It’s been a discouraging week. A weather system came through and so I have had a headache every day. These headaches drain me and I get very little done. I did sleep when I felt tired and I suppose I needed the rest. And the dreams were useful so there was that.
Last week was the two year anniversary of the day I quit the Terrible Job. My truck spent much of my anniversary in the garage getting a new steering thingy installed. Nice and expensive. Then we went out to dinner to celebrate. Dinner included two pieces of white and dark chocolate cake from a bakery and it was the most wonderful cake I have ever eaten. I did not think cake would be the highlight of the day! But it was just that good.
I know that I am slowly healing and have made measurable progress during the past two years. But I am still in a different world completely compared to who I used to be and what I used to be able to do.
The other day I drove by a place of business and saw that they were hiring for a job that the old me would have at least gone in and asked about. This new me realized pretty quickly that I still don’t know how I would manage relationships with co-workers and customers.
I used to be able to imagine myself doing just about anything I put my mind to. Now I remember all the ways I have gone wrong in the past because I was usually in over my head and was getting by on being an over-achiever.
I used to have an answer to everything, lots of opinions, lots of belief in those opinions. Now I censor myself and stay quiet a lot of the time.
The old me could be kind of bold at times and I often jumped into things without thinking. Now I think myself away from the noisiness of life.
There’s me with my picture in the paper. There’s me being treasurer of this and vice president of that. I was out there, in small ways mostly, but still out there. Not too much anymore, though.
It makes me wonder what it will be like when I believe I have healed enough to enter into the give and take of the community again. Will it be too late to start again? What will be interesting to me? Will there be like-minded people to connect with? That’s hard to imagine just now.
It has always been difficult to find like-minded people. That was part of my stress that built and built over the years and drained the life out of me. I probably would have been happier in a very large city or a different, more liberal part of the country. But that is not how life turned out.
For now, I am playing it safe. Maybe if I had been a touch more cautious in years past, I might have had an easier time of it and maybe not gotten stuck in intolerable situations. Then again, maybe not.
It will be nice when I can look back on this time period and smile at the progress I made and be happy with how it turned out after all.