a new chapter: the world is upside down

It’s been 8 months since I’ve written here.  Partly because life got more complicated.  Well.  Mostly because life got more complicated.

Back in September I mentioned a bit about the changes at my job.  Even before that, I’d mentioned my boss.  Looking back on it now, it’s very clear that she was abusing me – verbally/emotionally.  Not just me, but me more than other people.  When I first started there, I thought that she was great.  Then I found that she was sometime-y, alternating sweet and mean.  But it seemed to be with everyone.  Time went by, and it seemed like I was getting a lot of hits, but I figured that I just wasn’t seeing other people get the short end of the stick.  It wasn’t until my work-buddy said something to me because he noticed that I was particularly getting picked on that I realized how bad it had gotten.  As I am wont to do, I internalized quite a bit, multiplying my white hair, contemplating quitting and complaining to my family on the worst of days.  When my work-buddy left, greatly influenced by her general suckiness, I became focused on finishing a particular project and getting out of dodge.

A few months later, things started moving quickly, we were interviewing candidates to take over for my work-buddy and settled on one.  The day she started, my boss tendered her resignation.  I was shocked – blindsided, really – and a little sad…weird, I know.  The woman my boss had been grooming had always said that she’d leave if the boss left, but I wasn’t sure if she really would or not.  And in the interim, she took over.  A week after my boss’s last day, the new girl and another coworker quit.  They were gone the following week.  But a week later, the guy wanted to come back.    My company balked at that, and it wasn’t clear if they would let him return.  I took on quite a bit of additional responsibility as the more senior woman and I handled the work previously handled by ourselves + 3 other people.  It was a difficult time, but when things are that dire, you just do what you can do.  No one is really expecting you to be able to do 3-4 people’s jobs.  At least not at my job.  Two weeks later, my last compatriot gave her two weeks notice.  That’s when I thought I would become a babbling idiot.  I took a short vaca to get away from it all (because I actually had to use the time) and came back to a pure unknown.