Don’t be upset

People do not like when I tell the truth. I’m usually a passive aggressive yes person. Yeah. okay. Sure. Let’s plan that. I walk away from emails as a passive aggressive that’s how we communicate. I am almost 53 years old and I started telling people how I feel in the last 6 months

“I feel like your perception is different than mine,” I tell my boss.

My boss quickly telling me in a teams meeting “that’s not what happened!! This is what you said!!”

I don’t really know what gaslighting is exactly.

Doesn’t it mean when you share your feelings and someone tells you no that’s not how you feel?

After 20 years at my job, it seems like my boss is angrier than I am about still being there. I. wasn’t as angry until she started being angry at me. It doesn’t make sense right? I want to leave but am making the best of it. I love my team. The work is never boring. You know the saying “when you suffer, we all suffer?” Well I am suffering for sure.

It’s one thing for her to be cranky that’s she still there. It’s another to act bitter. I take responsibility for staying for the last 20 years at a pretty awful workplace environment. Totally on me. However, I do not take responsibility for creating it.

I called my 85 year old dad who survived Mussolini’s dictatorship to tell him I was upset. I have done that maybe a handful of times. By handful I mean fingers on one had, times. I can never tell him how I feel because he doesn’t have any feelings that he has ever shared with me. Ever. We support each other through navigating a world without my mother. I had no one else to tell so I started sharing about how unhappy I am with my boss and her boss. He told me not to be upset. I think he said it a dozen times.

“Don’t be upset” “Don’t be upset” No one has put my father in the. position of consoler.

“I am upset dad. My boss and her boss are mean. And disrespectful. Sometimes I even cry.”

“You are going to make yourself sick. Do not cry. Who cares about them. Who cares what they say. You get paid good now, right?”

“Now I do yes.”

“So you save your money and retire in 10

Years. Then no one can say shit to you”

“Dad I cannot last there even 1 more year.”

“ I worked 29 years at that horrible auto plant. I cried every morning. I just did it. If you cannot find another job then you stay there until you do. Alright”

“You are right dad.”

I called him later than I thought and I could tell he was exhausted.

“Okay. Remember what I said. No being upset.”

“Yup. Got it.”

I am not sure I felt better. What I did feel was a weird feeling of I just didn’t give a fuck anymore about what happens with my job acknowledging that I had no luck finding a new one. I am committed to staying on this truth journey at work. My boss and her boss too will never ever feel like they can gaslight me again. And that is the truth.