I needed a reset. The past two years have taken me away from who I grew up as and learned that the world is doesn't align to the rules you learn. You realise that the things you learn to be life's guidelines are only that, guidelines.
You become free after that, which is both liberating and limiting. Without rules you go with are your instinct; what feels right? What feels wrong? What aligns to your personal values? But if you don't have that moral compass, or you haven't had the opportunity to develop it yet, then you are left guessing and hoping for the best.
But this is the beauty point, you are left wondering what is the right decision without direction and realise that you provide the direction yourself. You realise that when you stop and think, believe in who you are and they way you think, then the world is yours - not someone else's. You realise that the rules you live by are those which others have provided to you, and they may well mean these to better structure and influence your life, but what if you don't believe in what they believe? What is they are liberal and you are conservative? What if they are heavily religious and you are an atheist? What if their world is the size of a village and you experience a world which is the size of the globe?
I'm a depressed human being. Everything in my life points in the direction that I should feel excited, and fulfilled. But I have been lost, I have been numb, and I have felt vulnerability for the first time since I was a teenager. It has taken a considerable length of time to acknowledge why I have felt this way, I'm thankful to understand mental illness as it's something I didn't tolerate before I had experienced it. I almost regret experiencing the world after having grown up in such a small community; my childhood was so simple, my life so straight forward. My Dad had my life planned out but it was never enough. I needed more.
So why depression? I have put it down to sadness. I have put it down to lack of fulfilent. I have put it down to loneliness. And what makes these worse was when I was not acknowledging them; I didn't acknowledge that I was sad at the way I was treated at work. I don't do anything which fulfils me at work through presentations and direction at a strategic level, and in life I haven't been doing the activities the I love. Finally, because I have been settling, I still haven't created the base I need to be happy. I'm not surrounded by individuals in the same position, but with people in similar positions. I am not around people with similar interests but with people who are from a similar experience so you are able to relate on a structural level.
Without these things I had forgotten who I am. The levels of lost I felt were comparable to that of a person who had forgotten their identity; it's not until now that I realise that you need to recall the things you grew up with and learned that you remember who you are.
I am thankful for these things. My personality has developed, I have changed. My heart aches on a regular basis, for my family, for direction, for familiarity. But I know that if I was spoon fed my life, I would be a different kind of misery. I have this drive to find more, to find excitement, to experience the tough but worthy. I can't stop. I need more. I can have more. And I have provided myself the opportunity to experience more. Restricting me in life is pain, it is bars, it is a gaol, it is my hell.
Ahead of me right now is a resignation. But that resignation is that of a person who will have accepted a role from a firm who will have provided me will a role which aligns with my values and requirements to be who I am. A place which requires me to be myself, a place that hires me for my personality and capability; things that they acknowledge will develop them as a company and are invested in me as a person.
It's a Sunday night at 12am and I have drunk a bottle of wine. I do not want tomorrow to come around, I do not want anyone speaking with me, I do not want to open my email. I have passion, I have too much energy and I have so much enthusiasm that I would irritate a springer spaniel; yet as soon as I open my emails on a working day I want to drive off a bridge. Why? Because it is so dull, I haven't been trained, I struggle to speak through things with people, and because I am an extrovert in an introverted team.
These things can be remedied. But this company gave me so much in the first three years, I was on top of the world and flying. Now is the time to change but they have gone from making me feel invincible to making me feel like I am incapable of the most menial tasks, and I am furious. Yes, a huge element of this is choosing to move out to the States and be in this team, but I didn't know myself well enough to know that this wouldn't be enough, I didn't know my boss well enough to know that he wasn't a manager who was compatible with the way I worked, I didn't realise the implications of being a women in an isolated world.
I am done, I have been done for a while. The reason for not having left yet are somewhat elusive to me; I am someone motivated by a deadline, but when it's yourself those deadlines become somewhat flexible. But also, my job brings me down so much that I can't muster the confidence to complete application forms which suggest I'm capable, even though I very much know that I am.
Alas, it is time to sleep. I'm taking a risk having written this after wine and no spell check. But I can't help but feel that this may provide some insight which would not come to the forefront of ones mind sober.
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