Insecure Interregnum

In saying what I am about to, people will probably disagree. They may say things like ‘I don’t think you’re stupid’ or ‘it was them with the problem, not you’, but I just don’t know. Without glorifying the truth, I haven’t had a real lot of insecurities since I finished high school. Without a doubt, my high school years have been my healthiest thus far. It marked the very period of my life where I grand-theft-auto’d the vehicles needed to overcome the fears and insecurities I enrolled with. Nowadays, I do my best at maintaining that with a head-up-high outlook when caught in the teeth of confrontation and reminding myself that words spoken by idiots don’t necessarily need to have anything to do with me, and thusly, will not have anything to do with me. It upsets me to admit, however, that no matter how much I have tried to act like it has, that same mentality has never truly extended into the workplace. My self-esteem has never been a great match against the scrutinising eyes that rest inside the faces of my employers, even the ones that have liked me. My previous boss happened to fall into the category of bosses that want me dead, so I resigned. Now I find myself in this familiar financial interregnum, terrified of what’s ahead and trying to pinpoint on the workplace calendar where it all went wrong, ultimately asking myself the question: was it them with the problem, or was it me?

In short, my recent boss thought that I was a moron. She didn't need to say it straight out, I just knew from reading between every smartarse remark, every comment delivered with a tone and every question which was never quite rhetorical but not exactly answerable either. I know what was being said behind her eyes when I would walk in and behind my back when I’d walk out; she thought that I was stupid. I could have simply chocked it down to an isolated incident with a person that didn’t know how to be a manager, because let’s be blunt, she didn’t - she was a non-communicative woman who blatantly bitched about employees to other employees, who never properly trained anybody and who was too afraid to fire people – but it was hardly isolated, as I had similar issues with the managers at my position before that, however, the same can be said about them as well. They were two brothers who were fresh out of hating their lives and new to running a business, who failed to properly schedule a staff-wide training day which meant that I simply missed out; to my misfortune, this was never something that was considered whenever I was having my first go at anything and that’s why, among other things, I was the least favoured. After I left, one of them were quoted saying that I was ‘the shittest worker’, however, they then followed that statement by impugning trivial things like my taste in music and such, which says a lot about how much their opinion was worth. The bottom line of it is that these people are children, plain and simple.

When I was younger, my father would always say that no matter where I go, there will always be a dickhead, and at these last two jobs at any job I have had, that has rung true. In my previous two, it just so happened that those dickheads had been made or had made themselves managers without having any managerial training to go on, and I don’t take that personally; from that perspective, it was them, not me. Up until here, my nights generally go unscathed, but then I consider the employees who didn’t run into the problems I did, the people I observed as being better trained than I am, who got along with the managers, who got tasks done quicker and better on their first try than I could on my first. Initially, I was asking myself why they picked up things when I couldn’t, wondering what the fundamentals are that I seem to be without, but then I realised that I care less about that sort of comparison when it’s only being made in the privacy of my own mind and care more about my employer making that same comparison in their mind. For some bizarre reason, my brain has simply cut a rope and let my superiors transcend like a helium balloon above all of my peers and all of the teachers that are paid to assess me …and the fact that I have made their opinion matter so much is stealing precious shut-eye from me at night. Like I said - I can’t shake it, and the thought of it is just killing me.

It’s not an easy task admitting a substandard self-worth, that’s why getting this particular subject off my chest has been like pulling teeth. These last few months have just been a persistent battle with an unusual stint of low-esteem, a nasty demon who incessantly asks me how this has happened twice now; who inquires as to how I could leave two jobs and three bosses in my dust without any references to show for it; who, more importantly, wants to know if some sort of tally will soon be necessary. Last night I was writing a cover letter for a job application and every time I had to retype it, I came ever closer to the realisation that I am just terrified, terrified of another workplace and another dickhead who will label themself my boss and me an idiot. That has been my defining thought this year, my future employers, because as the ratio between the jobs I have had to the amount of employers who I can reference on my CV gets more and more unbalanced, I can feel the ice start to thin from beneath me, and I just can’t seem to get off the fucking lake.