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Journal, November 18, 2011

I had a terrible day yesterday. The previous day, while eating a salad, a piece of a filling fell out of my tooth. I called my dentist right away and they said they could fit me in the next day (yesterday) at 4pm. Now, I know everyone hates the dentist, but my hate for the dentist is fairly new. I went a lot when I was a kid (apparently the drugs they gave me when I was born 6 weeks premature screwed up my first set of teeth pretty badly), and I used to actually fall asleep in the chair. It was a relaxing experience for me.

Somehow in recent years, that all changed. In college, I didn’t take as good of care of my teeth as I should have, and while I have since learned my lesson, I had to pay for that neglect. I had an abscessed tooth which required a root canal, and just sitting in the chair getting x-rays taken gave me a panic attack. I had lots of work after that to fix the lack of care over the years, but I thought I was done for a while, until that filling fell out.

What I’m saying is, the day was already filled with dread and anxiety because I knew I was going to go under the drill once more. Then I got a discouraging letter in the mail. I’m collecting unemployment benefits at the moment, due to being laid off a few months ago. At the time I was dismissed, I was told it was due to lack of work, but according to their appeal, they either lied to me or changed their mind since that day.

Their appeal included a one page summary of their complaints about my job performance. It’s filled with little things like their accusation that I refused to fold a letter the correct way.

It’s so discouraging. I was shaking in anger after seeing the letter, and that was BEFORE I had to go to the dentist (where they started drilling, then had to stop because it hurt and gave me more novocaine shots). I’m surprised I could sleep last night. I still can’t believe how vindictive they are being, how deceitful. It makes it hard for me to focus on looking for a new job when I now have this fear that a future employer will treat me like this.

And this isn’t the first time this has happened. Two other jobs involved the employer suddenly revealing that I wasn’t up to par the entire time I worked for them, prompting me to leave the job. A rational person might want to draw a conclusion from this. If three separate employers all came to the conclusion that I wasn’t working up to a reasonable performance, might it be true? Should I start doubting myself and my work ability?

The thing is, at those other jobs, I saw the employers do the same exact thing to my coworkers, workers that I knew to work their hardest. I knew these people to do a damn good job, and then during their evaluation, they would be told they did a bad job (in most cases so they wouldn’t get a yearly raise). So I believe it’s not me. I know myself. I don’t approach anything in my life with less than 100 percent. It’s in my all-or-nothing nature to put everything I have into everything I do.

When I have a job, I’m grateful to have that job, and I do my best to keep that job. For someone to try to say that I didn’t do my best is just very hurtful to me. It’s something I have a difficult time getting over, but I have to get over it. I have to keep moving and pushing on. I have to find a part time job so I can support myself while I take under-graduate classes so that I can get into a graduate program. Then I can get a decent job and show up my former bosses. I’ll continue working my hardest to prove them wrong.