For All The Times I Didn’t Show Up
Tags: Life Lessons, Jobs, Depression, Life, Mental Health

For All The Times I Didn’t Show Up

There have been many times where I have walked out. There have been so many times that I have called out of work in a huff. There have even been times that I have quit jobs for a fake reason.

Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels

I’ll be in the middle of doing something, and then my heart will begin to race, my mind will begin to cloud and all I hear is white noise in my mind, and the next thing I know, I can’t go in to work that day. Worst case scenario, I’ll show up to the job and I’ll physically run away. I’ve done that twice. I’ve gone into a job and quit right on the spot.

Therapists aren’t very helpful with this. They’ll just challenge me not to quit the next time. I’ll accept their challenge and then eventually quit on them. I’ll run away from my therapist. I’ll stop answering their calls. I’ll find a way to end the session, never to pick it up again. Eventually, I’ll quit the job. I’m always thinking about leaving and running and hiding.

The last two jobs I had I didn’t quit. The urge hovered within me though. I was working two jobs on paper, but emotionally I was working six jobs. I was a social worker, therapist, educator, marketer, and recruiter all in one. I kept challenging myself to show up. My skin felt like it was on fire all the time. I kept seeing other times when I ran away from jobs in the past. I kept seeing my shame, and it was so debilitating. But then, I got laid off from those jobs. And honestly, I felt relieved. Yes, I was broke. Yes, I would have to move back home, but this time I didn’t quit. I was dangerously close though.

I don’t know why I get so easily overwhelmed. I did some research into Highly Sensitive People and it feels something like that. I feel like everything is too loud often. I go from a winning personality and the ability to do everything at the beginning of the month, to a feeble whisper by the end of the month. I go from organized colorful color-coordinated notes to a jumble of words and an inability to even write down sentences.

This is the longest time I’ve ever been without a job. I keep applying for things, but all I feel is this dark sinking feeling whenever I go for my usual jobs. My heart breaks apart and I feel like I’m going to throw up. I have always had this feeling. This sinking feeling that would tell me “You’re not supposed to be doing this. Stop faking it.” The more I don’t live my truth. The more my body is going to physically rebel against me.

I’m beginning to realize in this time alone, where unemployment is enough to survive, that I have hated everything that I have done up to this point. I have told myself that I loved it in order to please a father, a mother, a partner, a friend, or a stranger. I have done so many things in order to seem like I am apart of the human race only to feel empty, listless, and afraid. I ask others “what should I do?” Then they tell me, and then I do those things, and then I run away from the things they told me to do because it isn’t what I have wanted.

What do I want to do? I don’t know. But honestly, writing is the only thing I have never run away from. It is the only thing I haven’t packed my bags and driven away in my Prius from. I’ve run from jobs, from men, from family, from passions, from ideas, from people, from God and from myself, but writing has been the only thing that I cannot escape. When I don’t write my thoughts shared or unshared, I feel like my blood is boiling. I feel like my skin is drying up and I am withering away. It has always felt this way. Since the 4th-grade words have always been my lifeblood.

But I hear my father's old words in my mind: “how are you going to make any fucking money” “why would you waste your life trying to become a writer” “you can’t even write in complete sentences” “you’ve tried so many things what makes you think this isn’t something you’ll leave too?”

The Answer to all of this is: I don’t know. I don’t know how I’m going to make any money. I don’t know why I would waste away and bet on myself in this way. I can’t write in complete sentences, and I’ve tried so many things and I don’t know if I’ll run when the going gets tough. But for now, I have had time to notice that this is different. I wake up in the morning wanting to do this. I don’t wake up in the morning planning an escape anymore. I smile to myself more often. I allow more time for silence. I find times where beneath my C-PTSD, anxiety, depression, and whatever else I’ve been diagnosed with over the years, I find a place where I actually have joy. Things feel lasting when I write to them or type them out. When I was sexually assaulted, I wrote five journal entries a day. Five long ones trying to rationalize what happened. I was healing my soul.

I do this not only for me but for those who feel this way too. I want to be able to share something. I don’t want to be a puppet anymore for anyone else. So for all the times, I didn’t show up. For all the jobs I’ve quit in a huff. For all the spaces I’ve attempted to occupy while slowly dying inside.

Goodbye.

Now granted, it is tempting to go back. It is so tempting to try to put on skin that someone else told me to wear. It is so tempting to put on a coat that is supposed to give me instant validation. It is so easy to wear a hat that doesn’t fit and squeezes your temples but it sure looks good on. It is so simple to wear a pair of small high heels when you love wearing flats. But, I physically cannot do that anymore. It is life or death at this point. Honestly, I’ve been hospitalized too many times for doing too many things that don’t fit in with my personality. I cannot live for other people and expect to live much longer. So I’m done walking in my mother's shoes. I’m done wearing my father's baseball hats. I’m done wearing my grandmother's faux fur coats. I’m done wearing my best friend's stilettos. I’m done wearing my partner's prescription, and I’m finally choosing to dress myself.