Stress and my Inability to Let go

original date:  Feb 2011.  I found this "draft" and decided I'd do an update and publish.

The last couple of weeks have been full of great stress for me. It all culminated on Friday with an announcement that a trainee at work I have worked with for eight weeks would be moved to train with my least qualified dispatcher. The reason is because the trainee says she cannot learn from me.

Maybe it is my wounded pride or just my own exhaustion from consistent training for the last six months. I have not had barely a handful of days in the six months that I was not working dispatch while also training and handling my own administrative assigned duties.

I am very curious how most people handle stress.

I have actually spent too much time sleeping and doubting every ability I have. I internalize too much.

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August 2012, 18 months later:

During the time of the beginning of this post on stress and not letting go, I was beginning the bulk of my graduate studies, dealing with my most recent "relationship" ending after 4 months, stressing over work, had my brother sleeping on my couch, dealing with the emotions of my oldest child graduating from high school and struggling to hold it all together.  As I look back now, I am truly amazed that I actually survived it all.  In reality, I barely did.  In May of 2011, I developed an upper respiratory infection that would linger until November and turn into pneumonia.  Most of my work responsibilities ended, and I struggled between relief,   concern and rejection, not knowing what was happening at work. I also fought very hard not to let go of the "prestige" of those additional responsibilities and my own sense of what I thought my work ethic was.

In June 2011, I had to drop a class because I was too ill to keep up with the demands which threw me off track of my projected graduation date of December, and the ensuing confrontation with the professor (director of my thesis program) caused me to truly doubt my abilities to complete the program.  In the Fall semester, I earned my only B in my graduate program, and again, I doubted my abilities.  Following this disappointment in the Fall, my brother who had been staying with me for almost a year developed an issue with a comment made by one of my children and a family disagreement would shadow our holidays.  Add to this family disagreement the stroke my stepdad had the day before Thanksgiving which put our whole family in an ICU waiting room for several days over the holiday weekend.  My boss ordered me back to work that Friday because my stepdad did not qualify as immediate family to justify me using sick leave to be away from my post, and I was also informed that a stepparent did not qualify for bereavement leave if a death occurred.  I was ordered back to work and told that if I needed to return to Brownwood to be with my family, I would need to submit the proper leave request 2 weeks in advance.  As I left my family's side, my stepdad was still considered brain dead without the possibility of improvement.  Thankfully, he recovered and is doing much better, but it was not an easy few months for any of us.  Sadly, the family disagreement lingered well into April and threatened to cloud the joy of my graduation in May 2012.  The clouds did clear, and our whole immediate family was together for my May 12, 2012 graduation from SEU.  As a sidenote, I was denied a leave request to attend my graduation.  Until the day before, I was being told I could not take off to go to graduation.

As I sit here enjoying my second cup of coffee and some Alicia Keys, I want to laugh at the absurdity of it all.  Perspective is everything, and in all the chaos that was 2011, I continued to believe in God's plans for me, even if many times I endured repeated disappointments.  It truly became comical to me, and I would begin 2012 with the attitude that I just had to let go of everything and just be.  This is very hard for me............to just be.  To just be still, to just be quiet, to just be there......................at this point, I cannot say if I have learned anything from "just being", but I am healthy and contented.  I found a job doing what I truly love doing and I have a sense of optimism about my own future.

I will turn 45 in a couple of months, and I am determined to move forward in my life with renewed determination.  I have things I want to learn still, things I want to do.  Nothing good comes easy..........each thing we treasure we must work for or otherwise, that thing has no value.