I\u2019m beginning at the end here, or at least at the start of something different. Fingers crossed that my piece of good news is sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Only 5 months ago I was a complete wreck. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Take it easy Sandy. Just relax and drink this tea. Want a biscuit with it?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
I can remember Mona\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018We could see you were struggling. What tipped you over? Should we ask Occupational Health to be in touch?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Yes\u2019 to all this, but I needed to explain myself. So I tried Mona one evening in our little flat:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018 You know that party dance, the limbo, where people have to dance or jump backwards under a bar? The bar gets lowered until it\u2019s almost impossible to get underneath. It\u2019s 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\u2019t up to the job\u2026 . I thought of just leaving but by then I wasn\u2019t feeling very confident\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Hang 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\u2019t you tell anyone?\u2019 Mona was angry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018I know your head of section quite well. She\u2019s a reasonable person and I think she\u2019ll be concerned by what you\u2019ve told me. I\u2019ll have a chat and see what she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You might think about getting back to work on a staggered return basis. Relax for now and we\u2019ll talk again.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It fell into place \u2013 I\u2019d go back half time, Meg would meet me in a cafe so I didn\u2019t go in alone. Meg had some news on my first morning:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Guess what? He\u2019s gone. Suspended last week for bullying in his last office. Lots of complaints apparently. People on sick leave or leaving\u2026\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m 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. \u2018Take it easy Sandy. Just relax and drink this tea. Want a biscuit with it?\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10158782359051062_103813597863211":"","twitter_1225722811282530305_1225722811282530305":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1129,1358],"tags":[483,1371,1370,482],"class_list":["post-2138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1129","category-august-2024-limbo","tag-fall","tag-near","tag-office","tag-rise"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbrNJE-yu","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2139,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138\/revisions\/2139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}