I have a meeting with my supervisor tomorrow. When I emailed her my resignation last week, she replied with "(blah blah blah)...passion...(blah blah blah)...dedication." I've told her before that I don't like using the word passion in connection with my work. Right now, in the midst of quitting my job due to burnout, its use feels especially cruel. More on passion in the future, perhaps, when I've regained some spark.
I wonder what my mom would say. Probably something kind and thoughtful. My dad would be cheerleading. I don't want to be here doing this anyway so maybe that's why I'm not more sad. This is one of those times where it only happened because they're gone so which is worse? And, is this what I had in mind when I named this blog - back when I thought I would process my grief nice and neatly in writing and definitely not in questionable life choices and bitterness - that for ever after, flight might be hard to distinguish from falling? (From the inside as well as outside).
I beat myself up quite a bit on the descent into burnout. Then I beat myself up for beating myself up because, I know better. I do not believe in taking responsibility for problems that were created above me, but in doing what I can on the days I can with whom I can and where and when I can (terrible John Wesley paraphrase). So the guilt is more about...if I was better I wouldn't be burnt out. I could/should have advocated better for myself and my coworkers and clients, if I had used the right tone and the right word things could have been fixed, I would have more credibility, etc.
(It's not really a problem of credibility, I don't think, really, but I no longer have the luxury of trying to figure it out and hope I can think of a solution. It's done and I'm walking away and I have to be okay with that).
Someday I'm going to write neatly about my last few jobs and leaving and endings because they've all been terrible, but I'm not ready yet. Literally the only thing I can count on in my job right now is that I can act with integrity so if that goes out the window it will be total chaos. Like, I'm definitely not going to start screaming about how awful it is to have a coworker accost me, harass me, write a manifesto about me and my other coworker to our supervisor and HR about how we let clients die, and then hear that he punched a fridge in the day center, and has keys to my building and office and comes over anytime he wants something...definitely not going to scream, but I'm not sure how gracefully I can let that shit go.
It helps to have something to look forward to...a summer with my kids, a potential part-time/on-call crisis counselor job, regaining some hit points and sanity, actually having fucks to give about things that used to feel important. Especially resting up before the big anniversary. Five years. The time, looking back, when I thought I'd be "through" all this and yet have fallen pretty firmly back in the thick of it.
