An Open Letter To My Employer In Regards To My Poor Job Performance…

I have to tell you something, I’m being emotionally abused.

I’m sorry that I’m late again and that I called out sick yesterday. No, I don’t have a doctor’s note, but I swear I wasn’t faking it. I didn’t take the day because I’m a flake and don’t care about my job. I care very much about my job. I really do. But I really was sick, so sick that I couldn’t get out of bed.

My stomach was sick, I had the chills, and my insides felt like they’d been pulverized in a blender. Also, my head hurt really badly, and I think I had a migraine. I know this has been happening a lot lately, and you’ve observed a pattern of decline in my productivity. I also realize my excuses haven’t sounded all that legitimate, so I wanted to tell you the truth.

I’ll start with what happened the other night. I was driving home from work when I got a call from my cousin, my little cousin who is ten years younger than me. She was calling to tell me that my boyfriend has been hitting on her at the gym. Saying wildly inappropriate things to her, “like your butt looks really good in those pants.”

She said, “Stop, you’re with my cousin.”

And he said, “That doesn’t matter. She doesn’t matter.”

I know people’s boyfriend’s break up with them all of the time. I get that, I really do, but this is different. You see, I’ve asked him a lot of times if he wanted to leave me and he always says no. Obviously, if I am asking him, I have a sense that something is wrong, and if I were a smart girl, you’re probably thinking, as soon as I suspected something I would have just left him. Instead, I stay and take his shit, and you’re probably thinking if that’s the case, then I set myself up for the fall, and have no one to blame but myself.

But what I want to explain to you is that he uses psychological weapons against me because he knows that I’m a highly sensitive and caring person. Some people might say ‘I’m weak.’ I don’t know if I agree with that label. I have put up with his shit for a long time and I’ve managed somehow to carry on without cracking, without telling anyone, without getting any help, so I kinda think really that I’m strong.

On the weekends, when you’re going to the movies, and the grocery store and picking up your dry cleaning, and relaxing, I’m crying because he’s playing a mind game with me, or blaming me for telling him about something I’m upset about, or simply giving me the silent treatment. The way he treats me requires me to have super human strength that I don’t possess. It doesn’t help that when I’m being super strong, people don’t have any idea of what I’m living through on a daily basis, so they think I’m lazy, disorganized, weak.

So anyway, he gaslights me. No, please don’t tell me that’s some pyscho-babble made up bullshit that people who have victim-mentalities use as an excuse. I swear to God, it’s not. I know you might have a difficult time understanding because you haven’t walked in my shoes, but would you do me a favor and hear me out? Because I am a victim, and I’m trying not to be one. It would really help me if you would recognize that what I’m talking about is real. When you deny my experience, the abuse is simply compounded.Then it’s not only like I’m walking around on a broken leg, it’s also like you’re not only telling me I don’t need a cast and kicking me in that leg. Please don’t do that.

Abusers gaslight their victims to ‘trick’ whomever is the target of their abuse. By withholding, blocking and diverting, trivializing, and denying their victims emotions, they put them into a state of confusion. The abuser, who often charms his or her way into the victim’s life gradually undermines the person’s sense of self. Causes them to doubt their own reality. Addiction to the abuse and the abuser often follows. Anyone who has been addicted to anything knows that addictions are terribly difficult to break away from, especially without the support of others. When the addiction you’re trying to break away from is to an abusive person, you don’t get support, you get the opposite. An abuser will go to great lengths to see that you don’t break your addiction, and leave them without a victim.

Yes. I know you have a company to run. And these are personal problems that maybe I should call my mother about. Well I already did that. She was on her way to the salon and told me she didn’t have time to listen to this nonsense.

And the other day, when I came ten minutes late with with my make-up all smudged, I’d just gotten off the phone with her. I told you I was having an allergy attack. I lied. I’d been crying because she told me maybe I should do the world a favor and kill myself. Yeah, I’m probably suspectible to abusive relationships because I was raised in an abusive household. No, that’s not just another excuse, that’s an explanation.

No, he doesn’t hit me. Would you feel more sympathy towards me if he did? Would my problem be more legitimate in your eyes? I know that in the eyes’ of the law what I’m talking about is unrecognizable as a crime, but I have real wounds, I assure you, you just can’t see them.

Yes I did come in with a black eye a couple of weeks ago, and you did ask me what was wrong. I lied then, too and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you I smacked my face with the trunk of my car, but I was too embarassed to tell you the truth: that my boyfriend and I were in bed together and he was screaming at me because I told him that he hurt my feelings, and the dog got scared by all the commotion, lunged at me, and bit my eye. Afterwards, my boyfriend threw me out of the house, saying he couldn’t take my crying anymore. It was annoying to him.

I went to my friend’s house and then he started to call. He didn’t apologize, exactly. Although, he did say that he was sorry that I’d upset him so much that I caused him to lose his temper. I felt bad, so I went back to him.

But this time, it’s going to be different. This time, I want to change. Could you help me the way that you helped Rob, the guy who was always coming in drunk, until you took him aside and sent him to rehab? Do I have to start drinking to get help and not lose my job? I really don’t want to, but if that’s what it takes, I might consider it.

Because I need help, and I don’t want to lose my job.The reason that I waited until now to tell you all of this is because I wasn’t sure you’d believe me. Also, I wasn’t sure I believed myself. I told myself I should be tougher, smarter, and stronger, too. I told myself it was my fault, and that I had no one to blame but myself, and that I deserved what I was getting.

But the other night when I got home and confronted him about trying to cheat on me with my own relative, I was already feeling humiliated, and like I couldn’t take much more. Like I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

He told me he hit on her because I mentioned that I was concerned he was interested in other women. This, he said, intrigued him. What would I do if I found him disobeying me? Wouldn’t that be kind of funny?

Then he told me that I misunderstood our relationship, and that I’m annoying and I talk too much. He said the word sorry. but what I heard him say was too bad you don’t like what I do, I’m still going to do it, there’s nothing you can do to stop me, and no I don’t care that you’ve given so much of yourself to me, I don’t feel bad about hurting you at all. He told me that I could stay, or leave, or do whatever, and he’d understand. He wasn’t upset but he was hungry, so I could please leave so that he could make his dinner?

When I told him that I couldn’t believe I wasted six years of my life on a person who prepared dinner while I writhed in emotional pain, he repeated that he was hungry and not in the mood to talk to me.

So I decided to leave him. And the past couple of days have been rough. Because I’m alone and I want him to say sorry, want him to acknowledge that he did something wrong. I’m coming out the fog though, and realizing that he’s been manipulating me for years, and that what I mistook for love was really abuse. I’m also recognizing that he’s the problem, not me, and that what he’s done to me is wrong and there’s no excuse for it. There was nothing I could have done to change him and his behavior is not my fault. Still, I’m confused and having difficulty concentrating, not crying all of the time, and functioning normally. I have no self-esteem left.

Am I too fat? Too old? Too dumb? How could I have prevented this from happening? These are the questions I ask myself when I wake up at two am and realize that the nightmare I’m having isn’t confined to the hours that I sleep. It’s a reality.

So please, don’t discipline me, or fire me. Because then I’m going to have to find another job. And because this cycle has been going on for years, I have lost other jobs because of it. My work history has these gaps that I can’t really explain, and employers chalk it to me being undependable. But I swear to you, I’m not.

So please give me a chance, cut me some slack, bear with me. I’m a very loyal person with a lot to offer and I will be a valued employee, if you can just give me a minute to realize it for myself.

Best,

Laurie