Silence Is Invisible

I've experienced harassment at the hands of my boss for the past three months.  I have to work tomorrow and am a little afraid of what will come up.  My boss is confident that I won't say anything about it...I'm sure.  That's the purpose of harassment to emotionally beat someone into submission so that they will be too afraid to say anything.  I'm afraid, but I still plan to speak up.  I have to give myself time though.

I have had to examine my motives and look at what good I think can come out of speaking up.  I've come up with a couple of things.  I think that this will be good for me to see that taking up for yourself is a process.  You have to think that you are worth the effort.  I hope to clear my record of the lies that my boss has so freely stacked my file with as well as preserve or protect my confidentiality.  I also, hope that it will improve patient care on the unit that I work on.  And I hope to prevent this from happening to anyone else.

I am still somewhat traumatized by the events of the last few weeks.  I get a headache when I think of how sick the people who think they run this unit are.  It also makes me nauseated to think that this place would even consider itself worthy of Magnet status with the way that it treats it's nurses.

I couldn't really blog about this because I was so upset initially that I was incoherent when I started to talk abou the events that have occurred these past few weeks.  In almost thirty years of nursing I have never experienced such blatantly horrible treatment as I have with this lady.  I'm lying...this has been my nursing career in the state of Georgia.

Being an African American nurse with a knowledge base equivalent to that of some MD's people seem to resent that I know things that I know.  I wonder if I were white, would it be any different.  I try to use my knowledge base for the good of other people.  I don't try to impose what I know on anyone else.  Isn't nursing about using knowledge to help others?

I am still a little incredulous at what I've been going through.  But, I think that I need to give creedence to my experience and accept it in order to come to terms with it .  I also need a resolution to the issue.  As much as I'd like to walk away from this pile of mess, I'd don't think it's a good idea.  To be silent is to participate in the sickness.  To be silent is to be invisible.

What Color Is Silence Again?

Still facing challenges at work.  I am still being harassed and treated unfairly and lied on by my boss.  I am still upset.  But calmer than I was yesterday...or all weekend for that matter.  It's really sad how black people treat each other.  We are a clueless group.

Anyway, I've been trying to make a decision as to whether I should go after my boss or just retreat.  I am going to go after her but, I have to do it with love in my heart.  What a challenge...  My love waxes and wanes.  I wish I could maintain it but I can't.  I don't want to make any desparate or sudden moves.  I don't want to damage myself.  I don't want to react.  She is a witch.  Probably the worst director I've ever encountered.  I would hate her if it didn't compromise my love for myself.

I sit in the counselors office, I have been referred to at work.  I worked last night and I'm exhausted. I try to read a book that I have on had but to no avail.  My eyelids are just too heavy.  The name of the book is the time paradox.  It's about how we perceive and use time.  I am only a few pages in.  Can't wait to get to the good parts.  The counselor at the employee assistance program comes out to get me.

I'm not angry at my boss for referring me there.  I am angry at her for trying to use the referral against me.  She is an idiot and I really don't think she knows what she has done.  But, that's okay.  I'll just let her go head and do what she is doing.  I hope one day, she has to deal with what I'm dealing with so she can see how it is.  The counselor entreated me to love.  Love?  I have to access my energy...to love.  Or maybe she has ...who knows?

One of my coworkers told me that I have problems at work because my intelligence level and my analytical skills far exceed my education level.  He said that it baffles people and makes them jealous.  I can't help it.  I tried to act stupid but people always see through fabricated idiocy.  I'm trying

So Surreal.

My experiences at work for the last few weeks have been surreal.  In some ways I feel like a baby in the womb, large...but no where near time to be born.  I twist and turn in this environment of mine...naked and unknown.  wondering daily who I am here...now because, in no way am I familiar with the person that I was last week yesterday, minutes or even seconds ago.  Transition...change.  Call it what you will.  I am having difficulty processing the events that so change my point of reference...that I am constantly wondering...who I am and how I arrived at the point that I stand at now. 

My tendency in a crisis is to emotionally fade to black in an effor to ignore the unpleasantness that is coursing through my very being.  It numbs me and allows me to block out the circumstances that threaten to obliterate my very existence.  I feel ignored and insignificant in the face of someone else's abuse.  Running from my demons in an effort to save myself.

I have chosen to stand and fight.  I have stood and fought in the past but only when my circumstances have so severely overtaken me that it is impossible for me to ignore them or escape them any longer.  By then, I am so angry that I cannot do anything but retaliate...but I have never really learned to defend myself. Not really.

I often at these time lashing out furiously, rationally but as brutally as my attacker.  Only when I have again resumed a safe distance do I stop. Then, I run...again.

My actions are usually out of a desparation, a fear that I would be hard pressed to describe.  The unpleasant feelings of shame and guilt of existing to be a target are overwhelming.  Then, the feelings cycle to anger at the person who has assaulted me and then fear as to what they might do next.  My goal is always to just stop that assault at the time, for that time...so that I can keep my attacker at bay long enough to escape to emotional safety. I run.

The cycle then continues.

My work situation has come to this.  I have experienced this over and over again at work, at home...wherever I go.  I'm tired of it.  I'm angry about it.  It needs to stop, it will stop. I have had enough.  I am functioning in a fog.  It is difficult to function this way. But, I will keep moving.

My goal is to take responsibility for what is mine and not allow others to heap their emotional garbage on me.  I am so tired of this.  It never occurred to me how sick people are,especially my boss, until now.  I'm having a hard time believing what I have seen and experienced from her and her minions within the past month or so. 

But, I need to see.  I want to see. I have to see so that I can continue with my work.

The emotional pain I feel concerning the things going on at work are gut wrenching and hard to sort out. I have been violated to an extent that I have never experienced in my 29 years of work.  It brings to light so many questions in my head about how someone can work in a field that requires compassion and have no sense of compassion at all.  Or just feel that the rules don't apply to them because they hold a position of power.

I think that what is most difficult about this whole situation is the lies that we tell ourselves in order to keep our lives quiet and orderly.  To maintain a  "quasi-peaceful" and waveless existance.  What is most compelling is the parts of ourselves that we sacrifice to promote and protect lies that harm others, as long as they don't seem to bother us.

I'm sad.

Off Track

The late, great Scott M. Peck understated it when he wrote, "life is difficult".  A more accurate assessment is that life is a bitch and hard as hell. 

I'm tired today.  I have been tired everyday.  It is a struggle not to run into the sea and keep running. (I suppose at some point I'd have to start swimming if I want to continue to breath).  I had some idea a while ago that life was supposed to be a playground.  That we are supposed to be able to do what we want, when we want and run and laugh and have fun everyday of our lives.  I never considered the miserable bullies who come over to you while you are happily playing in your sand box and kick sand in your face.  Nor, did I ever consider the ones that come over to the swing and demand that you get off so that they can get on.

Not only do they exist for children, but also for adults.  Bullies exist at work.  They work to suck all of the joy out of you that they can so that they can be the muscle men on the beach.  Every so often, they underestimate the 90 lb weakling.

Work is more work than it's worth.  I want to walk away from there and keep going.  People just have no clue what life is about.  It seems that people choose to spend the majority of their lives outside of themselves, in other peoples business and trying to control those things that they have no right or the ability to control. While their lives spiral out of control

It's not only them, but it 's me too. I've been off track for the past few months.  I think that's what makes things so hard.  If I could just ignore all the crap going on around me and keep moving...maybe.  Then maybe that's not what I'm supposed to do. I think that I'm supposed to be gleaning some type of knowledge and strength from this...but it's coming very slowly, if at all.

My situation at work with my bullying boss has got to come to a head somewhere.  I'm still traumatized by the events of two weeks ago when she called me and told me not to come to work unless I called her.  She had received some complaints from my coworkers and decided that they were true.  When I talked to her and asked her why she did this, she said because she wanted me to call her back. Then, she demanded that I write a rebuttal to the accusations and initally refused to give them to me in writing.  I insisted, she conceded and I wrote. 

I'm still angry.
How can you be the nursing director on an oncology floor and  have such a primitive mentality? To put it mildly.  I'm still reeling from the fact that she actually had the nerve to leave this on my voicemail.  I'm trying my best to let this go.  I fully understand why things remain the mess that they remain on the floor that I work on. My thought process needs to move on.

This is why I haven't blogged for a while.
I think it's funny when people apologize in their blog for not blogging for a couple of weeks, a month...or two.  It's like they think that all people have to do is sit around and read their blog.  I make no such apology.  Life happens and sometimes it interferes with your ability to blog. But, I really miss blogging.

I love blogging!!! I don't know why...I just love it!!!

I sit in Barnes and Nobles listening to songs by Tony Bennett.  Somehow, it is the most comforting and soothing music that I could listen to right now.  It brings back memories and reminds me of my Mommy.  New York, New York is playing now.  I've always loved this song... Especially when they get to the end and it slows down.  I just picture me in the middle of a long line of Rockettes kicking my legs!!!
I was kinda off track before the events at work occurred.  Now, I'm really of track.  This thing at work has taken me far out of the way.  I'm trying to get back there, but the more I seek to get back on track, the harder it seems to get back to where I was.  Maybe I'm not supposed to go back where I was.  Maybe I'm supposed to forge a new path.  That is something to think about!

I'm definately grieving the old scenery.