Today started out with hate, anger, and helpless tears. Yesterday a wonderful thing happened, where a contact at a client company felt like the team was asking a lot of me, and sent me a Starbucks gift card for $10. I felt like I’d won the lottery. My quarterly bonus doesn’t give me a dopamine rush, but an act of simple and genuine kindness and appreciation from someone felt like the best thing ever.
The feeling wore off by this morning, and I started to feel trapped in my life again. I wish I could feel hope. I made a lot of progress today, but nothing. I know I provide a lot of value to the folks I work with and I’ve got numbers and dollar amounts to back up how much work I’ve done for the company. Nothing. For all the work I’ve done, the company gave me an increase in my company stock option amount, and reading the paperwork made me tear up and get angry all over again. The language and the terms feel a slap in the face. It’s so weird when people give you things that you’re not entitled to (I know I’m not entitled to anything in this world), and you still feel like you lost. Where’s the disconnect? We get shopping benefits, and I’ve been giving everything away, hundreds of dollars worth of stuff to friends, because I don’t care. I feel nothing.
I’m hoarding the Starbucks gift card, though, like it’s a treasure. I’ve been going through the menu for the past couple of days trying to figure out what I’m going to get. I haven’t been to a Starbucks in months, and I’m not even sure there are any that are open in my neighborhood during the shutdown.
One ray of light in an increasingly dark mind. I am starting to get to the point where I can only remember how I’ve been hurt by people, and am starting to cut people out one by one. But I got a call from my cousin today, letting me know that my 92 year old grandmother is in a sleep state, and in really bad shape. She’s not in pain, but she’s not going to be around for much longer if her health continues to deteriorate. I’d planned to visit her in May before the quarantine started, but the pandemic ended that plan. The news of her health brought home the fact that time is really short. Cutting people you love out because your mind is becoming increasingly more vulnerable to darkness is costly, and there’s no time for that.
Trying to decide if the “life is too short” lens applies to quitting my job. Is it time to just throw everything out the window and just fly out to freedom? Life is too short to be so miserable. But what is my backup plan going to be? My body is starting to run out of the capacity to house so much hate, anger, and misery. I’m becoming increasingly more numb. Don’t know how to fix it, and I’m throwing everything I can at it.