The universe works in wonderful ways.  Synchronicity and coincidences are no accident.  I want to expand on additional things unfolding related to knowing limits and what happens to the body under sustained trauma.  Work turned highly sketchy this week for various reasons and, as a highly sensitive person, I felt it the second things were going down hill.  Some radar went off in my body and I immediately felt my entire being tense up.  As events unfolded and became progressively more pointed and obvious in spite of their underhanded nature, I felt the fight or flight rise up in me like a vice grip, but I couldn’t fight or fly, I became paralyzed.

The night I woke at 3am in a total panic about work, I should have simply taken that as a warning.  I went to work and couldn’t function.  It started with the anger then escalated to sharing it by which point the cyclical thoughts were already running wild.  After discussing it with my boss, the gaslighting began and that immediately made me spiral, feeling completely alone and even more angry and misunderstood.  So, I tried to calm these feelings because I 100% admit they were getting out of control.  But by then, with so many things happening at once, I was beyond control.  My face became perma-tomato red and I couldn’t catch my breath.  My back started hurting, my stomach started hurting, I felt nauseous, then the dizziness came, the breathing got even worse, and I could barely stand.  I checked my symptoms on my watch to validate and it told me to go see a doctor.  I started scrolling through my app and saw that my stress was sky high over the previous few days.  I had gotten less than 2.5 hours of sleep. 

There are moments of enlightenment, moments of epiphany, and moments of absolute certainty in our lives.  Everything snapped into place at once as far as how I wanted to feel—and I knew I NEVER wanted to feel that again.  I’ve had strong emotions before, emotions, things, and experiences I haven’t wanted to feel again, but this was something different.  This was the type of thing I knew if I kept going, I wouldn’t be able to feel anything again because I thought I was about to die.  There’s a difference between letting emotions run rampant and letting emotions kill you.  This was killing me.  All for the sake of proving I was right, for the sake of proving my worth, of showing my “team” that I was just as worthy as them, that I did as much as them.  NEVER again.  I’m almost 40 years old and I’ve spent enough time on bullshit, asking for permission and feeling more and more lost as time went on.  It’s different letting time slip away when you know you can do something about it versus when you understand you’re causing it through your own emotions. 

When stress wins, that’s when it’s enough.  When you are no longer in control of your faculties to the point your body is shutting down or breaking down, when your mind can’t function, that’s enough.  No work, no matter what comes on the other side is worth putting yourself through that.  It’s torture.  That is when another decision needs to be made and it needs to be executed.  I want to be clear: no one deserves to endure that kind of behavior.  No one deserves to be gaslit and misunderstood so intentionally and completely that they question their reality.  The truth is we can never make people understand us or see the truth from our side, or any side for that matter, if they aren’t willing to accept it.  If they don’t want to know it, see it, believe it, feel it, then it won’t happen.  At that point the choice becomes yours.  I’m grateful for that.  I’m sorry it took me feeling like I was about to die, I’m sorry it took such drastic measures, but I’m grateful to know.  Now I can breathe again.  Now I begin again.