So I slid down the slippery slope (see 'The Seven Year Itch') & arrived in the present. No more walking the tightrope of the dead & gone past & finally arriving exactly where I am supposed to be. You know how they say it takes thirty days to break a habit & then a few more weeks to reinforce it? (hence the 45 day addiction treatment program). How then you need to go regular AA meetings or counseling or....... to maintain it, while still recognizing your triggers? Well, that was it exactly for me, although I'd say it took a hellish five years for me to come through the cycle.
Losing my college teaching job almost five years ago on December 15th, 2009, threw me back & into a hole so deep I didn't fully realize until now nearly crippled me for good. Seriously. I have gone through two divorces, painful break-upss with friends & family, discovered my child was physiologically disabled & lost my father &, but still had some form of a rewarding, intellectually stimulating career to fall back on. Respite care. Someplace to go where everything else could be forgotten, while I taught. I loved it.
The demise was quick, blindsiding & completely out of my control. No probation or way to find my way back in or to get restitution. As an Adjunct Professor for 12 years with NO legal rights, I was quickly & quietly laid off by a new Dean who didn't like working with women. I was replaced by a man who wouldn't bother her or ask for support with student issues and I was not alone. I found out at much later that at least three other women had gone through exactly the same thing at the same time. I went to the new college President (who brought her with him from another college where she had been fired) , & for a year or so I worked through a lawsuit that couldn't be won.
I started an on-line Etsy Art business with a community of other artists around that same time which frankly saved me from completely losing it all together. It was good for me & returned me to more regularly creating my own art again, but it didn't stop the bleeding out, nor the anger or reminders of more entrenched issues of abandonment & just not being GOOD enough. I went into hard core counseling & we beat the bushes together for a good three years; going down, down, down to the roots & pulling each out one by one to look at, process & let wither. I did EMDR to codify the emotional wreckage & then learned how to it on myself. I found out I addicted to a sleep medication & went through a hellish withdrawal. Purging, sorting, holding on & finally tossing away into the trash pile.
Losing my college teaching job almost five years ago on December 15th, 2009, threw me back & into a hole so deep I didn't fully realize until now nearly crippled me for good. Seriously. I have gone through two divorces, painful break-upss with friends & family, discovered my child was physiologically disabled & lost my father &, but still had some form of a rewarding, intellectually stimulating career to fall back on. Respite care. Someplace to go where everything else could be forgotten, while I taught. I loved it.
The demise was quick, blindsiding & completely out of my control. No probation or way to find my way back in or to get restitution. As an Adjunct Professor for 12 years with NO legal rights, I was quickly & quietly laid off by a new Dean who didn't like working with women. I was replaced by a man who wouldn't bother her or ask for support with student issues and I was not alone. I found out at much later that at least three other women had gone through exactly the same thing at the same time. I went to the new college President (who brought her with him from another college where she had been fired) , & for a year or so I worked through a lawsuit that couldn't be won.
I started an on-line Etsy Art business with a community of other artists around that same time which frankly saved me from completely losing it all together. It was good for me & returned me to more regularly creating my own art again, but it didn't stop the bleeding out, nor the anger or reminders of more entrenched issues of abandonment & just not being GOOD enough. I went into hard core counseling & we beat the bushes together for a good three years; going down, down, down to the roots & pulling each out one by one to look at, process & let wither. I did EMDR to codify the emotional wreckage & then learned how to it on myself. I found out I addicted to a sleep medication & went through a hellish withdrawal. Purging, sorting, holding on & finally tossing away into the trash pile.
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