The Aftermath

Day four arrives. I am feeling strongly disillusioned.

I am feeling disillusioned with the people whom I respected and in whom I held trust and respect. I cannot understand why and how my supervisors could betray me in such a cold manner. If I was unwanted, I could simply have been told and I would have left quietly. Instead I am attacked. I have to restrain from reacting. I must discipline myself to remain calm. I gain power and reverence from my warrior background and summon the strength of my generations to do the right thing in this new age of battle, and not strike a fist of fury. The war that is raged here is one of honor and dignity. Mine is being stripped away and I must fight to keep it.

I am disillusioned at work for not being appreciated for what I do. I am hurt for being compared to my colleagues. Of course I will not be as good as everybody else, but I am as good as I can be, and certainly I am better than myself in the past. Yet, try as hard as I do, it is not enough. I am a human being and the work that I do is tasking. Even one of my supervisors admitted that it is exhausting. The only ones who understand this are a few handful of my friends at work who support me and encourage me. They offer me praise and they thank me, instead of the cruel criticisms I am so accustomed to hearing from some supervisors, that I forget how misguided and false they are. I even appreciate and respect those who have neither anything good to say or who maintain minimal essential contact. Even these relationships are, at least, not painful. But the ones who ought to be providing support are the ones who cut down and hurt. It would be somewhat bearable if it were a neutral position due to an absence of both support and condescension. Save but for the grace of my supportive colleagues I would not have the strength to counter all the negativity that is poured upon my soul.

My boundaries at work have been violated, but there is nothing in my contract to protect me against this. It's almost as if the contract disregards that I am a human being. I do not understand how a contract written by humans can supersede the contract written by the universe. I am a human being bound more to the universal principles that exist beyond us than to any contract written by people. I may be required to honor my contract, but I am without doubt held to the universal laws, irrelevant of my own agreement. If I am wronged I will feel hurt. If I am mistaken in thinking I have been wronged, being told I am mistaken will not make me feel better. My friends at work support me by validating my feelings. It reminds me that I am a human being. When my supervisors tell me they don't think that I am unsafe, or that I have been disrespected, which is the same as telling me that they don't think that I am a human being, or that I have feelings, or that I am believable. If I feel unsafe and disrespected, then it is true to me by they existence of my feelings, which is the same as it being true for anybody. That warrants empathy.

I would not disrespect somebody by invalidating them by telling them they should not be feeling what they are feeling. What a horrible thing to do. Does a doctor tell a wounded patient that they are not in pain? Yet my supervisors tell me that I needn't feel unsafe or that I shouldn't feel I've been disrespected. Now I see that they are unconcerned with me. They are only concerned with their own selfish needs. Just like the police officer that shouted at me in front of my colleagues that he would arrest me if I made another 911 call since his 30 days of vacation were in jeopardy. What selfishness. What about my concerns? Was I offered assistance? No. For this I forgive them, but I must not dishonor myself by accepting it and enduring more of it. I am a warrior and must protect my integrity and dignity. I forgive my supervisors for never having experienced anything such as I and therefore being incapable of expressing empathy to me. It hurts, it hurts to not be cared about. But I resolve to be fair to them. If they knew any better or any different, they would not do this to me. As for my supportive colleagues, I see their valiance emerge as they hold me up in my time of crisis. I honor them by doing what is respectful and strengthening myself through their givings. They have made great contributions to my emotional bank account, while my supervisors have callously and coldly made overdrawn withdrawals from my emotional bank account. There's no collections agency. I will suffer and they will continue in their insufferable ways.