there are other people who didn’t take anything close to the typical path yet have an incredibly successful and fulfilling career unhindered by not fitting into the mould.
But anyway, back to the story time I have been debating about sharing for a long time…
On the first day at my job last summer we’d each selected a work space in the room they kept the residents in to keep them away from the rest of the staff (yes, they did make it clear that was the intention). The room was shaped like a very narrow L and the monitors and chairs were arranged in a J around the perimeter of the room with just barely enough room to walk through the room. I’d very intentionally selected the desk on the end next to the door to give me clear access visually and physically to the outside world. But we’d been told that we needed to be flexible in our arrangements and especially the PGY-2’s needed to be thoughtful of the needs of the PGY-1 residents, so when a PGY-1 asked to switch with me I moved to the desk at the other end of the J, putting me in the back corner…and putting someone next to the door who preferred that the window be completely covered at all times.
If I’d been at the desk that I originally had been set up at, I would likely have had enough access to the outside world they wanted to separate us from that I’d have accepted what they wanted to be my place in life and stayed there at all times. Instead I yearned for connection and so desperately needed to be somewhere I could have relationship that I reached out to my RPD who said there was no reason I had to stay in my office and was welcome to work wherever outside of my office would work better for me. So I found a corner of the hospital that was never used, was not in a patient care area nor inhabited by visitors, had a couch and chairs, and was close enough to the pharmacy to allow me to finally start to get to know people as they walked past, and to at least see the culture of the pharmacy even if I wasn’t totally involved in it.
If you’ve been reading for a while, you’ll know that quiet place to work one day became the reason my residency fell apart.
Brief intermission from that story. There are a lot of reasons I should have left this residency before that point. On day one we each got a note from last year’s residents. I don’t know whether all notes were the same, but I do know that mine essentially said hold on, this will be an awful year but you’ll get through it (which I suppose I am getting through it, just not as a resident). It was already clear that residents were employed as cheap labor not due to anyone desiring to give back or mentor newer pharmacists. It had been made clear that my RPD believed that a PGY-2 was to enable the pharmacist to work in administration rather than clinically – and she couldn’t understand why I would have any interest in PGY-2 when my career goal was as a clinical position rather than administration. And even forgetting the rank list and application comments making it clear I was unwanted, it was very clear that my RPD was hoping I’d choose of my own volition to leave. Y’all, one of the first things she said to me in my planning meeting on July 21 was to ask me if I was sure I should be in residency because she thought I probably shouldn’t be there because I’d mentioned in one of the things I’d had to fill out that my dad had died just under two years prior. I give people the benefit of the doubt so I chose to believe she meant well but just didn’t quite understand grief. I should have seen it for the red flag that it was. But I’d already ignored rows upon rows of red flags because I really believed that because this residency was labelled pediatric critical care and that it was coming immediately after my pediatric PGY-1 that it was what was going to make me feel like people would see me as worthy of having the position I’d wanted since forever.
Basically this had been the entire path from match day in March to that day in July and yet I was still naively, obliviously, convincing myself that I was misinterpreting the signs and being too sensitive, that these weren’t *actually* problems, that there wasn’t *really* anything wrong…but there were absolutely some things wrong. I was working incredibly hard to make everyone happy and made significant contributions to the department and yet I was not shown any appreciation and while a few people may have commented that I was doing impressive work and significantly exceeding expectations, most people made it clear they felt I wasn’t doing enough and that I couldn’t really be trusted to perform. I tried to focus on the people who were in awe of my work, but especially for the weeks I didn’t have any patient care responsibilities at all that lack of value while I was being given so much work that I pretty much exclusively worked, went to bed, got up, and worked again was starting to lead towards burnout. And even if I had felt valued, there is only so long you can answer texts every 30 minutes all night. Eventually if you are burning the candle not just from both ends but also from the middle, it will burn out.
Anyway, let’s return from intermission, especially ‘cause I was getting rant-y and no one needs my crabby recounting of the things that should never have happened…
It was Thursday, July 29, and I was sitting in that place that I’d found working on my CE presentation, making some really good progress. If anything, I was ahead on my projects…but up comes my manager. He is angry and tells me I need to be getting my work done. I wonder what he thinks this whole looking at research articles and taking notes is, but simply non-argumentatively state that I am actually working on my CE presentation. He asked why I wasn’t at my desk and I answered that I’d prefer to be around my coworkers. I wanted (hoped) the conversation was over and tried to go back to my work. He stood over me and told me it was unacceptable for people to see me and my choices were either to go staff in the pharmacy or go to the breakroom. I had a lot of work to get done so I went to the breakroom to defuse the situation.
A breakroom is obviously not an environment conducive to work, particularly when it is still lunch-ish time so it is full of people taking a break and not only is it an atmosphere of conversing, but there isn’t really space to set out the materials required to get work done, so as soon as I was fairly certain he was gone I went to my desk to try to get my work done. I was still on edge from being yelled at and humiliated in the hallway, and I was a little overwhelmed from all the conversations in the breakroom (because, hi, I’m Wiggle Worm, the most introverted extravert you’ll ever meet) so I needed a moment to chill alone, but I’d vented to a coworker who was really concerned about me and taken a moment to calm down and was just about to get back to my CE presentation when in comes my manager. I am instantly afraid. He asks the other residents to leave. He moves to the back of the office where my workspace is and moves a file cabinet so I am trapped in that back corner between him and my desk. He then proceeds to yell at me for an hour about how I am ungrateful, unprofessional, and he wishes he’d never hired me. In a brief pause I try to assert myself and ask for the conversation to be put on hold and am told that sometimes we have to do things we don’t like and he keeps going. It is terrifying and there is no way for me to escape. This is a man with very visible muscles and a history of violence and he is red with unexplained anger and I am in one of the few places in the hospital with no cameras and there is no visibility into the room from the hallway. At one point I hear a key in the door and think I am about to be rescued. He hears it too, and as the door opens he stops talking and tells the resident to leave because I needed to talk with him privately. I was too afraid to contradict him and ask the resident to stay. The resident backed out of the office and I was alone with him again. I couldn’t tell you now everything that was said, but I do remember the clear threat that he better not hear that anyone has heard about this. I’m so thankful he realized he had somewhere to be so that he finally left. I didn’t know what to do, so I emailed my RPD to let her know that the office situation we’d been planning to discuss further the next day was now more than just a desire to be more included, then I went to the bathroom because I felt like that was the only safe place I could go.
Eventually I realized that I couldn’t stay in the bathroom forever, and though I really wasn’t sure what I was doing or where I was going next I needed to leave the bathroom. I left, and there was my RPD. She acted like she cared. I felt relieved. She showed me how to get outside, gave me permission to do my next meeting outside where I’d feel safer, and walked with me get my laptop. Learning how to get outside was a life saver in getting through the next month. In the hospital I didn’t know how to get around and was refused a campus map, but outside the hospital I knew I could run multiple directions and still know where I was, and I couldn’t be trapped outside. There weren’t outlets outside, so it wasn’t an all day location even in good weather, but it was a good temporary spot.
The next day we had the meeting we had previously scheduled…but my RPD tried to run the meeting like she didn’t remember what had happened the previous day. I was okay with that at the beginning of the meeting thinking we’d resolve the situation after talking through what we’d originally planned, but then she tried to end the meeting and I was like, umm, this would be fine if it weren’t for what happened yesterday, but I can’t go back to that office and my charger is there and I don’t know what to do or where to go and my laptop is out of battery…and she had already explained that letting me officially work somewhere else wasn’t an option because there weren’t enough spots for all 7 residents and it might seem like favoritism to move only me or only a few residents, so she suggested I start the ADAA process. I was a little resistant because I do not see myself as an American with Disabilities requiring accommodations, but she insisted and convinced me that I deserved to have a safe place to work and this was the way to do it because then it would no longer be a decision of who most needs to be included.
I worked really hard on that process, and it gave me a lot of insight into what people go through who have disabilities that must be accommodated in every position they take. It has also given me knowledge that has helped me help other people who know that things aren’t currently working and don’t know how to find something that will work…
Unfortunately for me, the ADAA people sent me a letter giving me less than a week to have a counselor sign a form stating that the accommodations I was requesting would reasonably resolve my problems. By this point I had already contacted my EAP figuring it was possibly worth giving counseling another try but hoping to do it outside of the workplace, so I’d contacted a few counselors. Unfortunately, none of them responded to me, and I therefore could not turn in the paperwork and my request was closed until I could get that paperwork signed and re-open the request.
I had agreed to a reconciliation meeting with my manager scheduled and mediated with my RPD, and I’d been hoping for it to be scheduled sooner rather than later, but it wasn’t scheduled until late August…well, technically my RPD had asked to schedule it on August 19, but we all know that isn’t a good day for me so I requested if it couldn’t be sooner that it be after that date. The ADAA request closed right around the same time as the meeting so I thought I could wait until that meeting to see if we could come to a different solution before continuing to search for a counselor, because while I still wished I had a home base to store my things during the day, I had gotten used to finding and reserving classrooms throughout the day and the friends I’d made in July started sometimes coming to see me in those classrooms, so it at least kinda worked to provide some community, so it wasn’t the emergency it originally was even if this meeting didn’t work. But anyway, somewhere around like August 25 we met. My manager did not admit he’d done anything wrong, and acted like he was the victim, but did agree to not have any future conversations alone with me, and agreed to implement a new rule that the window into the resident office must not be fully covered if the office is occupied. That made me feel safe enough to go back to the office.
Retrospectively I also recognize that I was told to tell no one and I told my RPD. I think to me that didn’t count just like the year before when my RPD felt like it wouldn’t count to tell someone some of my information for advice on whether there was something she should do to help me. And just like once I let my PGY-1 RPD know how that had made me feel and she recognized that it hadn’t gone ideally, I soon recognized in this situation that it would have been better to not tell my PGY-2 RPD what my PGY-2 manager had done. I found out that she was really offended that I had told her which didn’t make a lot of sense to me at the time, but later made a lot of sense when I found out she and my manager were very close…but it also gave me a better understanding of why someone might say they won’t tell anyone then turn around and tell someone, because these actions both felt like the next right thing in the moment…in PGY-1 telling me it would be my choice whether anyone else knew gave me autonomy and was a step in showing that my life matters, and contacting someone else really was a good faith effort that she legitimately didn’t realize I would mind…and I know I am very sensitive to private conversations becoming public because of my history in college that she would have had no way of knowing about. And in PGY-2, I saw really no other choice but to agree when there was a very clear threat attached to contradicting that demand to ensure no one found out…but I also knew that while I had longed for community prior to that point, my desire had changed and all I wanted was safety that I didn’t know how to find, and I’d told my friends I was giving it at least a 6-week trial period and had only made it like 4 weeks in, so leaving didn’t seem like the right option.
Honestly, I don’t know what I would have done differently if I had it to do again…obviously knowing what I know now I wouldn’t have applied to this program, but I didn’t have any way to know that back then. On paper it was a good program…but I wasn’t applying to work for a paper hospital. Even on day one when I saw just how bad things were, I am so open-minded and willing to give additional chances and dedicated to fulfilling my commitments beyond just basic expectations that I don’t think I would have been ready to walk away even if I had been offered my dream job. Hindsight is 2020, but knowing who I am, it isn’t realistic to think I would have considered walking away at that point.
But problems both small and large continued to stack up. Per the syllabus I could have two NICU rotations…per preceptor availability I could only have one…so much for being a critical care resident (as it turns out, one of the NICU preceptors was leaving – she was an incredible pharmacist and an incredibly kind person, so I am glad she got out). And once my schedule was set, I was excited to start in the PICU…and then like a week before the rotation was to start it mysteriously changed to management. I excelled in management, and while my personal philosophy of effective management styles did not align with my preceptor’s philosophy, my preceptor was clearly thrilled with me. I know that communication skills are not my strength, so it really filled my tank when towards the end of the rotation my preceptor told me that going into the rotation he’d been dreading having me on rotation because based on my application/interview he thought I wouldn’t be able to contribute, but he was surprised to see that while it may take me a little longer to speak than some people when put on the spot that when given a minute I could communicate very effectively, and because I was stopping to listen and to think I was able to provide excellent insight when I did speak. A week or so later we had a meeting where he had me type my final evaluation because he was sure I could put it into words much better than he could. As we started working through the evaluation he told me that he isn’t supposed to mark anyone with 4’s or 5’s on a first rotation, so when he told me on the first question that he was impressed with my skills I marked a 3…and he told me I definitely deserved better than that. The majority of my evaluation was 5 out of 5 (5 is achieved for residency, 4 is consider achieved for residency, 3 is satisfactory progress, 2 is may need to repeat the objective and rotation, 1 is must repeat the objective). I protested because I didn’t want to get him in trouble for giving me too high of a score, because I knew by this point how my RPD responded when things didn’t go her way, but he insisted that this is what I deserved. I hadn’t really felt valued on this rotation, but this evaluation made me realize that this person valued my work even if he hadn’t really shown that it was valued.
While management may not have been the rotation I was hoping to start with, it ended up being probably a good thing for me. As any reader from September onward is well aware, I began looking for a new job. I only included a very small sampling of my projects on my CV, because no one wants to read a list of the 50 things you did. Even with just like a top 5-ish projects that seemed un-confidential enough to put on a CV, I had more than one interviewer tell me how impressive it was that I had completed that many projects while on that rotation (and of course I am too modest to admit that was just like maybe 5-10% of my work). Although I may not have felt valued doing the projects, these comments, again, made me realize just how significant an impact I was able to make even if I’d only been there a short time. It also made me realize that perhaps if I’d spoken up that I’d been given too many projects that the projects would have slowed down – it wasn’t that all these things had to be done and had to be done by me, but more that I was there and accepted everything gracefully and got things done by the deadline which apparently was atypical, so more projects just kept landing in my lap. I don’t know if that made a difference in getting or not getting interviews, but I do know those conversations are good fuel for the fire of my confidence on the days I’m starting to waver in my belief in my own competence.
Anyway, my next rotation was PICU. I feel like this post is already too long even after deleting things that felt too vulnerable to share, so I’m going to try to stick to just the facts really necessary to tell this story. Learning from PGY-1 I expressed early on that when I feel like I am being watched it has a huge impact on my ability to communicate until I am feeling really comfortable with my team. My preceptor didn’t want to discuss rounding until I could take notes on the entire unit in an hour. I don’t see value in speeding through taking notes on patients because I feel I can better care for my patients if I take my time and know exactly what I meant by all my comments rather than being like yay I’m done but for this intervention I wrote fluid mgmt and I have no idea without re-evaluating the patient what part of fluid management I wanted to change, watch, or ask about…but if that was what was needed to discuss rounding that was what I was going to do.
Here’s the problem. I did that and my preceptor’s response was that she did see that clinically there were no concerns about my ability to care for my patients and she could see both that I had okay communication skills and that they were rapidly improving, but that she was going to stand right next to me until I was assertive on rounds. I tried to explain that I was unlikely to reach that point if she was standing there, but she seemed to be uninterested in discussing and I wasn’t sure how to politely continue to explain my point without seeming argumentative, so I just left it at vaguely suggesting we’d discuss again later. If there was a possibility my patients wouldn’t be cared for I would totally understand, but I was speaking with my team and I was discussing the relevant points of my patients’ care.
I realized that night though that with her constantly by my side, I was going to be actively moving away from my goals of residency rather than towards them because between the lack of ability to be my team’s point person because of course any question was initially going to be directed at the person with whom they were familiar and because it was pushing my anxiety on rounds higher and higher which ultimately decreases my ability to communicate. I seriously considered quitting, because I knew while progress may be slower without the cheer squad/accountability partner of a preceptor, that I also didn’t have those things in this rotation and wasn’t sure what I’d have for future rotations. The next day though I was rounding with a former resident because my preceptor was off. By rounding with, what actually happened was that at first she was with me, but she could quickly see that I was much more competent than my RPD had led her to believe and she backed off, so I was rounding mostly alone, and I thrived. Suddenly rounding was something enjoyable again. I emailed my preceptor to ask whether we could consider that success rather than having her stay at my side to see it herself, and if not if we could discuss other alternatives. I was hesitant to send the email because I didn’t want to get this former resident in trouble for not staying by my side…I should have been hesitant because I learned later she used my very intentionally sensitive, thoughtful, and inquisitive words to try to show that I was insubordinate…
The day she came back she was later to rounds than usual, and I was able to interact with my team independently before she arrived and because of our formation it was a few patients in before she could even really try to break into the group, and by that point she had seen enough to see that I could very competently show assertiveness and handle my team without her and stayed backed off. I was very thankful for that, and that afternoon she confirmed that I’d finally be rounding completely on my own the next day. Finally things were looking up.
…but not for long. After rounds one Tuesday I got a meeting invite. I thought it was for the joy in the workplace meeting I’d been dreading because I knew while they were going to ask us to be honest about areas for improvement that any area recognized can and would be used against us, but I also didn’t want to lie and say everything was excellent. Long story short, the meeting started by saying they thought I would agree with the recommendations in this meeting. I knew in that moment this wasn’t about joy in the workplace, but now I thought they were going to recommend that I find a counselor because my RPD knew that my grief group had stopped meeting unexpectedly at the end of June. I didn’t feel by this point that I wanted a counselor, but I also was thinking like if this is what is going to keep the peace then fine, let’s do this…it wasn’t a recommendation for me to see a counselor. It was telling me that I was no longer employed. I’m not ready to talk a lot about that online at this time, but it was definitely a shock – all my evaluations had been much more positive to this point than I’d even thought about myself, and I’d had no written or verbal warning that anything was wrong after that one-time comment in August that my RPD hadn’t felt it appropriate for me to tell her about what happened with my manager…and that conversation had ended with a promise to let me know immediately if there were ever anything else whether verbal or written that didn’t sit right with her so we could figure out how to communicate better between each other, and I had heard absolutely nothing further about anything not feeling right to her, and had been praised about my communication.
I did not agree at first that this was at all good for me. I felt like they had just erased my chance at success in life. I also felt like my PGY-1 had poured so much effort into teaching me that I had value and I was a good pharmacist and it wasn’t fair to them because this basically drained all that out of me. And I found out my coresidents had been planning a birthday party for me and so I had wrecked their plans. I felt alone and hopeless and helpless. The day before my birthday I even applied to come back. I knew it hadn’t been a good place to work, but I thought not having to really ever see my former manager in the role I applied for I could continue to work with the patients who needed me, continue to be part of my community, have better work life balance because I could choose how many hours I wanted to work, and could even probably complete the projects I’d been in the middle of when I left. I’d been told that another manager at the hospital really wanted the value I’d add to the team and the position was mine if I wanted it.
Soon though, I realized I didn’t want it. First, someone leaked to me that they overheard my manager with my RPD making threats regarding me and while this person didn’t hear everything that this person heard enough to know I needed to be really careful – I was already concerned about potentially at some point seeing them in a hallway (they never really entered the pharmacy and my potential new role would be almost exclusively in the pharmacy) if I came back, but this solidified to me just how unsafe I was if I ever encountered them again. Second, I realized that it wasn’t going to be great for me to be in an environment that allowed people to be treated like that because while others were not as bad as my manager, there were other bad actors, and a culture as a whole of fear of what might happen next, so within a few weeks I had pretty much completely moved on and was excited about the potential opportunities to come. I was applying and interviewing and realizing how thankful I was that God found a way to get me out of a situation I wouldn’t have known how to remove myself from on my own.
And that is how not getting the desk by the window really saved my life. I can’t say with certainty, but I think there is a good chance that things wouldn’t have come to a head the way they did if I’d been in that position. As a result everyone around me would have continued to watch me fade away as I continued to be taken advantage of, unvalued, and unrespected, and while I think I would have survived the year, I would have ended up in such a low place that I don’t think I’d have been ready to start my dream job, and I’d have been trained in learned helplessness for so long that I may not have thrived even if I did somehow end up in a good job following residency. I really feel like while that desk may or may not have saved my physical life, it absolutely saved my mental, emotional, and professional life. Being treated that way, and going into work terrified each day is not a sustainable way to live life, and I wish I had seen that sooner and recognized that leaving was going to be better for my career than staying…but I am nothing if not stubborn when I put my mind to things. That determination served me really well in finding an incredible PGY-1 residency, but it would have better served me to let go of my PGY-2 pediatric critical care dream, wake up from that nightmare, and get out so much sooner. But here’s the thing…in October 2020 by a few hours into day 2 of my ED rotation I really believed I may not live to the end of that rotation if things didn’t change. I reached out and was willing to do almost anything to figure out an alternative and the answer was I’m sorry it isn’t going well, but no, we don’t make changes once the rotation has started…and to be honest, I did come close to not making it to the end of that rotation, but I did make it…and I think that experience was one more thing playing into why I was willing to stay in my PGY-2 so long. I felt empowered that I could do hard things and I could survive, and that if I could find the positives along the way that I could fulfill my commitment, serve my patients and coworkers, bring value to the department…and, ok, also have that piece of paper that proved that I deserved to be taken seriously…and looking back, that was the wrong answer. I should have known myself well enough to know that, sure, yes, I may have remained alive, but after a year of that I wasn’t going to be a functional person.
Instead, I got what I wanted from residency and more from leaving. People reached out and told me how incredible of a pharmacist I was. I was wanted at the hospital by a team who barely knew me, but in the tiny amount they knew were sure I would be a valuable part of their team. People didn’t see me as a failure – they saw me as brave and competent and resilient, and I realized that I was worthy of the position of my dreams. My primary goal in residency was to feel competent and confident, and by leaving I gained those things. God knew what I needed to achieve my goals. It was incredible to see how my confidence grew in ways I didn’t feel like would be possible through a situation designed to dissolve the little baby confidence sprouts that had been cultivated throughout PGY-1…but now I firmly believe that I am a valuable part of a NICU team who deserves to have her voice heard. I have learned to stand up for myself and to advocate for what is best for my team. I still believe in second chances and in compromises…but now I know that when I am people-pleasing it is okay to count myself among the people. My voice doesn’t have to be left out.
…and there is one more piece of the puzzle that I’m going to be a little more vague about because it feels even more risky to share…plus, yikes, this is getting way too long like the 10-page posts I started this blog with…
So shortly after leaving PGY-2 (like maybe 1 or 2 days later) I talked to one of my friends. We only could talk for the couple minutes while she was driving her kids to sports practice, and I don’t remember most of the words we said, but I remember her encouraging me to ride my bike…and I remember thinking, but I can’t, I very much look like I’m unhappy and so I don’t want strangers staring at me wondering what is wrong if I leave my apartment like that…but this was a time when my stubbornness and desire to do what I’m told is the right thing served me really well. The next morning I strapped on my bike helmet and was like okay, so you don’t have to leave now, but you are wearing this bike helmet until you are ready to leave…and eventually I went. Over the course of the next week and a half I had a pretty regular path figured out that I was biking near daily. (I would have said within a few days, but the first attempt at finding a path was really incredible until, umm, oops, it was a little later than I thought when I left and by the time I got back I was riding in pitch blackness in an area with no lighting and trying to mostly just feel my way through the woods on foot because my tiny promo flashlight was doing basically nothing to help me find my way, so to keep that from happening again I needed to try a different way).
It was really the perfect path – long enough to not feel like an elementary school kid going around the same block over and over, but relying mostly on looping some of the same blocks so that without getting lost the distance could be modified based on how much time and energy I had at the moment…and there was a waterfall which anyone who *really* knows me knows that water is my happy place…and it isn’t much of a secret that being around kids is my absolute favorite thing in the world, so it was perfect that there were a couple playgrounds…and there was a road that had a name that made me smile because it reminded me of a memory of my PGY-1 RPD. There was one scare when I thought I saw my PGY-2 RPD waving at me and I was afraid, but she claimed it wasn’t her – and I don’t know why I believed her, but I did…
Until it was definitely not the perfect path. I learned that shortly after putting my complaint in with ASHP, in retaliation, two people had started formally tracking me. They had been taking videos of me on various roads as I biked. I felt scared and violated. I’m going to admit something that feels really embarrassing – I started leaving my apartment in leggings without a dress or shorts covering my bottom because I figured I never saw anyone I knew on my bike rides anyway, and knowing someone has pictures and videos of my like that really ups the ante on how violated I felt, because it wasn’t just images of me, but using my body against my will. And I know this sounds super rape-culture-y, but I’m also dealing with shame as I feel like it is partly my fault for not wearing something that would cover my bottom – you couldn’t have taken booty pics if I’d at least covered my bum bum with more than just a pair of leggings.
The bigger issue is the fear that I will be found. I completely stopped biking for months because it felt so scary to be that exposed. I still am mindful every day about how to keep my location private and how I will escape and get help if I ever see the perpetrators again…and I worry that I won’t be able to find safety. And this concern for my safety makes a huge impact on my life. For example, I recently took a road trip. I would have LOVED to announce to everyone I knew that I was coming so that I could maximize how many people I could see, but instead I only told one person and I only halfway told her in texting and halfway told her on facebook so that if either one was somehow being tracked that individually it wouldn’t be very possible to know where or even whether I was going anywhere, and it was done super last minute in hopes that even if my location was somehow leaked that it wouldn’t be enough time to find me there before I was gone again. I do have to admit that surprising people was a little bit fun and that in some ways it was nice to go into it with no expectations so that any positive thing was above and beyond my plans rather than having to hope I’d be able to live up to even half my over the top ideas I’m sure I’d have had if I had been able to make the announcement…but oh my, unless you’ve been there you can’t really understand the terror when I got an email maybe a week or so later that said something like your location history, how was your trip to (insert primary location here) and even included a marker of “unknown location” in Louisiana…when all I did was stop at a gas station. Every day the fear is present at some level that I will be found…and how could this possibly be good?
Well, I think it really is making me realize how strong I am, and it is forcing me to be a problem solver, but to also be brave. And the whole situation taught me a lot about our court system…it gave me a lot of empathy and understanding…if I hadn’t gone through something like this that barely seems believable if I weren’t living it, I would have a hard time not doubting there was something I wasn’t being told when someone who’s story I don’t want to tell for her included a night in jail when she went to the police to report a crime against herself…it’s just that our justice system in this country is super messed up and I can’t speak to other demographics, but at least in my experience, young women get the short end of the stick. I know multiple young white women like myself who have seen things that definitely di not include justice through our justice system…and while I tend to see the good in people, until you’ve been there, it is hard to believe that the US government that seems so perfect when you learn about it in school is not nearly as incredible in real life. I do absolutely think that there are police officers, judges, and lawyers who are really trying to do the right thing, but a few bad apples can spoil the bunch. And, I mean, this also pushed me from social media to real life communication, because I really need to talk about what happened, but it doesn’t feel safe to talk about it much online.
And now that I have typed this I think I am going to post it without re-reading it for edits or anything, because I’ve kinda written it in my head over and over and over for the past month or so, and if I don’t just post it I think I might lose the inertia and the fear might keep me from posting this, and I don’t know who need to know they aren’t alone, or who needs to know that even in what seems like a dark situation God is orchestrating it for good, or whatever else, and I don’t want to get in the way of people having access to stories that might help them…so there are probably typos galore and I’ll probably have like twenty-five more things I meant to say that I didn’t, but I want to capitalize on the brave I have now because some days the fear is a lot more oppressing than others, so on good days I try to do the things that are harder on the bad days, and I don’t want to decide to delete this post and lose the hours I’ve poured into typing it just to get brave and regret that decision…the end and good night 🙂
Recently (aka Easter weekend) I heard on the news about an outdoor sunrise service for Easter…and I felt really sad about not being able to be there…it was weird…because if I lived near there a year ago I definitely wouldn’t have gone. It wouldn’t have seemed worth it to me to go to a new place with so many people. Now if I lived there I’d likely have gone before going to my own church if I felt like I could do it safely. Trying new experiences is now of value to me…as long as I feel like I am somewhere safe. Safety has been hard to find in the past 9 months.
I participated in ASHP’s imposter syndrome roundtable for educators today. I was going in case there were things I could use on the educator side, but for me it was also personal. I see things as progressing from being confident to feeling confident to feeling competent to feeling perceived as and worthy of being perceived as competent. The first two are a measure of ‘can’ I do it. The second two are the internal measure of ‘should’ I be the one to do it. Anything except for the last category is imposter syndrome…but of course it is hard to know whether you really are not on that spectrum I just described (can’t actually do what you need to do) or if you are experiencing the first level of imposter syndrome……As a pgy-1 I moved from being confident (I can do it) to feeling confident (I believe I can do it) and was teetering on feeling competent (I believe I should do it). The barriers I had to overcome to get there were definitely, as expected, my communication skills. My goal in pgy-2 was to firmly move into the realm of feeling perceived as competent. I’m not going to bore you with all the problems at that hospital, but the moment I felt it necessary to seriously consider quitting wasn’t the day a member of upper management proclaimed that a good pharmacist better not ever feel any negative emotion. It wasn’t the day I was assaulted, nor the day the person who assaulted me claimed his actions were okay because he is aggressive, demeaning, and sometimes violent with other people as well (like, umm, what?! It being a pattern of behavior makes it worse, not better – it shows it is more likely to happen again). The day I finally was ready to seriously consider quitting was the day my preceptor made it clear she did not intend to ever give me the space I needed to grow my practice in a way that would allow me to build the communication skills I needed to grow my competence and in fact were highly likely to decrease my communication skills. I ultimately decided it was important to me to honor my commitment and to complete my year and also recognized that perhaps if we spoke about how we could reach my goals perhaps we could come up with a plan that worked for everyone. As it turned out, we didn’t end up needing to have that conversation because somehow she on her own changed her mind and gave me enough space that I felt like I could make things work satisfactorily.
And then I was no longer a resident. The I am firmly in camp competent was crashed back down to questioning if I really was confident. Aka, in the schema above, I fell from level 3 to level 1. But then some important things happened that pushed me into stage 4 which I really don’t think I would have ever achieved if I’d stayed in residency. Residency was for me supposed to help me gain social skills and be a check box that my career path was finally close enough to normal for me to be worthy of being perceived as competent. And y’all, I think anyone who has ever felt any amount of imposter syndrome knows that as soon as you jump one hurdle, the finish line is pulled even further from you and another hurdle is now between you and the goal. I could have done residency and any other series of next right things and never reached the supposed finish line…but instead I didn’t even finish residency yet somehow crossed that imaginary line that made me worth something. So how did that happen?
Well, it was the people who reached out and told me I’d been a valued member of the team and was missed. It was the people who told me that this hospital had lost a valuable resource and that I made a huge difference serving patients and changing lives…and these words were coming from people who had known me only a very short period of time, and some of whom may have known the potential political danger in expressing anything negative about my not being there and yet still reached out. It was people from pgy-1 (aka people in the real world of the pharmacy community) not seeing it as a failure and helping me see I was an excellent pharmacist who was now free to find something that fit me better. It was the people who recognized that while it may have hurt at first that being in that toxic environment was crushing me and I was so much better off not being there. The first time it was said it was too soon and I wasn’t ready to admit what I’d wanted to be my dream come true really had been coming true as my nightmare and this was really a wake-up from that nightmare rather than an end to a dream, but over time I’ve grown to see that I am so much better off for not being there. The way I was treated (and that people around me were treated) was not okay. All those things got me to the point where I was able to really believe what everyone else had known all along. I can excel at improving the lives of children and their families and at supporting my team, and I do excel at those things.
The fact that my stress level significantly decreased when I no longer had a job and therefore a salary probably says a lot about how awful of a place to work I was now out of.
Everyone loses when you play small.
This was a quote from the book I just finished about how women limit their own success by not believing in themselves. And it seems to fit. If I’d stuck with residency I’d have ended up in a place where I never felt like I should be seen as competent and as a result I’d be limited in the impact I’d be able to have. Instead I know I can have an incredible impact and while I did apply to some low level fall back jobs in case I got desperate enough, a lot of what I applied to was what I really wanted NICU in a position where I could have a strong educational component and in which it at least sounded from the job posting like there was a team-based supportive environment…preferably with a new unit opening…and preferably in a place with Christian values (because once I was asked in an interview if I’d be comfortable with prayer in meetings I decided I wasn’t just comfortable but that it was what I wanted), though as long as the institutions stated values seemed in alignment with my own I’d be happy…and applying to those places knowing no job is perfect and that I very well may find my fit in a less prestigious position wasn’t a downer…it was a realization that I hadn’t been happy at all in my previous job and had realized that people weren’t just *an* important piece of a job, but *the* important piece of a job. I can be in a job doing what I supposedly love but dread it because of an awful person, and I can also do a job every day that doesn’t excite me at all yet be thrilled to show up every day because the people are incredible…it isn’t really about the job, it’s about the community…but it is also not about letting imposter syndrome tell me what I can’t do. If I’d listened to 989 or to slde in school I may not have ever bothered graduating or gone immediately from graduation into another degree because they tried to tell me I wasn’t going to make it as a pharmacist. Just think of all the lives I couldn’t have touched if I had continued to believe I couldn’t do it…like the book explained, it wouldn’t help anyone for the writer to get up on stage and tell everyone there was no play because it might not have been good enough to be successful. You have to recognize your true worth.
And I have now gone incredibly off topic and don’t even remember what this post was originally going to be about, but I mostly went off topic all in one direction, so I guess success-ish even though the title is a little more of a stretch now…
Back to imposter syndrome, someone recently gave me a great perspective to keep it from creeping back in. I am currently in a place in life where people are telling me how awesome I am, so this person said to ask myself am I really that good of an actor. Basically, there are three options:
Everyone is lying to me about my value.
I’m such an amazing actor that I have everyone fooled about my value.
I actually am a valuable member of the healthcare community.
Also, a couple people suggested that perhaps pharmacists are more prone to imposter syndrome than other professions. There were a couple reasons that really stood out to me. First, a lot of people even within the healthcare community don’t understand what a pharmacist does and in turn can’t really provide effective feedback, and second because you wouldn’t ask a pediatric pulmonologist to help you with the proper dialysis formula for your geriatric cancer patient, yet despite the specialization of a pharmacist they are still expected to be the drug experts in *every* situation, which is really unachievable.
Today I’ve been working on telling myself that there aren’t usually lions on the streets. I’ve been even more afraid of riding my bike a second time than I was the first…but I did it. I just had to remember that I’ve biked the same route sometimes daily or more than that in whatever area I’m in for my entire life, and only once has someone I’d never even met or seen before found a way to hurt me through that, which means hundreds if not thousands of people have been safe. I think really feeling and believing I am safe will take a lot more time, but for now being able to go outside despite my fear counts as success enough. I am so proud of me.
I’m also very excited because I’m on the planning a trip stage. I absolutely hate travel, but I love the idea of travel…so I’ve packed my bags three times already and we’ll see if I ever actually leave the county in which I live…especially because the world is an increasingly scary place. Not just for me personally. Youtube has been suggesting I watch news videos lately and surprisingly a lot of them have been pretty recent, and alarmingly there have been an uncomfortably large amount of gun violence in places I’ve frequented in the past. It makes it a lot more real when the places you’re seeing these horrors on the news isn’t just some anonymous location, but places that are familiar. It’s a good reminder of all the things in life to be thankful for.
Some days are just hard. I don’t remember if there was a trigger or what happened, but I do remember that the day culminated in feeling that familiar fear that the people I’d been trying to avoid this fall who I found out this winter were tracking me in order to hurt me were about to hurt me again. It was so intense that I put on my glasses and flicked the lights a couple times and checked under the covers before going to bed…it’s not how I want life to be, but we don’t always get what we want…
It’s a good thing I got decent sleep that night, because the next night I got a bunch of spam texts around 2am and then after that there was nearly continuously a loud train sound for the next hour and I decided that if I ever found out any of my friends were train operators we can’t be friends anymore. And the entire rest of the morning there was never a period more than a minute without another train sound and by the time the alarm went off I had decided that anyone who had ever been on a train wasn’t my friend anymore…which is somewhat problematic and poorly thought out given that *I* have been on a train before…but I was exhausted and crabby…lol…
Sometimes I feel lonely. I am working really hard to do whatever I can to keep my location as private as possible. That has a lot of repercussions socially. One of the big ones is that I am not adding a lot of Facebook friends who live near me. Facebook is how I connect best with people, so it is really hard being separated from that. I still have my old Facebook friends, but I also feel like I can’t post too much in case geotagging or my words makes it obvious where I am. And I can’t let anyone know when and where I’m traveling in case that information falls into the wrong hands. I do have friends on slack, but I’m not that comfortable with slack and it just isn’t the same. I hate that people have taken so much life away from me. I’m thrilled for the brief period of time recently I felt safe enough to uncover my windows for the first time in months, but I’m sad that legitimate fear has forced me into hiding…but on the positive side it has made me much more bold when I am in safe places outside my home, and that is great for my social anxiety.
I had a topic I was gonna write about next that I’m gonna have to put on hold because I feel like it could give out too much of a hint about my whereabouts…and that is another way I’ve become isolated. I can’t say too much in case my words lead to taking away any safety I have left.
Y’all, something weird is going on that I don’t understand. There are significantly more unmatched residencies in the scramble than I have ever seen before, and I’ve been following this since the 2016-2017 residency recruitment season. I’m glad at least so far my former Y2 program is still open – at least one fewer person might be mistreated like I was. Thank God. I’m happy for anyone who is in the residency market for all the incredible opportunities left…many are ones that I’ve applied for in phase 1 at some point in the past both on the pgy-1 and the pgy-2 side. And in looking through the list there are also some that while not my first choice look pretty incredible…like some of them looked awesome enough I almost considered bailing on the whole job thing and going back to the residency game. I feel like maybe I’ve healed enough it would work, but I also feel like I’ve realized that I’d be doing it for the opportunity to put on my CV that I’d done it at this point. I’ve realized that I have patient care skills and in learning to stand up for my rights have gained significantly in social skills, so the world of work is where I belong. I do wish I had that on my CV, because I’ve already seen in interviews that many places aren’t shy about admitting that there are certain positions they would never hire a pharmacist without that on their CV or that a pharmacist without that is not just unlikely but will absolutely not be given any advancement opportunities. I strongly disagree with that perspective and disagreed even prior to having a non-traditional career path. While residency can be helpful, it is not required in order to be competent, particularly for someone who has had on the job training and excelled through it…let’s be realistic, y’all. The concept of anything even kind of resembling residency didn’t even exist until the 1930s and at that point was not a clinical position. ASHP didn’t get involved until 1948, and residencies didn’t exist until like 1963. That was under 60 years ago…so many of the people who are currently training new residents were most likely trained primarily by people who had not completed pgy-1 or pgy-2 residency…and I would argue that those people were still incredibly competent pharmacists who found other ways besides residency to obtain any assistance they required for their weak points. Honestly while I was thrilled with my pgy-1 residency, I think the people I worked with would have been able to provide very similar support even if I’d been a regular coworker instead of a resident. And I gave and received similar support at the job I worked prior to residency. Learning doesn’t have to occur within a formal framework.
But anyway, I am also really sad for most of the people who didn’t match on both sides of the table. It isn’t so bad on the candidate side with how many opportunities are still available, but it can still be a very legitimate grief process to get that national matching service email again…and some of the programs have really incredible RPD’s who I know both excel at and love to mentor residents, and I’m so sad they might not get that opportunity this year. I wish there were like 5 of me so I could do a few of the residencies of the good RPD’s and still have a me left to work a big girl job, because my bank account needs a big girl job almost as much as I need to get back into using my knowledge but having some freedom to direct myself…and then I could reap some incredible residency benefits that I’d never otherwise choose. I think an ambulatory care residency, for example, would be incredibly useful to fill in my weak points, but I have close to zero interest in ambulatory care, so there is no reason I’d have even thought about it if it weren’t for an incredible pharmacist/RPD who is currently down a resident…but I think I may not thrive doing an entire year without what I am most passionate about, so if there were more than one of me, I could reap the benefits while still having opportunities in another state for a residency in which I could spend quite a bit of time caring for critically ill babies. That would be pretty sweet.
Some videos I’ve watched on youtube lately have made me even more in awe of southwest airlines. I’ve always known they have by far the most customer-friendly policies, but watching these videos showed me it goes so incredibly far beyond just their policies. They are so incredibly helpful and caring to people who are not always so kind and caring to them. It was so impressive to me how much the people in the video showed they weren’t just doing a job, but truly caring about people. It was so amazing…obviously I understand the reason these moments were captured were because they are not the typical airline experience, but that doesn’t mean that every employee acts like that every time, but it was still very heartwarming to see how far these people would go to make people’s day as good as it could be…sometimes while being sworn at that they were the worst people ever. (for example, by someone who felt it was unfair that she had to buy a ticket because how was she supposed to know the airline’s policy didn’t include just showing up and paying later – she doesn’t study their website!)
The other day I saw the van I thought had been watching me a month or so ago. I was an idiot and continued toward where I live anyway, and I briefly felt scared, but then I realized that like sure, it could be someone tracking me, but the other possibility is that it is someone who recently moved nearby and previously had been stopped in the road lost and looking up directions before continuing down the wrong road. I’m choosing to believe that situation…and it’s working for now anyway. Today I rode my bike for the first time since December. I didn’t intend to go far since I was going to be going a new direction and thus needed to be careful not to end up lost and exhausted since I obviously wasn’t going to even be kinda in shape since I’ve reached the point where I spend so much time curled up at home that it literally hurts to straighten my legs (on the positive side I take way fewer snack and potty breaks since getting up requires straightening my legs…although it also means instead of a snack break being a few skittles or a couple crackers it’s multiple rice Krispy bars and a whole bag of skittles and a few Hershey kisses because I wanna maximize the yield from my effort…I’m prolly gonna start getting fat if I don’t modify my eating habits…). But anyway, I actually went significantly less far than I intended. Perhaps this episode of 812andco is not going to win should have waited a couple days until I was not in the middle of my period…I was winded before I even got outside and I’d barely made it to the corner before I was coughing trying to get enough oxygen to my body, but I feel like as an adult I’ve got to at least make it all the way around the block before going back inside to prevent people from looking at me like I’m crazy on the off chance they have noticed me at all, so I did make it a little further than to the corner and back and I only thought about sleeping on the sidewalk cradling my bike, but it wasn’t a real option since I wasn’t wearing pants and I was wearing pastel colored target leggings, and target leggings are nearly impossible to get clean…so that’s another good reason not to go to far, because I was also wearing a cup and biking makes my cup leak and while I was wearing period undies, the ones I have are technically a few sizes too small, so they’ll hold some liquid temporarily, but I’m stretching them as far as they go so all the tiny seam holes are stretched out enough that they don’t hold much long, so I really should have worn a pad if I was going to bike any longer than I did.
812andco is adding complexity to my professional world as well. Someone asked me recently if I could pose a question to the ASHP community since I’m a member…and I know my lawyer said that kind of thing is fine, but because I insisted on specifically calling out PPAG communications it seems like maybe instead of preventing anyone from questioning how often I use that forum it might make people suspicious if I use any other forum…and so I felt like I couldn’t ask the question which then made me realize I pay a lot of money for a community I can’t use…and maybe I shouldn’t have wasted my money on renewing that membership, especially when the rate got jacked up because I waited so long…
Recently I saw a closed laptop on a desk and suddenly it may have been April all around me, but I was on September 28. And at first I wasn’t sure why that afternoon I was feeling how I was, which is honestly a little scary to feel a wave of fear and grief and stuff and not know why. As I was telling myself I was okay and I was safe I figured out what happened…at the last good job I had my laptop came home with me, and at home it was either on the floor or on my bed. At my friend’s house our laptops were either on the couch, or *maybe* on a coffee table surrounded by items dogs had chewed or children had discarded. At the bad job the laptop was similarly either open on the desk or carried with me until the day it was closed on the desk and I never came back. Luckily I was going to a game night in the evening, and that was enough excitement to pull me out of the trauma response…
But speaking of trauma, probably because of how much caught in Providence I’ve watched lately, youtube suggested I watch an hour long court proceeding regarding the disposition of children who had been removed from their parents. It made me so angry. I felt so sad for the children and their parents.
Based on the evidence presented I saw no reason the kids shouldn’t be reunited. All the reasons were so petty and stupid in my opinion. There was a claim they needed a larger home because their plan was to have both infants of their blended family in two cribs in the parents’ room. I was like are you even serious right now?!?! Not everyone can afford a large enough home for each of their kids to have their own room, and if you wouldn’t keep a parent from bringing a child home from the hospital after birth because the home is too small then it shouldn’t be an issue for reunification as long as the home is safe. They were talking about an infant who had been a 23-weeker and saying the parents probably did something to her because she hadn’t reached some milestones on time…like no kidding, she’s a 23-weeker, we don’t expect them to be typically developing, especially in infancy, and when babies are born that early it is not uncommon for them to have neurologic abnormalities. That is not the parents’ fault. And they claimed that the parents must not love her because prior to their rights being terminated they were only at the hospital a few days a week. Y’all, when you have other kids at home and are living near the poverty line so can’t miss too much work and possibly can’t afford transportation to the hospital, I am impressed they consistently were there at all.
From what I could tell a neighbor called about domestic violence because she heard screaming…since removal the older children had confirmed that the parents were telling the truth that sometimes their house was loud and sometimes their parents got upset, but there was never physical violence. The kid who was hurt when DHS had come had simply fallen in the home…so it wasn’t like there was some egregious unresolved issue…it was just people adding to those poor kids’ trauma by continuing their separation from their parents. I have a lot of thoughts about the foster care system – like why do foster parents get so much more support than bio parents, but I do recognize there are times that kids really aren’t safe in the home and the trauma of removal is necessary…but I think that reunification better be an actual priority, not something to which lip service is given. There is no such thing as a perfect family, and kids need their parents…I know at least one person in non-youtube life fighting for custody of her child, and it is devastating to see someone flying state to state twice a week for visitation but still fighting to be able to parent her child…
Changing topics slightly, I recommend not staying up late reading a book in which a person whose family was killed when she was a child finds out that the person who did it has been keeping tabs on her. She finds this out when she is at a rural farmhouse to get away from her family and civilization and this man comes and very nearly kills her…like he even survives her driving her car into him and she is almost dead from him choking her when a child who had been wandering outside found her gun and shot the man. I don’t usually condone violence, but when it was this guy versus her, I felt at least seventy percent okay with it since who knows what would have happened to the kid if the man had won with the woman…although I still firmly believe there shouldn’t have been a gun anywhere a kid could just happen to find it…but in any case, once you have lived your life in legitimate fear, realizing how bad it could be is scary. That definitely temporarily took away a lot of my progress in trying to convince myself that right now I am safe. I tried that night to get ready for bed without turning on any lights and blocking the windows and doors even more than I typically do. I was very afraid. I was glad for once the next morning for having bad soundproofing because I could hear before opening my door that no one was at least moving around outside my door…I still ran until I was around other awake people in case someone was hiding and waiting for me, but y’know, looking back I am proud that I didn’t let that stop me fully from living my life.
To end us on a lighter note, I have a lot of questions about water towers…like the cylindrical ones make sense, but the ones that are like a ball on a stick don’t make sense…so much wasted space where you could hold more water…and also it just seems super unstable…so yeah, that’s what I’ve been thinking about for the past like probably close to a month now…
And during church last week do you want to know why I needed to pull out my phone? I had the sudden urgent need to find out if Illinois touches Canada or if it is a more South state. Spoiler alert, it is 100% covered up top by Wisconsin…who knows why that became something I immediately wanted to know…but now I know…hashtag learning…and my next urgent question was does California touch Mexico. The answer to that one is yes, and so do Arizona and New Mexico. As you can see, social studies has never been one of my strengths…I got A’s in school, but it was definitely was proof that success in many things can be achieved if you put in the effort.
At my previous job I was supposed to have a song of the week every week. At the end of September my selection had been Weary Traveler, which I am pretty sure I’ve already written about…and I’ve probably also written about how I listened to that song on repeat through a lot of October. When I’d picked it as my song I loved the imagery and the musicality. When I was listening on repeat, it was comforting, but it was not hopeful. It was validating (you were never meant to walk this road), but to be honest also a little overwhelming (feels like this road just might go on forever, carry on). It felt like the song was basically saying life might be awful, but someday you’ll die and it will be better in heaven and that’ll be worth it (so just hold on. Weary traveler, you won’t be weary long). For a long time because it had been the song with me through a really dark time any time I heard it my heart felt heavy.
And then this week it came on the radio and I was grooving. It felt like such a triumphant and hopeful song. Life can be hard, but if you carry on you very well may reach a point even while still alive where things are so much better than you ever imagined they could be. It might not be perfect, and you might wish you could take away some of the pain of the past, but you will see how out of terrible circumstances you persevered and there were good things to come. You might feel crushed now, but God can put you on a mountain later and it will be amazing how much different it is at the top than at the bottom.
And I don’t remember where I was going with that, but now that I’ve said it, I feel like it is something I need to take to heart for future difficulties…you never know where trouble will find you…
Like this morning my cell phone decided it no longer makes phone calls which means it is time for a new phone. Sad day, because I love my phone so much and I know the phones I am willing to pay for are not what I want, but the phones anything close to what I want are either off the market or incredibly expensive…I feel like I’d rather pay $100 for a phone I don’t love that functions than $200 or more for a phone I’m also not fully enthralled with…it would be one thing if I knew exactly what I wanted, but since I don’t I feel like whatever is going to function is probe fine…for that matter if I didn’t want to also be a responsible adult I’d be happy to keep going with a phone that only texts and connects to the internet. Also, I’m annoyed because in trying to see if I could get my phone working properly I deleted a bunch of apps and installed a software update so now everything looks different and some of the buttons do different things than they used to so I barely know how to use my own phone…but luckily I am pretty sure I didn’t delete any important apps…unlike one particular day in like July when someone (okay fine it was me) forgot what one of her apps was for, deleted it, and permanently lost access to one of her email accounts…not a major issue at the end of the day, but frustrating when you’re someone like me who uses email as a giant filing cabinet…
Also, today I couldn’t figure out which weather I wanted…none of the places I looked up had the weather I wanted this week…but I did decide the weather I wanted least was the Seattle weather…if only when I picked the weather I wanted online it actually gave me the weather I wanted outside…
Also, if I were going to pick a song of the week this week it would be the Commission by Cain. “see my hands look at my feet…goodbye is not the end”
A journey through trauma & triumph 