It’s 03:25 and once again I cannot sleep. Even as I saw this day coming months ago I feel like everything has changed in the last 24 hrs and I feel lost.
Some of you may know that if I talked about my day to day life outside of my music and art and this blog, that I neglect so much, I told you about my job as a receptionist at a pet crematory.
Every Monday to Friday I have pushed through my depression, a lot of times after a sleepless night (such as this one) fighting anxiety and I would gather myself as best as I could, as quickly as I could to get to “my job” as I called it. When I started there 4.25 years ago, I wanted it to become my career. As time passed I saw myself growing there in a few different directions but life had different plans.
I loved everything I had the chance to give there. I got to help people who were in pain suffering a deep loss that so few people can understand. It gave me the motivation to fight the desire I often had to disappear.
I started my time there after going through a strange loss myself something I don’t often talk about in detail because it has so much weight and pain and it has been hard to even think about it all as time has passed, though I am sure I mention it here and there as “a long story.” I hate leaving anything behind but it was a time I had been left behind yet again. I don’t even know how to explain the place I was in so that is part of why I never talk about it. It has always felt like too much to talk about. The point is, mentally I was in probably the darkest place I had ever been in my life and then I found my job that for the last two weeks I have been calling “my current job” and as of 17:00 February 19, 2021 it is now “my old job.”
Today hurts more than I imagined. In my resignation letter I thanked them for giving me a place to remember or see the worth of my compassion. I know they have no idea what that means, I think only my therapist and I know what it means, maybe not even my therapist (I can’t remember if we have talked about it) but I guess I am writing this so that you all can know what it means. I am very scared today.
I got to The Pet Crematory after a year of being jobless, after I am not sure of how many years struggling to survive financially, two months after I had my last conversation with my father where he called me in short a lazy deadbeat, and maybe a year or so after I started to lose my faith and started hating myself more than I ever had in my life and around the time I hated that I started this blog and any other blog and I regretted ever stating a mission for my life.
In 2010 I was introduced to a community that told me over and over to share my gifts, a community that got me to open up about the deepest hurts in my life all for the sake of helping others find life and love and healing and peace and I poured out the ocean of compassion I have in me only for them to let me bleed out the life I had in me. Week to week I heard story after story about the poor, the marginalized, the needy, the weak and how those of us with more should give to those with less. I felt I finally had a place to plant my roots and do the only thing I have ever wanted to do in my life, help others, give, nurture.
I was poor, not the poorest but struggling to feed my family, (Mom and I and later my bun) feeling abandoned and forgotten by my sibling. I gave of myself for that community sleepless nights of prayer and sending out the only healing I could give, listening to people who needed a compassionate ear, crying along side them, sending them good vibes when I thought of them. I called them friends and family that I chose. I felt if I could not give financially, I can give time and energy and it was important, I thought. It was a time I suffered more emotional neglect than what I had from my father and it felt normal because why wouldn’t it feel normal?
Time passed and life got harder as some of you know I had to go from, working towards going back to school for Music Education and helping my family a little, to head-of-household and putting my dreams on a stand still when my mom was laid off and forced to retire in 2013.
Suddenly I needed help from my community, my friends, more than I ever did before and I had message after message that I was not worth help, I was not needed, I was an appendix and I became the burden I always fear becoming.
I shared my fears with my friends hoping to gain encouragement, healing, better treatment, more effort, less neglect and I was reassured many times that I was mistaken, I was not taken for granted, I was not a burden, I was looked after and needed and my presence was a blessing and would be missed if I were gone.
Life got harder and suddenly mom and I needed help to even have community at all. We didn’t have enough money to pay for the gas to go be where we were “much needed and missed” even while I had a job. More and more I had to ask for help in getting rides to weekly gatherings and events. More and more I was giving of myself and not being emotionally supported especially after I was bascially told by a spiritual leader that my whole sense of self was a lie, “you know nothing about God.” Years of being told my singing was a gift to be given by my friends and I was told it was useless by the only person who had authority there to give me a place to use it. When I spoke up about the hurt I endured I was told to pour out even more of myself because then I would feel loved.
The more I asked for my needs to be met the more I got messages that my needs were too much or not important. I spoke out because I saw many others who I called friends being burnt out, used and discarded or outright neglected and abandoned. I wanted to help those who didn’t seem to have a voice and I wrote about it in my other blog and shared despite how much sharing triggers me.
I went unheard and nothing changed but there were countless promises of change and reassurance that I was mistaken they were there for me and my mom. In 2015 my shoulders finally succumbed to the abuse they were getting at the credit union job and I was fired when my chronic migraines got worse from not eating well and the stress of the pain and struggling to do my job and begging for change and being told I wasn’t worth it, but I felt things would be okay.
It was shortly after my dearest friend at the time made me see the value of my art and music after I decided to face my fears and share a song I wrote for them (a story for another time) so I was hopeful because I had started my YouTube channels and I think this blog came close behind.
I was hopeful but scarred. Around the same time I had given my compassion to a guy who I called friend only to find out he was manipulating that compassion to use me and I don’t want to disclose the details of why it hurt so much but the point is I had no boundaries because I had a community that reinforced the lessons I had in life, that my needs didn’t matter and asking for them to be met is toxic. I felt unprotected and I felt my greatest gift (my compassion) was the weakest and stupidest part of myself and since previously it was the only part of myself that seemed unique and special it made me see my heart as a big piece of shit. My conclusion then was I was a big piece of shit and I slowly tried to make myself disappear everywhere I could.
Almost year passed where I was consistently triggering myself with sharing my blogs and vlogs and gigs to my community who I still cared about and I gave up trying, they have yet to notice that I am gone if they did notice they never bothered asking why I am no longer there. I did it I disappeared but I still needed to survive and I still had my family in my care (Mom and since 2015 my bunny too). So I needed a job still.
Then I found The Pet Crematory. Suddenly many sad people needed a person to listen, to care, to understand, to feel with them. I don’t regret my time at that old community that used me and left me vulnerable in countless ways. My time there taught me enough about what I find value in, in life. I grew to know and better understand my desire to bring love and peace to others and I was able to put those desires into words and a mission for my life in a more tangible way.
The Pet Crematory is what saved my compassion in this life. It restored my vision and gratefulness for possessing that gift. Soon I was determined to share my music and art for the sake of love and peace, for the sake of seeking out life and light and being that light for others who fight in the dark like I do everyday.
As some of you know, my time there was not all glamour it came with some pain as well but it was mostly because somethings reminded me of darker times and I still have so much healing to do. So I say goodbye to that job and my heart is hurting deeply. I loved everyone there so much and wish them so much good and beauty and growth.
I don’t deal well with separation, I don’t deal well with feeling more attached to others than they are to me, so it’s now 05:36 as I am writing this and I miss everyone there so much already. At my new job I will be working from home and I hope that it will be as fulfilling as my time at The Pet Crematory was in all the beauty it brought with it. They really did support me through a very dark time in my life as best as they could and I will cherish my time there forever. On my last day the boss said that their goal is to grow with the people who pass through the company and hope they leave a better person. I feel like my time there helped me get back to the person I was before sever poverty (I know that’s subjective I was never homeless but The Pet Crematory kept me from losing my home, I was only a few steps away from it and it was a crappy home too). Not only did I get back to where I was, I got help in building and gathering what I needed for a new dream for my life, one that is all mine and not riddled with safety nets unlike my music teacher dream. To be honest, I think the path I am on now was always my dream in life after I discovered music, writing and art. I wanted to use them to help people in need.
Everyday I had to honor to say to a person in need “I know how you feel” I had the honor to validate their pain and hopefully be a part on their journey to healing. My whole team was a part of that and I will miss being surrounded by people with huge hearts like mine. For once in my life I think I felt known. I am the crazy bunny girl, the creative girl with a huge amount of compassion and for a long time I was ashamed of that compassion. Today I am happy with myself and who I am. Thanks for your time reading this long, long story. I hope to share more of my journey with you all. I wish you all love and peace and for those of you who have the blessed skills of creation I hope you never give up in bettering that skill no matter where you are in that walk. Growth takes time. I hope to have more courage to share my creations with all of you. Because of The Pet Crematory I have a working space to make my vlogs, blogs, music and art again. I have been so scared but I hope to have the strength to keep being a light in the dark.
