My Mind Not Made Up: Quitting and The Power of a Good Run ...

It has been an eventful three weeks ... Pretty soon after I wrote my previous post, things at work started to take a turn for the worse ... Again, it isn't the workload ... I really just don't feel it necessary to clog up blog space ranting about someone who clearly doesn't deserve the space they have been given ... But, if I don't, then what is this blog for? ... But rather than just badmouthing about this persona non grata, I'd rather just post the two posts I had written within the last two weeks ...

Posted 15 Oct 2019

Here's the thing ... I'm only human, and though I try my best not to take my frustration and anger out on others, I have done this very repugnant, repulsive, offensive, disgusting, loathsome, revolting, obnoxious, foul, abominable, foul act more than I can remember, and so, despite the fact that I have tried my very best to contain it, I will rant out about the Devil's Spawn here in this sordid blog ... Better this blog than me venting it out against people who have no idea what is going on in my life, much less care about it ...

Today (yesterday depending on when this post is published), the Devil Spawn called me dumb ... You may not think that is worth all the trouble of me complaining about it, but, let's just try to put yourself in my shoes ... Imagine being called all sorts of things, not every day, not every two days, but every week of nearly every month for the four months that I have been at that miserable place ... Sure, for the first month or so, I was spared of being called everything short of idiot, but the Devil's Spawn sure ripped out her vile best when she did ... And if me listing out all the synonyms of words in this post isn't enough, the fifth word to mean dumb on powerthesaurus.org is idiot ...

There is only so much I can take, and today/yesterday was the last straw ... I ranted about it to my co-worker via WhatsApp, and he only told me to put my trust in Allah and remain silent for that is whatever blah blah blah ... I went home and mention it to my mother, and what a surprise, all she could say is that I should be patient and blah blah blah ... So, I let it out ... I cried in the bathroom ... If memory serves me correctly, I haven't had that kind of hard and wallowing cry since ... No, I can't even remember the last time I cried as hard and loud as I did last night ...

I cried so much and cried to God, "After what You've put me through, you just want to put through some more shit? I had THREE psychotic episodes ... That isn't enough for You? If I am to be alone in this world, at least have the sense to make it at least bearable to live this life that You put me in ... No, that isn't enough ... You think I can take this amount of suffering and pain because I'm made for it? What have You mentioned in the Holy Book,

Allah does not charge a soul except [with that within] its capacity. It will have [the consequence of] what [good] it has gained, and it will bear [the consequence of] what [evil] it has earned. "Our Lord, do not impose blame upon us if we have forgotten or erred. Our Lord, and lay not upon us a burden like that which You laid upon those before us. Our Lord, and burden us not with that which we have no ability to bear. And pardon us; and forgive us; and have mercy upon us. You are our protector, so give us victory over the disbelieving people." - Al Baqarah, 286

So, because You say so, I am to be imposed with test after test, pain after pain, because I have the ability to bear with it? ... Reciting this verse makes me cry even more ... Why? My brain's just too tired to think why ...

So, I opened my laptop, thinking I'm just gonna let it out on my blog ... And while doing so, I logged on to social media ... And the first article I come across is this one on Psychology Today ... How apropos - Why Saying Just One Word Can Calm Runaway Emotions ... Hence, the title of this post ... Not one word, but three ... Mad because I can't defend myself, Sad because I don't know how to defend myself, and Scared because I'm not sure I can defend myself the next time the Devil's Spawn rips it out against me ...

And then she called me stupid ...

Posted 21 Oct 2019

I left the place without so much as a notice, in the middle of the f**king month ...

I said I wasn't gonna quit, and I truly didn't want to ... I was only thinking of the debt situation I am in ... If it wasn't because of the stupid debt, I would have left a long time ago ... So, what happened, huh? ...

Well, in order to really understand what I went through at that hellhole, one also has to be working at that place ... Only my co-workers understand what I had gone through, and only they saw it fit to say that maybe that was not my place to work ... The day after I left, I asked one of them to collect some of the stuff I left and pass it to me after work ... On that day, I met up with C, mainly to pass him my novel, but also because I had reapplied to work at the news business monitoring agency (where C works as well) ... C, of course, could not understand why I had quit ... He simply said that all I had to do was just continue working and leave once I found a new job ... I don't know how to explain it to him that I only got this stupid job after more than one and a half years of finding one - meaning I don't think I couldn't find another job ... C of course could not see what kind of a non-human boss I had ... He couldn't see the kind of abuse I had to deal with ... He also explained to me that it is impossible that the agency would rehire me because I was supposed to return after I had resigned the last time ... He added that even though the employers may empathise with why I was a no-show (it was because I was in the hospital when in fact I had the the second relapse and ended up in the psych ward), they will still not give back my old job simply because I had quit before and I didn't turn up when I was supposed to ... It is a business decision ... Nothing personal ... I sighed and tried to accept it for what it is ...

After my meeting with C, I hung out at IKEA, simply to pass the time while waiting for my former co-worker to pass me my stuff ... While I was there, I started to listen to funk on Spotify, and for a while, I was transported to a place where there is no stupid debt, no nothing to worry about ... I thought I was gonna lose it when I started to move to the music in the middle of the IKEA displays, lying in beds, playing around with the kitchen taps ... Really, I thought I was gonna have another psychotic episode ... I was elated and dejected at the same time ... That is classic mood disorder and I didn't want it to happen ... But I think risperidone helped because I have been on it religiously ever since the last episode more than five years ago, so I think I managed to pull myself through ...

So, I waited for my former co-worker, and knowing what time they normally finish (since I used to be one of them) it was well after dark when we finally met ... Bless him ... This guy is one of the sweetest, kindest men I have ever had the pleasure of knowing ... He's the one who always tells me to say a prayer every time the Devil's Spawn has her ass lit and comes after me ... The only reason I haven't jumped on him is because he's married ... Lucky her ... Anyways, I told him what C said and my kind and sweet former co-worker said the one thing I wanted to hear at the time ... "Only people at XXX would know what it is like to work there, and maybe you're just not meant to work here" ... Then I told him that perhaps the reason why I came to work there in the first place was to meet him, though I wonder why ... After all, the guy is married ... But, he is a Muslim, so he can take on a second wife ... This isn't helping, so let's move on ...

Over the weekend, I just slept and slept ... I couldn't care less, I just slept on ... On Sunday morning, another former co-worker texted me ... I was of course lost in La La Land, so I only checked my messages, if any, later in the day ... This is what he said, "... I know you won't be coming back to XXX but I think it's for the best. You're a good worker but XXX wasn't a suitable environment for you, and you should be allowed to work in a place that's best for yourself" ... I wouldn't know what to say to that, so I said thanks ...

To be fair to myself, I think I could have thrived in that so-called toxic environment if the boss wasn't such a ... well, I want to say bitch but it wouldn't be fair to all female bosses, would it? ... I've had assholey bosses before, but none as ... I can't even find the words for this woman ... Like I've said, there is no point describing the ways in which she abuses a person ... Not worth the blog space ...
So, now I'm just trying to find a way to meet my monthly debt payments ... But, I think I'll just mope around the house in the next few days ... It's either that, or when my mother starts shouting at me to get work ...

Update

Okay, you may think I over-reacted by quitting in the middle of the month, or by quitting at all ... However, this isn't the first time I quit from that Godforsaken place ... Nevertheless, the first time I did it proper ... I handed my one-month's notice and only after a week I retracted it ... Why did I leave this time in such a manner? ... Well, it isn't just because she called me stupid ...

That fateful Thursday afternoon, she called me in with my immediate supervisor and the co-worker who texted me ... Then she just ... I don't know how to describe the temper, but it would fit rightly with the expression "veins bulging on the sides of the temple" ... But, it was more than the shouting and the utter nuclear explosion that I witnessed ... It was the fact that I was going to get this kind of scolding time and again in the pretty bleak future ... I was just unable to give what she wanted, which is some sort of perfect delivery of whatever perfect system she has created ... She wanted perfection, or rather she wanted to be things exactly her way, and I'm just not that ... I'll admit I do have a kind of a rebellious streak and I'd rather go against the system, if it was too proper in my opinion ...

Why did she get so bloody angry this time? It was because I didn't reply to one of her clients with an email response acknowledging that they had emailed their response ... Yeah, a nuclear explosion happened because I didn't send an email acknowledging that they had emailed ... A simple email that would say, "Thanks for that. We got it and will work on it." ...

I didn't get any sort of training at this place ... Everything that I did, the process that I followed, I did it and followed through because I got scolded ... Got scolded in front of other people, over and over ... So I replied to the email and she called me in again, and it was then that I realized that I was not going to just take this lying down ...

I really did not want to quit, having been through nearly two years of frustrating odd-jobs and endless job searching and desperation and whatnot ... But it felt as if I didn't have a choice but to quit ...

So, in the week that ensued, I fell into a kind of depression ... I just lay in bed and tried to sleep ... It's either that or doing Buzzfeed quizzes online ... Even TV wasn't interesting ... I purposely did not shower ... Maybe a shower every two days ... I didn't want to go out because I knew I was going to spend and I didn't want to do that ... Then I got an email reminding me to pick up my race pack for Yolorun KL 2019 ... A long time ago, it seems, I registered to participate in the 5km course ... I thought it might be fun to join a fun run ... Well, that was a long time ago ... When I got the email, I just shrugged and thought I might pick up the race pack but don't turn up on the day ...

Then my nephew turned up, bought me groceries and on top of that, gave me money ... I just got angry ... Not at him of course but at myself ... For a short while, I went through this self-loathing of the cliched kind ... But really it was just self-pity disguised as self-righteousness ... Then, sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning, it hit me ... "Wait, I'm supposed to pick up the race pack" ...

At the state I was in, I was very reluctant of course ... But I did pay for it and it would seem a waste if I didn't ... So I went on Saturday morning ... Firstly, I got the wrong size t-shirt ... I did not know what I was thinking when I clicked XL ... (So that t-shirt, nice-looking that it may be, is just gonna be stuck in my closet because I look awful when I wear it) ... When I picked up the race pack, it just occurred to me that perhaps I should just join the run ... In other words, I changed my mind ... What do you expect from a blogger who calls her blog My Mind Not Made Up (though to be fair, it has another layer of meaning, if you can get it) ...

On the train towards home, I figured I would just take the train really early in the morning and then walk all the way to the race venue ... After all, it was just next to my primary school, so I knew just how to get there ... Then I asked the person at the counter what is the time when the station opens ... 6.00am ... Shit, I'd be late if I took the train ... So, then came all the hand-wringing, thinking of a way to get to the race venue ... In the end, I took my mother's car and drove all the way to KL just to get an idea of how to get to that place ... But, where the hell should I park? ... Though I knew where the race venue was, I didn't have any idea how to get to the parking spot near the place ... I went home, thinking that the only was I was going to get there was to go on my scooter ...

After I got back from KL, I thought I should get in some workout by doing a slow jog very near my place ... It was raining ... After a round of slow jog, with the soft rain falling on my face, I decided, "Screw this. It's dark and I'm cold." ... Then I went to the hypermarket 'coz my supply of bananas had run out ... At least if I had bananas in the morning, I'd have some energy for the run ... The hypermarket ran out of bananas, or at least the kind I like ... In the end, I bought a carton of milk for my morning tea and a burger ... I figured I was going to eat the burger before I left in the morning ...

After a week of nearly no showers, I showered for the second time that Saturday ... Well, I had a short jog and my body sweated and I felt sticky ... Went to bed just before ten, but just couldn't a wink of sleep ... For some reason, the shower energised me ... So I stayed up and watched the first episode of Watchmen (very interesting ... missed the first few minutes though 'coz my mother wanted to watch her Hawaii Five-0) ... I think I fell asleep after 12am but I set the alarm at 3.45am ... When I got up, I thought I was going to feel tired, but for some reason, I didn't feel sleepy ... It felt like getting up for a Ramadan fast, and even more so because I had that burger at four in the morning ... Normally I don't have much appetite this early in the morning, but because of years of training my body to wake up early and eat before Fajr for Ramadan, it didn't feel that weird ... I plowed through that burger even though I didn't think I could finish it ... And for the third time in as many as 24 hours, I had my third shower ... By five I was out of the house ... The reason I started out so early was because I thought I was going to take a while to reach the race venue on my scooter ... Here is where it gets really interesting ...

Obviously, there was hardly any vehicle out at the hour I was out ... I ran through a few red lights ... Went through this really long stretch of near darkness and hit a pothole (Why the f**k haven't they fixed the street lights there?) and from there onwards, I worried about my scooter ... Rode about 40kph because I wanted to be safe rather than sorry, but then there was this stupid truck that followed me very closely and flashed its lights and nearly ran me over when it overtook me ... The jerk who stuck out his stupid head out of the truck from the passenger side just smiled this stupid grin at me when the truck was ahead of me ... I would feel justified firing a rocket launcher at these sort of stupid drivers ... But now you see why I was riding my scooter at a rather low speed ...

When I reached the general area of the race venue, I went around a bit because I didn't know where to park ... In the end, I went to my primary school and asked the night guard there of a place where I could park ... I don't know why, but the guard let me park alongside other vehicles in the very small parking space ... Then I checked the time and later realized that I was actually an hour too early for the race ...

I didn't really feel excited, but for some reason, in the process of getting ready for the race, which was pathetic since I didn't go for a jog at all the week after I quit my job, I felt ... Well, if I was so depressed, then why was I doing all these things for? ... I don't think I was depressed ... I was just angry and frustrated, more at her than anything else ... In the end, it wasn't so much that she scolded me, it was because she did it in front of other people, every single time ... I don't understand the logic of it and I guess that is why I feel I should just leave the place ... And when I ran, I kept saying to myself, "The goal is not to win, the goal is to finish." ... I think I finished pretty well ...