I wonder why I do not write.
I think about it very often, I write mentally, yet when I get to either the blog or my paper journal I get blank.
I very rarely make it to here, normally I try my journal first. But there are two posts half written that I never posted...
So, what brought me here today? I am feeling low. My self-esteem and self-confidence are going down to worrying levels.
I have been unemployed for a few months now. I left my job because I was very unhappy at the place. I didn't like the way my boss treated me, or managed the group, and I saw very little, or none, intention or possibility for the situation to change.
I was in a bad place personally as well, although things where getting better on that front. I felt the job was bringing me down. I thought I always put up with things that are not good for me. Relationships mainly, with friends, partners and family. I thought it would be good for me to think about my well being, short term, stop always trying to do the safest thing, save for the future. My decision was made on the present, what I wanted.
At the time I wanted out of the job, the place, and I wanted to consider a change in career, having realised that although I was interested in the subject maybe I had not thought much about other options.
I have a degree, a masters and a phd in physics. However there are other things I am interested in.
When I started my degree I was confused. Still living home, being told that I had a very analytical mind and should go for science. Well, that had been going on for a few years, and I was already doing sciences in high school.
While working as a researcher I felt like I was a fake, a fraud. The pressure from my boss to constantly prove myself didn't help. He was understanding at first about my depression. We agreed that I would not take the medical leave that I was entitled to and offer by my doctor, but that I would have flexible hours and try to work through it. Cutting a long story short, after a while I realised he was a doubled faced person and although he had encouraged me to take higher responsibility role within the group we were working with (collaborating with many other institutions) he had not confirmed this position officially (and neglected to tell me). There were other issues that went on behind my back, and what really made it was the insinuation that I had not being honest and forward coming with him. Not only that he would "say" it, but the time chosen and the way of twisting my words and manipulating facts.
All in all, he really made me feel quite inadequate. It is funny how knowing that the facts he was using were "wrong" I still feel as if he was right. I feel like I am not good enough.
I left convinced that this was the right thing for me, and that I could do whatever I wanted.
I suspected that I had not thought enough about what I wanted. Of course I did think about it many times over the years, but there were many pressures external and internal, and I wasn't sure about why I had made the choices I did. The whole situation made me think about other times when I have done something just to prove I could. To me or to others, or both (establishing that would require more analysis).
I wonder if this happens to other survivors. I seem to be intrinsically insecure. It doesn't matter who much I achieve. How many times I prove I can do what I set myself to do, I still feel that I am not good enough, that it was a fluke, i didn't really do it alone, and so on.
I think one of the issues i am having trouble with now is in a sense status. Before I could say what I did with some pride, people would react positively to hearing that I was a researcher, which meant I had a phd.
Ironically enough this would irritate me, I could see how they were forming and image of me before getting to know me at all. I think I felt a bit the same way as when I used to get attention, from men mainly, because I was attractive. Though the assumption that I was clever and someone being drawn to that was less annoying to me that going on looks, still there was something to it. I guess a part of me that said "I am not my profession!, that is not what a person is about".
However, now without a job, I find myself lost.
When I look at alternatives for my career, I hate myself as I realise that I would like to be able to say I was a researcher in physics.
I don't know if I would feel differently if I had another job, but right now, there is an overwhelming feeling of failure.
What is worse, I am convinced this was always going to be like this. That I kidded myself thinking that completing the phd would make a difference to the fact that I was always just going to be... a failure for lack of a better word.
The feeling is very very deep, and it is not only related to the job, but I am not sure I will be able to convey it.
When I took my previous job I moved. I was living with my boyfriend with whom I had a bad relationship.
Soon after I left we broke up.
Even now, after two years, and even though I am in another relationship now, I feel like I am not doing what I am supposed to. I spent many years with this boyfriend; we had broken up before and then got back together (more than once), even though the relationship never really improved much. I kept trying and putting up with things that were damaging for my self-esteem, self-respect, and in general made impossible for me to be confident.
Two years down the line I still feel like I am just pretending to scape my destiny.
I have had the same kind of feeling about leaving home. My family lives very closed together, almost all of them in the same city. I moved far away, and have been far away for a long time now. Yet I still feel, many times, this is just a break, and reality will come catch up with me soon.
Is as if I couldn't really change my life, I was supposed to be something different. Be home, not have control over my life, not be happy, not even try to be happy.
I guess it feels I was just suppose to be the invisible unimportant, "for use" person that I feel I was, and maybe I feel that I deserve to be.
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