Just remembering how awful boss got so into building a team and mentoring her team members that she was uncomfortable and weird about my teaching because she couldn't ignore that I was good at it even when I was struggling, and that I had two decades of experience doing that kind of teaching, and that I built rapport very quickly because I'm genuinely good to people. She was so displeased that she couldn't box me in about it like she could with other things.
God, she sucked. That situation sucked. She drove me out by making that team a place where if she wasn't the authority it wasn't okay. And the dismissive things she would say to me in front of other people, she looked bad but they were still exhausting and inescapable.
I know I'm far from the first to be abused out of a job by a manager who wants to change things to favor their own authority and sideline preexisting expertise, but it's still really damaging to experience it and sometimes I have to grieve it real hard, still, but other times it feels like I made it up and it can't possibly be true. I hate that. I know this is how workplace abuse can go, but it is so wasteful, and so ridiculous, that it also seems unreal at times, and yet I have the PTSD.
She took a whole career from me. I'm getting back what I want, slowly, but the way she did that still shocks me when I have to stop and think about it.
Lots of people change careers in their forties. I didn't want to do some of the things we did at that job anymore. But having to walk away from your job because the abuse was killing you still feels like a huge loss and I'm not done grieving it. Not even after almost three years.
Having to walk away from your job because your disabilities became a tool for being abused, and because you burned out your ability to do certain kinds of work, is also a huge loss that I am not done grieving.
