Heavy topics

I tried to balance the difficult posts on suicide with 25 ways to talk nicely to yourself.  However, the over all feeling of doom and gloom is lingering.  Yesterday, I walked the botanical gardens in my photographs. I hope you enjoyed the pictures as much as I did. Snippets of time collected and shared help me balance emotionally.  I know recent events played a heavy hand in my moods.  My days are like roller coasters up and down and jerked around.  This week I felt that one of the people at school jerked me around and created a hostile environment.  I realized that up to this point I settled in nicely into a niche that felt comfortable and serviceable.  I felt what I did every day makes a difference.  I believed that my opinion makes a difference.  That my job made a difference.  In one hour, a person let me know very clearly that I could be pushed around because I am an X on someone's spread sheet.  I informed the woman how I felt.  My counselor would have been proud of my use of I statements and expressing clearly and concisely how I felt.  I am meeting with an administrator to get clarifications on boundaries and how I can once again create a feeling that what I am doing makes a difference and my opinion counts.  I also have the option of walking away from the craziness.  I would rather not.  Unfortunately, my mind is shaking around these ideas like a terrier shaking an old shoe.  Interesting that giving me a difficult job to do is helpful in clearing out the rats nests and seeing what is really going on.  I tackle a problem and set aside unsettling feelings.  But the feelings are still there.  I have the right to feel the way I do.  I am using the skills my counselors taught me to identify what I am feeling, recognize when past experiences are blowing my reactions out of proportion, sorting what I would like to accomplish, and I feel ready to present several ideas to the administrator.  I hope I get to say what I want to say and just not more lectures on duty and meeting grant requirements.