It can be a strange game, life. Sometimes things go your way, sometimes they don't. Some days you're right on your game, other times you can be just left floundering in the wind, not matter how hard you try. You can be brilliant in moments unheard or seen by others, or woefully poor or plain stupid in the presence of an onlooking crowd. These are the ups and downs, the stage we live our life on. It gives us moments of joy and riches of embarrassment, but it does give.
There is nothing so difficult for a human being to endure though, no feeling as debilitating to a psyche, to twist and tear the will of an individual and wreck lifes natural equilibrium, than internal bitterness of the mind.
There is often a root cause of these feelings, and a stage of development and maturing that comes from reflection. Mine came over a period of months, linked to service reviews ongoing in the organisation I work in. Where there are too many people and not enough jobs, there are always going to be casualties. I was one of them. That's hard enough, and yes, I looked around at those successful in maintaining their employment and thought I was better than most.
However, aside from the disappointment and the fact I was good at my job and had passion and ability to deliver, the bitterness was about how I was treated afterwards (apart from one or two colleagues). It was like I didn't exists, I was a thorn, a problem that the organisation wanted to get rid of. Add in a manager who showed little will to get me through the next bit of the process and you start to wonder what you had done wrong, other than give your all and fall at the final hurdle. It waslike everything had closed ranks around me.
It was a torrid time, and there was much water that passed under the bridge. I was swept away by someof the currents and felt smashed against trees and stones, dragged under to the point where I felt like was being drowned...being willed to drown.
All the time, I was reflecting, thinking, analysing. All the time, I was trying to work out why I deserved to be treated like I was. For the first time I felt like a number. Over the months that followed I felt like my dignity had been slowly stripped away. In local government the process can be long. I hung in. I told myself it wasn't any one individual, or group; rather it was just a sign of the times.
But it gets you, that reflection, when you live and question dawning everyday. When any certainty you once had about what was coming that day, waslost to you, and no plans could be made. When you robotically turn in at the office and try be you, when you no longer know who you are, give all that you can and it actually adds up to nought, because you're lost and drifting. That's the bitterness taking hold. It suffucates you, slowly squeezing the life out of who you were, until you don't know who that person is anymore.
It all sounds very dramatic, doesn't it? And I guess on reflection it is. But there is light. For anybody going through something similar, whether work or life in general (and I've had scrapes there too), leave the bitterness behind.
It's easy said here, it's harder to do in real life. But you've got to do it, otherwise it will destroy - it has that power! What I can say is that, I'm winning. I'm taking all that angst, fury and negativity and seeing a new me. I'm off my backside, going to the gym, writing, playing with the kids, enjoing my time spent with the wife. For every positive emotion I generate through this, and I started with very little, I push a little more bitterness out. One. Small. Piece. At. A. Time. For every step on the treadmill, every weight I lift, the exchange rate is quickened - positive in, negative out. My mental state is changing, my creativity is coming back, my will developing, my staminer for the fight building.
Do I still feel bitter? Of course I bloody do. I think there will always be some bitterness there. It's how we use it that counts, how we recognise that this can't go on for ever and something must be done to change our world.
Read what I've started to do, by looking at some of my earlier blog posts, or My Health Chart. Take what you've read here, and use it as context for what I've started to do. Follow my path, or your own, but don't follow the path of bitterness, or the black dog might savage you.
I'm going to post more on how I internalise things, and how I am starting to release myself from them, and other feelings detrimental to my health and wellbeing.
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