Cafe Hitch-hike

2024-04-10

Taking a break

It’s another one of those spells where I decided to take a mental health break. I don’t know if I’m going to take off the rest of the week or a whole calendar week. I couldn’t wait 6 weeks for a break. This temp position has pushed me to my limits in so many ways that I cannot begin to describe. It’s a combination of a freak accident that I get to observe and my neuroses kicking my ass.

I’m so glad I did not go for the permanent position, and pray my time ends on July 1 so I can end this nightmare.

I wish I could pull a cord that makes me care about all of this. I wish I didn’t care about any of this, but I can’t for the life of me. The moment I get lackadaisical on anything is when I know a foot’s about ready to hit my ass.

I know most of the issues go well beyond me, are power plays that go above me, and are from a legacy I did not create.

I guess what gets me is everyone on my team is in the same boat with their own catastrophes to manage. Chaos is my boss’s operational norm. Difficult changes and restructuring are on the horizon, and I see a pattern.

We will be restructuring and some dysfunctional teams are going to get torn apart, which I now acknowledge as a normal reaction in my field. This was exactly what happened while I was at my last job in Edgewhere. We are having what is known as a shakeout. One of the big bosses at that place did such a bad job with it that they had to step down, and another had to clean up the mess, which took about 3 years.

I still haven’t figured out what makes me so emotionally exhausted by the end of the work week. Is it me not taking on a role that comes naturally? Am I taking things too personally? Am I unable to detach from the job? Well God knows disassociation has been one of my specialities, it would be nice if it could kick in right about now. Is it something wrong with my brain? i’m very confused right now.

It’s pretty accurate to say I did not have the right stuff for the job. It was definitely punching above my weight, yet I can’t be angry at myself for that. I did not do a terrible job at all. At least now my teammates have a pretty clear understanding of what I faced because they actually listened to me and considered all of that when hiring the person who will take over my and my former boss’s position.

I dreamed that I hovered over my hometown river valley. I landed near Division Street, about 2 blocks and downhill from where I was born. A grassy area with some benches was next to the street and downtown could easily be seen from the park-like area.

I thought I had seen Avery at the park, and then I had seen my buddy Jimbob and a couple of others.

“I was born over there,” I pointed up the hill. “It was in the early 70s. My parents were very young…”

…this was my mother…. this was my father…” as I continued to describe them. The more I said, more close and intimate friends of mine were around me and listened to me speak.

“My grandparents,” I continued, “neither went to visit my mother and I in the hospital because they were angry and ashamed. It was really Uncle Joe, Aunt Juana, and 2 of her friends that came to see us…”

“I’m not sure I was particularly welcomed, even as a baby girl.” I concluded. “But, my grandfather changed his mind when he helped my mother in the middle of the night, when I was teething and had a fever. My grandmother was extremely happy to see me the last few times I had visited her. At least that changed a bit.”

“I did not know that at all,” said one person in my group of friends. “Have you ever told anyone?”

I went on, describing my life there as objectively as I could. I talked about my parents’ life before I was born and their difficulties I discovered in bits over time; I described how things made better sense to once I learned them even if they feel painful at times.

I saw more people surround me and by then, I had a podium and microphone. My best friends were still near me, but I was surprised that my story and I had an audience that rapidly grew.

Some people asked me questions, good questions. Some wanted me to describe what things were like in my life. It wasn’t like some sideshow attraction, they really wanted to know. As I slowed telling my story, people asked fewer questions and seemed to reflect.

My close friends didn’t change their response, they seemed interested though not surprised. Even after I told them things most of them didn’t know, they stayed with me.

Then, I dreamed about migrants, like I skimmed over a view of them. I saw the ones that worked in the fields outside of my hometown and near where I now live. I saw the thousands at the southern border; many were formerly middle-class people in their countries and not only the usual Latino country-folk or poor.

I dreamed about the work trucks I had seen bouncing on dusty country roads with their cabs filled with workers quietly coming or going. I then saw my parents as kids in winter jackets, walking through their snowy neighborhoods in our midwestern town (I guess my father started spending a bit more time up north after he was 9 or 10). Although they dressed for the weather, they really looked out of place. What a leap that must had been for our families. I then dreamed I was 9 years old again, quietly reading and writing something in my school library with my classmates scurrying around. Although everything looked right, something in that part of the dream also felt out of place.

I guess I never really told or described things from my perspective after a certain point when I lived in the hometown. All I remembered was people didn’t want to hear about any of that stuff but this time it seemed completely different. I felt like I had a full voice for once, I felt like I was heard. I wasn’t shunned, I wasn’t treated like an alien or outsider. I finally felt like I was fully there and fully seen.

Migration…. it’s a worldwide phenomenon that has gone on forever. I have my own thoughts about that but I think about how and why it has been happening on this scale. In a recent collage I worked on, the theme of migration came up for both people and animals like birds. Migration tends to be out of necessity for a variety of reasons, but at the same time, doesn’t it happen because of a call or pull like it is for the birds or salmon? Sometimes it happens because something is completed, and something new awaits or calls. I dunno…. the topic of migration has been on my mind a lot lately. But what no one discusses is the sense of displacement that seems to go with it, and how long that can linger.

Perhaps it’s the dreams that help us fulfill what we haven’t been able to do in our real life, or get a sense or hope of what that could be really like.

downwind | upstream