Lost

I have been wandering around like a little bit of a lost soul this past while. I have been frantically grasping for air, trying to keep afloat as I have felt a deep, dark undertow trying to pull me under.

I have been feeling low enough that I had an honest conversation with someone and admitted that I could not encourage our friendship because I needed to be around positive people. I felt that this relationship brought me down.

I have been drowning at work. I have internal anxiety attacks on a regular basis and I feel like I am falling apart at the seams. Yet people around me are complimenting me on being 'cool under fire' or handling a situation well. I am grateful that people don't see the weakness that has me shaking under my skin. I guess that I am perfecting the fine art of faking it until I make it.

But ... I finally did it. I fell apart after a day that unravelled me.

I have known that I needed to spend time with myself for a very long time. This has been one of my goals this summer. To just give myself the gift of 'time'.

When I found a movie that I wanted to see after work the other day, I dashed out of the house and barely made it to my seat in time. It felt a little bit wonderful to sit alone in a darkened room and lose myself for a few hours.

It was what happened when I walked out of the theatre that I wasn't expecting. The anxiety enveloped me and took over. I was walking through Zellers and I could barely contain myself. I wanted to run for the nearest exit but I didn't. I finally made it outside and breathed the fresh air around me.

It wasn't enough. I needed to get to the car. I needed to enclose myself and shut out the world around me. I started to crumble. I needed to drive.

I had no idea where I was going, so I turned in a direction that didn't take me home. I drove. I cried. I shook. I leaned into it and felt all of the emotions that I have been suppressing.

I had no where to turn. I have friends all around me, yet I didn't want anyone to know the extent of desperation that I had been containing.

If I would have had the home phone number of my boss, I would have called and quit work. Right then. It was the source of my immediate anxiety. It keeps me awake at night. It is not rewarding. I'm embarrassed to say that I work there. I don't want anyone to see me in my uniform. I avoid the store like the plague if I am not at work.

Yet I cannot quit. I need this. It is possible that I need this job more than I even know ... because my future at my other job is completely up in the air. I have no idea what the fall may bring. This uncertainty is like nothing that I have ever known.

There has never ever been a time in my life when I felt that I could not go out and do whatever it takes to support my family. I feel it now.

I have started three new jobs in under a year. As a relief secretary, I have faced the potential of 'every day being another first day' for the better part of the year. I am completely uncomfortable waking up to face yet another new day. Every day. It is wearing thin.

I don't know what the answer is.

I feel incapable of starting yet another new job. The very idea of selling myself and telling someone that I can learn anything would feel like a lie. I don't know if I can. I have never doubted myself or my abilities to this extent. I have learned ... that maybe I cannot learn. Not the way that I expect myself to.

I have never, ever not wanted to work before. I do now.

How do you think that would look on a resume? Nope. I don't think that the time is right to start yet another new job search. I think that I need to look within and find who I have evolved into first.