I titled this post with the words guilt and stress because that it was I just absorbed so much of yesterday at work. It was potent and overflowing. We had a staff meeting as we do every Thursday. This time the new DO (Director of Operations) was there and this was my first time meeting him. He seemed pretty rational and also more stern in his views about the residents’ behaviors. He seemed like a no bullshit type person so that’s good.

He did end up proposing that we come in on one or more days to help clean the residents’ rooms. I of course was not interested in that at all because as is I am pretty ready to leave this place. I have already helped two different residents clean their rooms for multiple hours in a row for each guy. The new DO seems to think that if we clean and organize their rooms really well that they will maintain them. That’s a load of shit because these guys are terrible with responsibilities. You clean their rooms well and within days it goes right back to the way it started. Also, all of these men are full grown adults. They are more than capable of cleaning their rooms but they choose not to.

After the DO left the site manager started to ask the employees who would be willing to do some extra hours on one of those days. I at first was confused by what the DO said and I thought he was saying it was going to be mandatory. All I did was ask her if this was mandatory and then expressed relief when she said it wasn’t. She starts freaking out on me right then. She starts raising her voice and being aggressive. She said “God forbid you do any extra hours”. I responded with “Well I’m not management. And so I haven’t signed my life away.” She responds to that with “Yes I am well aware of that”.

This whole time her eyes are practically beating out of her head and she’s responding as if I just told her I was going to do jack shit at work today. I did nothing of the sort and I work harder while I’m on shift than most staff do. The difference is I’m smart enough not to sacrifice the two days I have off each week. She and another one of my coworkers have been doing a ton of overtime. As expected the two of them are by far the most irritable and aggressive as a result.

The thing that pisses me off is that the two of them keep making passive-aggressive comments or having passive-aggressive responses to things and are becoming work martyrs. I have received more than a few passive-aggressive statements from these two, any time that I take a strong or honest stand on my need to keep my two days off and not do overtime. The two of them take on much more work than they can truly handle, yet continue to do so probably for a number of reasons. We have been somewhat short staffed recently especially with all the activities that our boss started to set up for all of the guys before he ended up being out on medical leave for the last month or so.

They sacrifice their days off to do overtime, they have a wicked short fuse and snap easily, they continuously complain about the problems in the program, they frequently mention leaving, they use their own money in larger sums to buy things for the residents or the program, etc. They do this to themselves. Yes, the program does need more staff. Yes, their are many open shifts that need covering. Yes, there are staff that do more work than other staff. I don’t care if they want to put this heavy load upon themselves and want to act as if they are responsible for filling all the open shifts.

What I do care about is the remarks they have made to me that are said with the intention of guilting me into taking on overtime myself. For the site manager to say “God forbid you ever do any extra hours”, is a clear jab made to imply that I’m selfish and that I don’t work hard. You can take on as many hours as you want until your body and mind shut down, but don’t think you have the right to expect that I take on the same thing myself.

I’m sorry but I have learned over time how stupid it is to bend over backwards for other people or for your workplace, when you are not getting anything back and all you’re doing is burning yourself out. Yes it may result in the shifts being covered more easily but you’re getting next to nothing out of this. If working extra hours actually lead to an improvement in the program, or lead to a feeling of achievement or like you made a noticeable difference in the program or the guys lives, it would make more sense to keep doing so.

I think these two are making stupid choices that negatively affect their states of mind and also their bodies because of the levels of stress they are taking on and the lack of sleep they are getting. Of course they are also getting next to no time off because they are taking on so much overtime so then they have no time to even try to recover from all the physical and mental stress. Sure this shows a willingness to sacrifice your time and it shows that you can be selfless but in reality it’s starting to become more clear that it’s not done for those reasons.

It’s done because these people do not love themselves enough to care for themselves above all, and because they have voids in their lives that they are trying to fill by working all the time. These people also clearly want recognition for all the extra time and effort they put in, so then it becomes clear that it’s not an act of selflessness. If it was truly selfless they wouldn’t go looking for compliments and they wouldn’t expect people to feel bad for them.

I think they are making choices that above all hurt them. I don’t think they are wise decisions. The difference is I don’t repeatedly get on their case for not taking time off or for choosing to take on over time. I don’t try to make them feel bad for being a workaholic. I see it clearly, but I know it’s not my place to comment on. I know this because I have developed pretty good boundaries and put my mental and physical health above the needs of other people or workplaces. What is wrong is when they try to shame me into making the same stupid choices they make. 40 hours a week is more than enough for *any* person to be working. To do more than 40 hours a week unless you absolutely have to out of some emergency or crisis situation, is taking on much more than you should.

Ok so I flipped out pretty hard earlier on today. What happened is that the past like five days or more my mom has managed to wake me up in one way or the other early in the morning, after I only got a few hours of sleep. She’s getting a major house renovation thing done and the dudes have been working on it many days in a row starting early in the morning. And luckily for me the drilling and nailing and generally loud fucking noises have been happening *right* below my bedroom. I have had a fucked up sleep schedule for a long time now and I have for most of my life. Tends to happen when you’re crazy and hypersensitive to everything. I used to be a really deep sleeper when I was younger (but then it was because I was so fucking depressed that I could sleep for 12-14 hrs straight, and would have non-stop vivid dreams). This was before I was on any medications too, and before even worse crazy shit had happened in my life. It was really bad then but as life progressed it only got more complicated and more varieties of traumatic shit were happening, and life was getting more demanding as I was finishing high school and starting college.

So anyways I’m certainly not explaining myself in order, but go figure. I’m never in order…

So what happened this morning is that yet a-fuckin-gain I was woken up by my mom making tons of noise at like 10 am…which OK I know that’s not really early but it is when you couldn’t fall asleep until 7 am…and then only slept lightly for those 3 hours. What pisses me the fuck off is that she does this EVERY time she’s home. She is incapable and unwilling to be quiet once she’s awake. I don’t even know what the hell she’s doing most of the time she’s just such a busy body that she manages to make like every sound under the sun, and she frequently talks loudly on the phone in the mornings. The house is really small with paper thin walls so the only way I wouldn’t hear her would be if she cared enough to go in the basement or if she fucking went outside. But again she’s too focused on herself to even think about doing something like that.

And I know she thinks that I and all people SHOULD be awake in the morning hours so she doesn’t care if she wakes me up. She has no understanding of what it’s like to be a night owl and to how it is to deal with insomnia for long periods of time. She’s such an anxious mess and such an early bird that she passes out starting at probably between 9-10 PM (Of course because she drinks herself to a near coma every night), and she stays there asleep (on the couch, with the TV blasting), for hours on end, until she eventually gets up and goes to sleep in her bed till 5 AM. And she is IMMEDIATELY wide awake.

So this morning when I was woken up yet again by her when I was looking forward to sleeping a whole night through because she was supposed to *stay* at work, I lost my shit. I stopped trying to pass out anyways, because then the house work drilling shit started too and I jumped out of bed and start throwing shit all over my room and slamming everything around. As easy as it is for me to get angry, it takes a fucking lot for me to get to this degree of basically uncontrollable rage. It takes a long time of me just putting up with shit and being out of control and being sleep deprived and whatnot before I get to this point. Normally when I’m pissed I just rant to myself or to someone else but I don’t do anything physical. At this point I just wanted to break shit because I am so fed up with her, with living here, with being broke, with not being able to easily correct that because I’m too different to easily keep a “normal person” job, with being in the same fucking house and room for 23 years, with having to be stone cold sober the past like four days, and with being sleep deprived and overstimulated for too long.

Generally I am VERY good at appearing stable but I think a lot of people know I’m not. The thing is I just don’t cause scenes so it’s not really obvious. But sometimes I just can’t keep my cool anymore and I can’t just keep being the passive, overly nice person that just deals and deals and deals with bullshit and irritation without freaking out. Sometimes one of the three main sides of my personality comes out and I am very different. I clearly express my rage, I stop giving a shit about keeping cool for other people’s sake, I start moving around a lot faster and I start talking and thinking with A LOT more aggression. You REALLY don’t want to cross me at this point because I will fucking lay you out or atleast scare the shit out of you (mostly mentally, I won’t actually physically attack someone). Some asshole tried to pass me at the last minute when I was driving up The Notch road right after this rage incident (well actually it was still in motion but), and I shot my fucking head around to look right at the person and was saying out loud “Are you fucking kidding me?” and I know they couldn’t hear me but they knew what was going on, and they immediately stopped trying to pass me and slowed way, way, down.

Anyways I chilled out a bit after I went to pick Zak up to help him with a ride to work since he didn’t have one and wouldn’t have time to make it there via walking. He calms me so much and he’s so fucking understanding and patient and just lets me rant when I need to. And he totally validates my emotional state this way even if he doesn’t say much. He doesn’t try to talk me out of it, he doesn’t try to tell me I’m wrong for flipping out, and he isn’t scared by how I act at this time. He’s just unconditionally there for me. I felt good that I was able to help him out with a ride and that I was also able to get the fuck out of the house and away from what was making me so livid, and he gave me some gas money, then we went to get some breakfast at DD because we had some time before he had to go in. We talked a bunch and after I dropped him off I realized I changed my IPOD music from Tool to Reggae music, and I was genuinely happy. Such a huge turn around. God I love him.

Anyways as usual I described everything in too much detail and haven’t gotten to the gist of what I wanted to write about yet. I hope some of you have the patience to read this all the way through ha.

When I got home my mom almost immediately asked me if I had any luck with my job search and then I said no, then she said I should work at Cumby’s then I said How about No then she said Well sometimes you have to work at a place outside of your field and I said Yeah but I’m not going to just go right for the shitty jobs, then she said something stupid that was invalidating as usual and I walked away.

She’s certainly one of those “normal” people that loves to just say “Why don’t you just get a job?” or “If you get a job things will get better”, and a variety of other super condescending and presumptions statements. For her she is best at working an insane ER job nearly every day and making a lot of money. For her working a 7-3:30 PM job is perfect, because she has an ordinary sleep schedule and an ordinary way of thinking and functioning. I get so fucking pissed because she never seems to think about how fucking chaotic and insane my upbringing has been, and she never seems to take that into consideration or to notice that that’s a huge reason why I have trouble functioning on a regular basis and why I can’t hold a regular people type job. She thinks everything can be solved with one quick fix and then life will be all Joly. She’s a simpleton and cannot even realize that if that were the case I WOULD ALREADY HAVE BEEN WORKING FOR A LONG TIME WITHOUT PROBLEMS. I would never have even been fired from the other jobs I had. She seems to think that I’m the idiot and that I don’t even think about what I need to do or where I’m fucking up or how badly I function in comparison to other people when it comes to fitting into this society. She assumes I need her beyond repetitive and simple advice or I would be totally lost. As if I had not a fucking clue what to do without her. Can you say absolutely invalidating behavior??

*Continued in Next Post*