#panicking?

So.  You know.  This is going to be personal, so if you’re not into that, best to skip this one.

But I’m having some feelings, and I don’t know what to do with them.  And, I feel like this shouldn’t be bothering me as much as it is, but it’s REALLY bothering me.  On one hand, I feel like I’m over reacting, and on the other hand, I cannot make the muscles of my neck unclench and I can’t stop thinking about it.

I am the only woman where I work, and that isn’t really an issue.  I’m just saying that for perspective.  I’m not a shrinking violet, I’m not easily offended or upset, and I can bullshit and talk dirty trash with or better than the best of them. 

But, things there have been pretty tense lately.  Short-handed, everyone is stressed.  Some are handling it better than others.  But, there’s this one guy.  He’s a manager, 55, like 6′4, a huge ass monster of a man, right?  Okay.  So, I’ve worked with him for 8-9 years.  I like him, we’ve always gotten along, I’d go so far as to say we’re “work friends.”  I trust him.  He’s come and picked me up from the hospital before when I couldn’t drive.  So, it’s that sort of thing.

Well, he’s been having some anger issues lately.  And, other folks have mentioned having run-ins with him, which, to be honest, I sort of thought people might be little oversensitive about him.  Like I said, he’s a big guy, and he’s got a big voice to match.  On his best days, he has one of those voices that booms and echoes, and sometimes he can be a little hard, but he bumps you, you bump him, and things even out, you know?

Anyway.  Things got a little tense yesterday.  Several different problems came together all at once, and he got super pissed. 

This might be a good time to mention that my dad and I have a pretty shit history.  He’s bipolar and was untreated when I was a kid.  There was a lot of emotional and mental abuse that went on there.  And, he used to raaaaage so bad when he was on a high.  He would just scream at me, the kind of thing where you know you’re about to get hit.  He never did, but that’s just the sort of reaction it gives you.  So, using the word in a totally not ironic or sarcastic kind of way, people being really loud, yelling, really ugly tones of voice, they sort of trigger me.  I don’t think I’ve ever described the feeling as triggering before, but I guess that’s what it is.  It doesn’t have to be at me or near me, but just hearing people yelling or hollering in a nasty way just shoots straight through me in a cold wash of panic.  It makes me physically uncomfortable.  It’s a very visceral reaction.

So, yesterday, this guy, he gets really pissed.  A couple of the other guys at work are trying to calm him down.  It’s not really working.  He takes off out of the building.  Well, a few minutes later, there was an issue I needed to talk to him about.  So, I ring his cell.  When I finally get him on the phone and explain the issue, he just loses his fucking shit.  He started yelling at me in the nastiest tone of voice that I have heard in a reeeeeeally long time.  I mean, it was fuck this and fuck that and mother fucking people not doing their mother fucking jobs.  And, I don’t *think* he was complaining about me, but he was yelling at me.  I totally froze.  Normally when the guys at work talk shit to me, I talk shit back, and then we’re fine.  It’s not a big deal to me.  I don’t have a problem with cussing or people getting angry or even with them being a little loud.  But this thing wasn’t any of those things.  It wasn’t what he said, it was how he said it. 

And before I knew it, I was crying and I couldn’t stop crying.  A couple of the guys made me sit down because I’m bawling and still walking around trying to do shit I need to do.  And, it gets to the ugly crying stage, so then I have to go sit in the bathroom and just unload it.  Because I don’t cry.  I’m not a crier.  Maybe it was a combination of the fact that October was a hectic, stressful month for me in both of my jobs.  And, this just tipped me over the edge.  Or maybe it was that this was someone I trusted, and he just raged at me.  I mean, RAGED.  And, while I don’t ever think he’d actually do me physical harm, what happened yesterday absolutely scared the shit out of me.  Not really because of the actual situation, just the frame of mind the situation threw me into.  And now that I’m there, I can’t get out of it.

I can’t get the muscles in my shoulders and neck to stop clenching.  And my stomach keeps rolling over.  And I had to go in today and tell my boss, “Hey, look.  You know me.  You know I don’t have a lot of lines for people to cross.  It’s virtually impossible to offend me.  But this thing happened, and not only did it cross my line, it did the tango across my line, took a spin on the far side of it, then cha-cha’d its way off into the sunset.  This thing needs to never happen again.”  And, he was great about it.  My boss is like the big brother I never had.  So, I’m not worried that it’s not going to get taken care of.  That’s not it.

I just...I’m stuck, and I don’t know how to get unstuck.  Like, it just keeps turning over and over in my head, and my heart keeps beating too fast, and my stomach feels upside down.  And, I can’t figure out how to get it to stop.  I don’t know if I’ve ever had this particular problem before.  I’m not angry.  I wasn’t angry yesterday.  I’ve just got this constant, low-key feeling of panic right in the middle of me, and it hasn’t gone away since this shit happened yesterday, and boy.  I’m ready for it to go the fuck away.  It’s damaging the calm I never really had a firm grip on anyway.

Maybe getting it out will help.  We’ll see.  If you made it this far, thanks for reading and listening.  I’m going to go hide in bed with my cat now. 

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah that’s great! good luck with working on exchange fics too!

I wrote like 4500 words of it in a week, it was sooooo satisfying, lol, thank you!