I have some big decisions to make. My new job (which I started in April) is becoming far too stressful for me - or should I say, one person in particular at my job is becoming more than I can handle. I know I'm sensitive and I let people get to me a little too much, but this is a person who has caused five people to resign due to her attitude. And I mean five people in the past year. The icing on the cake was the other day when I was talking to a good friend from my previous job (the vet hospital I left to move on to this vet hospital I'm at now), I started to tell her how I'm overwhelmed and have anxiety about going to this job, and she said "Because of ______?" and I said yeah, and asked how she knew her. She told me that several people at the practice she is currently at have left the job I work at to go there because of this person. That was when I knew for sure that I wasn't overreacting. I do let situations get the best of me, I always have, but for the past couple of weeks, I've worked myself into such a frenzy that I have a headache and can't sleep the night before work. And I work there four days a week, so you can imagine how my mental health has been lately.
Normally, at any other point in my life, I would tell myself to suck it up, because I'm making decent money there (a four dollar raise from my previous job) and I work essentially full-time. 30 - 35 hours a week, versus the 18 I had at my other job, and the 15 - 18 I'd likely be offered elsewhere in this economy if I quit. But with a full-time class load looming ahead of me in just a few short weeks, and while I'm nearing the end of the "first year after placement," I'm not sure that this job is something I can handle in the fall. As I just said, I tend to let things get the best of me. When I'm sad, nothing can distract me, and when I'm happy, I'm over the moon and nothing can get me down. It sort of overtakes everything at that moment, almost as if I have bi-polar (although I've been 'tested,' and told that I do not). Anyways, with Halloween coming up (a small holiday, I know - but last Halloween I spent pacing the house and around 11 I ended up in the hospital with labor pains, so that may be a tough day to reflect on) as well as her first birthday, I don't know for sure what I can handle. I mean, it's what I've always done...gone to work everyday and then left to go to class. I've handled it before, and made good grades, at that. I would be confident that I could handle it now, too, if it weren't for this crazy person at my job causing me such anxiety. She is like the devil in human form. No exaggeration.
This is life. This is my life now. I'd like to think I'm "strong enough" to take all of this added stress on, but I want to still have SOME control over it. I truly like everyone else I work with and don't want to feel like I'm completely screwing them over, but I've lived most of my life making sure everyone else around me was happy because seeing others happy made me happy. But, now more than ever, I think I need to put myself first...my mental health first, and make making sure I get better a priority. I need to come out on the other side of this a better person, because that was part of the point. There's not much point in ensuring that my daughter has a better life if I'm not going to, in turn, work on mine as well. And I believe that this woman, this job in and of itself, is only going to hold me back. No, I don't want to be unemployed. But if having a dinky part-time job at a store somewhere or something for the fall is what enables me to have more time for schoolwork and still have a semblance of a steady income, then I'll have to do it.
On the outside, my job is perfect. A small animal medical practice, where I sit in a chair in an air-conditioned office at the computer and get to see adorable animals come in and out throughout the day. Plus, add on the money I make for sitting in said chair in the office and it sounds golden. Maybe I'm bored there, too. Who knows. I like to be busy, be moving, not sitting looking at a screen all day. In case anyone was wondering how I got off on this tangent about my job, I'll tell you. For one, I registered for classes today, and there is a class I need that happens to coincide with a day that I work. I started going into stress mode, wondering how I could change my schedule around and make it work because I need this class but also need a job, and they only allow for eight-hour + shifts at a time there. Then, it hit me. I need to leave anyways, because of the aforementioned psycho. And secondly (even though chronologically, this happened first), yesterday at about 3:30 in the morning my phone went off telling me I had an email. I almost always put it on silent, but I must have forgotten. Anyways, it was an email from my little girl's adoptive mom. She said she just wanted to check in and let me know that she knew it had been a while since she last wrote (it had only been a little over a month! :) what more could I ask for?) and that they just got back from their two week trip to visit her birth father. She said that this weekend she promises to send lots of "pictures, videos, etc" and that she just *had* to note that she was looking at "our little girl" today and realized she looks exactly like G now more than ever. That part sort of made me sad, but the email as a whole had me over the moon all morning. Not just the promise of pictures and videos, but the fact that she took a minute out of her night to tell me that she knew an update was 'overdue' and she had lots to share with me when she got a free minute. Little Arianna is nine months old and she has a two year old big brother, so I know that a free minute must be hard to come by in that house. I was practically giddy all morning, until I arrived at work and the anxiety set in. That, on top of a few other incidents, left me leaving work at 8:30 (an hour and 15 minutes after I got there). I realized that I had every right to be happy about the email and about the fact that I have such a great relationship with C + C and I don't want to let some person who means nothing to me, and who is nothing but a bully at my job, get me down. I haven't felt truly happy like that since the last update I got. Maybe that's unhealthy, I'm not sure, but that's what therapy is for, I guess. So the last thing I want to do is let someone get in my way of that. That's the only thing I have that's truly mine in terms of my little girl. Granted, I can share the email with my parents and with G (C + C said that is totally fine and they encourage me sharing the updates and the photos and will even write separate emails to her birth father if he wants) but they still are written to me, with the intent of keeping me as 'in the loop' as I can be with my daughter. If nothing else in this world ever makes me feel content or happy again, at least I know I'll always have those emails. They give me a happiness unlike anything I've ever felt. It's not the kind of "happy" you feel at Christmas, or when you win tickets to a concert, or when someone you have feelings for asks you out. It's not like when you study hard and get a good grade, or get a raise at work. It's something entirely different that I can't even explain to someone who isn't a first mom. Just like seeing your baby for the first time is a feeling that you only understand once you've given birth. It's an incredible feeling. And although all of my 'incredible' feelings that should solely be just that - incredible - have been tainted with some sadness, disappointment, and confusion, they have still been amazing and I would not change them for the world.
I'm not going to hold my breath that I will get the photos and update this weekend, because I don't want to look forward to it and wind up checking my email every fifteen seconds only to be let down. I would rather let it be a 'surprise.' There is a good chance she may get busy and not end up sending it til Monday or Tuesday night, and that is fine. It *will* come, even if it's not in a time frame that is ideal to me. One thing I am absolutely certain of is that she is a woman of her word and they so far have proved themselves to be a family of their word. I hope, with all of my heart, that I can still say that about them in five or ten years (and I'm 100% sure I will be able to).
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