I’m beginning at the end here, or at least at the start of something different. Fingers crossed that my piece of good news is sound.
Only 5 months ago I was a complete wreck.
‘Take it easy Sandy. Just relax and drink this tea. Want a biscuit with it?’
I can remember Mona’s voice; caring, coaxing, bossy. It was swirling benevolent background noise. She helped me to get strong again with a million cups of tea and two million hours of patience.
There were dull, hopeless, helpless days when I could hardly talk. The GP said I was physically fine but seemed to be exhausted and rather anxious. Did I want to talk to a counsellor? No, not now.
Dream-walking days, with people dropping in or phoning kept me afloat until I could swim on my own again -but not yet in the shark infested pool that had been my workplace. Meg and Bob from work visited:
‘We could see you were struggling. What tipped you over? Should we ask Occupational Health to be in touch?’
‘Yes’ to all this, but I needed to explain myself. So I tried Mona one evening in our little flat:
‘ You know that party dance, the limbo, where people have to dance or jump backwards under a bar? The bar gets lowered until it’s almost impossible to get underneath. It’s like the opposite of the high jump. Anyway, I was OK at work. Pretty competent, got on with the others. A new chap was promoted to lead our team and he seemed to dislike me. Nothing obvious but he seemed to want to belittle me with snide remarks. He gave me far too much work to do and when I complained he suggested I wasn’t up to the job… . I thought of just leaving but by then I wasn’t feeling very confident…’
‘Hang on, you felt you were being forced to jump backwards under a low bar and then got blamed for not being up to it? So you were breaking your back but still not achieving enough? How long did you put up with this jerk? Why didn’t you tell anyone?’ Mona was angry.
Nothing like a bit of righteous anger to unblock the drain. Mona phoned the work mates she knew and I spoke to our Occupational Health people who were sympathetic. An OT nurse visited:
‘I know your head of section quite well. She’s a reasonable person and I think she’ll be concerned by what you’ve told me. I’ll have a chat and see what she says.
You might think about getting back to work on a staggered return basis. Relax for now and we’ll talk again.’
It fell into place – I’d go back half time, Meg would meet me in a cafe so I didn’t go in alone. Meg had some news on my first morning:
‘Guess what? He’s gone. Suspended last week for bullying in his last office. Lots of complaints apparently. People on sick leave or leaving…’.
