Friday 9 August 2013

Crawling out of the woodworks.

Four months with no update is just slack.

There's no other excuse really - I'm just slack.

There's been quite a lot that has happened in this time:
  • Organising moves, moves falling through, finally moving
  • Starting a new job, then not long after, being released from said job
  • Hospitilisations
  • Gaining new employment
  • Trials, tribulations, failures, arguments, tears, frustrations
  • Family gatherings
  • Making and losing friends
  • Losing and finding, losing and finding, losing myself
  • Surgery and complications


To say it's been a rollercoaster seems like both an understatment and an exaggeration.

I guess more than anything, I'm struggling with myself the most.

I seem to have fallen into defeatest mode again, and I am certainly not proud of it.
Just seems as though my life is in a perpetual state of two-steps-forward-ten-steps-back, no matter how hard I try to stay on the straight and narrow and keep things ticking along positively.

I guess you could say that the undoing came about when I lost the job that I had fought so hard to obtain.
I had some horrendous days with pain that I soldiered on through, having to take a day here and a day there to stay at home and try keep on top of things.
At the time, it all seemed fine - My employer was supportive of everything, and seeing as I had maintained open lines of communication, there was never any doubt as to where I stood.
I was only working three days a week, and in the short time I had been there, I had managed to acquire loyal clients and the three days I would be at work, my days would be full.
I'd made some amazing friends amongst the incredible team, I had my independence and sense of self back and I was feeling generally good about the way things were tracking.

I had moments where my pain was out of control, where I'd have normally taken myself off to the hospital for help, but I had been too scared to do so as I didn't want to jeopardise my position.

About a month into my employment there, the salon was sold
This came as a huge surprise to everyone in the salon - including our salon manager.

It was sold to a large up-and-coming chain which had apparently been looking for the perfect opportunity to lay their roots in Wellington.
Obviously, they put forth an offer which couldn't be refused, and before we knew it, we were all on three month trial periods (standard practice here in NZ, imposed by our government which allows employers to release new employees within that three month period, with one weeks notice and no obligation to tell you why you're being let go. That said, it works both ways).

My support and enthusiasm has always laid with small, boutique, privately owned salons, so becoming an employee of a large conglomerate really didn't appeal to me.
Their attitude towards the beauty aspect of the business really irked me, as they saw it as a commodity, unlike the hair aspect, which they deemed a necessity amongst woman.

How they figured that the relationship between a hairdresser and a client was more intimate than that of a beauty therapist and their brazilian wax client is beyond me.
I'm going to be far more loyal and trusting of a woman with my vagina than I am to the person who cuts my hair - but maybe that's just me.

All that said, the people I was working with wasn't changing, my clients I'd worked so hard to obtain weren't changing, and they made promises of grandure that I'd have been stupid to ignore.
So, I was willing to go with it and continue on my merry way.

It really wasn't long before I started to realise that my work and my opinions weren't at all appreciated, and I begin to feel a sense of unease.

The promises that were made to us didn't seem to follow through and I wound up going from three busy days a week, to three days a week where I was lucky if I had one client a day.

It wasn't too much longer until I was getting a phone call from head office, telling me that they were exercising the 90 day trial period and that my contract was being terminated, that there was no need for me to see out the weeks notice, and that I'd receive one weeks pay in lieu of notice.

Bewildered, distraught and utterly confused as to where I had gone wrong (although in hindsight, I know it's nothing that I, personally, did or didn't do), I hung up the phone, walked through the salon trying to keep my head held high and crumbled once I got to the staff room.

Everyone else was is complete shock and disbelief with regards to what had just taken place, and I tried so, SO hard to keep it together so that I could call The Lad and tell him what had just transpired.
I was so afraid to tell him, because things had been going so well, and I was horrified that I was once again letting him, letting us down.

The minute he picked up the phone, I couldn't help it and I lost it.
I was so upset and I couldn't contain it.
I told him what happened, albeit a little frantically.
As he always does, he calmed me down, assured me everything would work out and I vowed that I was going to be straight back into work as soon as I could find something.

True to my word, the minute I got home I was right back on the computer and going like the clappers trying to find work.
It didn't take long before the stress of losing my job, being unable to meet financial obligations and trying to find more work, meant that my symptoms flared up in a big way and I was back in the hospital....
Thus the start of yet another vicious circle.

I'm not going to ramble on for more of this post - Instead, I'm going to funnel the rest of it into subsequent posts.
I could so easily just continue on this tangent, but nobody is ever going to read it in it's entirety.
So for now, I digress and I shall continue this a bit later on and talk about the struggle with the depressive state I found myself in.

As always,

Love and Sunshine,



Serenity