A place I feel valued
It was a rough day at work today to say the very least. As much as I love the job I work, it's been getting more and more difficult for me to withstand the pressure. I was well on the verge of a burnout the week of my birthday, and the trip to Finland served its purpose in more ways than one. While I now have the physical energy back to withstand a hectic day, I certainly don't have my full mental energy back, which sucks because it means that I'm a bit more prone to being outwardly frazzled.
I truly dislike showing my frazzledness in hectic situations, but when I'm already knocked down it can be extremely difficult to maintain my composure. I pride myself in being cool, calm, and collected, but at the same time I'm internally frustrated when I hit my limit of how much I can withstand. I used to put up with a lot more shit than I'd care to admit, but nowadays I can recognise that all-too familiar feeling I get when I realise that I'm having to withstand hard hits at a greater rate than the others around me.
It's a double-edged sword being strong and level-headed. In the most hectic of situations, I rarely bat an eyelid and always manage to guide others through the thick of it; but this also places an enormous expectation that it is something I can always be capable of doing. Well...I definitely * know * I'm capable of getting through tough situations at a higher frequency than most people, but this rides on the fact that all my other ducks in life are in the most meticulous, autism-fueled row you've seen. For so long in my life I felt weak and overreactive to a fault. I was frustrated immensely by my innate responses to situations that I didn't want to even acknowledge. As I learned to manage my emotions (thanks to some much-needed medication, therapy, and prefrontal cortex maturation), I became considerably more patient...and subsequently more like my father in the aspect of his "stand back and watch before reacting" behaviour.
In my senior year of high school, I had stumbled into a less-than-ideal situation that resulted in my mental health going down the drain due to my inability to set boundaries with people and a desire to have some sort of autonomy in a life I felt I had no control over. I will spare the details of the story but everything finally culminated to a head during my robotics team end-of-year celebration evening. I spent weeks planning this and was excited to hand out awards to team members after a rough season, but became overly anxious when I realised that the person causing me trouble was allowed to attend. As all parents were invited, the individual made it subtle that they were trying to isolate me from socialising with friends, and I was quite upset. I went out of the room to use the toilet, and while I am not certain what happened in the moments I was gone, when I returned I found a scene that I was not expecting to see. Standing up in the middle of the cafeteria was none other than said individual, shouting at my father. With only a table separating the two, my father stood motionless, arms crossed, silently taking the brunt of the yells. Other parents quickly intervened and separated the altercation, but it did involve pulling the student away from my dad and bringing them outside to cool off. The entire incident lasted less than a minute, but it has still stayed with me all these years.
I was in awe of my dad's ability to maintain his composure, and after talking with him, I realised that we had a lot of similarities in how impuslively-emotional we were as children. He spent a long time working to improve himself, reigning in the power that comes with silence in intense situations. People who wish to start problems simply want a reaction out of those around them, and not giving them what they want is the greatest power you can have over them in that moment. I vowed to myself later the next day that I would work towards becoming as stoic as he was in the thick of situations. I may not be able to control the chaos around me, but I sure as hell could control myself, and my previous knee-jerk reactions weren't exactly working all that well anyways.
I seem to be rather successful in my personal journey since that night. I've realised a lot of things since my time in high school, and matured an awful lot. But I think the biggest takeaway from it (outside of mastering Dad's stoic reaction) is that I don't have to put up with shit. If someone is trying to start things with me, I don't have to comply. If someone is making me feel invalidated, unwanted, or not good enough, I have full jurisdiction to express how I feel and request it to stop. If my wishes are not respected then, I have full control in the situation by withdrawing from engagement with it. And while my work is certainly no insane-kid-from-high-school-tormenting-me-for-months situation (or that girl-who-threatened-to-call-the-cops-on-me-for-not-giving-her-her-rats-back-because-she-was-neglecting-them...or that p*do-i-reported-to-the-police...etc etc), if I'm feeling unloved, unvalued, or disposable, I have every right to stand up for myself. I am a hard, dedicated worker. I put in 110% of myself no matter the job, and stay true to my word. If the world I'm in isn't made for me, I guess it's just time to find a new one.
(nyt vähän suomen kieli)
Viikonloppuni oli epätavallista koska olin kahdessa maassa. Lauantaina olin Espoossa ja sunnuntaina Lontoossa. Espoossa hoidin asioita aamulla. Sitten söin lounaan ystäväni kanssa Judith ja iso-äitini. Kello viisi iltapäivällä lähdin lentokentälle. Lentoi oli myöhässä ja palasin kotiin yksi aamulla.
Until next time...
Leave a comment
Komments