The Downward Spiral — Part 5: The End is the Beginning
You can only take so many knocks before you seriously consider getting up again. I was always told, never give up, never settle, don’t quit. My mother was a big fan motivational/self-help books. So I suppose it took me longer to reconsider completely giving up. But I did give up, I gave up, I just was at the end of everything.
I was struggling.
The more I tried to work, the more my body hated on me. Every day I fought and lost, whether I went to work or not. It was always a loss, it was always at the expense of my health. It really came to a head when I worked for a ‘big red telecom’ because I thought earning more would make me fight more to go to work against my ability to do so.
But at the same time;
My relationship was on the rocks.
My health was on the rocks.
My sanity was on the rocks.
My financial stability didn’t exist.
I was put into a normal work schedule of 8–4 or 9–5, I can’t really remember. I kept it up for three months, almost four, just out of training. There were some people in that training class and I did not do well with. Which led to some really embarrassing and truly degrading meetings with internal staff, it leads to me feeling like I just couldn’t take it anymore. In addition to all of that, I had to take copious amounts of acetaminophen and ibuprofen just to deal with the physical pain of sitting all day. That ruined my gut, I didn’t eat well, I didn’t have the energy to take care of myself, I fell apart. The last day I went to work, I managed to make it there but I felt like I was going to fall down and I was extremely nauseated. I never went back.
It was around Christmas, that I was forced to quit.
The biggest part was that I was given a line from management that was intentionally supposed to impart emotional guilt on me. She said to me, “ I have people with terminal cancer that come into work every day, what makes what you’re going through any worse?”. It was then I knew I was in a toxic environment from day one. Everyone copes differently or doesn’t cope, but it definitely wasn’t her place to juxtapose that kind of emotional guilt-trip on me. What was going through my mind was that, well then, I feel sorry for them having to work for a disgusting company such as yours with such a toxic environment.
That conversation ended with “well if you don’t come into work, we’ll fire you”. So I quit. At that time, I didn’t know you had to be fired to get employment insurance. However, I did manage to get employment insurance after I explained the situation on how I was forced to quit. My physical and emotional health literally dictated that I had to do so. I thought it would help take the emotional and physical load off me for a while.
It was the first time I was introduced to the fact that what I thought was stable, was not stable. My relationship depended on me having a job because the emotional stress it was having on him was too much. He couldn’t afford me and him together. There is so much I can’t remember. I’m pretty sure we were in a rent-geared-to-income scheme at that time, but maybe that didn’t happen until later.
Compound the fear of losing my relationship, the fear of my health falling apart before my eyes, the fear of not being able to earn money in a normal job, the fear of having nowhere to go, not feeling loved.
It all ended — or began depending on your point of view, right there. Panic consumed me going forward.
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