Oh man, and Job thought he had troubles…….
The final day of survey was a disaster. My ego was already pretty bruised from the beating it had been taking all week, and it took almost every bit of courage I own just to push myself out the door this morning. The trainer who came with me today isn’t quite as nurturing as the other one, and he let me know in no uncertain terms that this is only going to get tougher: next time I’ll be expected to take on 3/4 of the customary workload, instead of carrying just half a load like this time.
Well, I suspected as much, and I understand that it’s necessary for me to make progress. But knowing that and being capable of translating it into action are two totally different animals, and that’s where I’ve hit a wall. I can’t DO any more than this. At least not while I’m having so much trouble getting the basics, and the performance standards are so out of reach I can’t even visualize a time when I might be able to meet them.
This is nobody’s fault……not even mine. I feel bad that my trainers have been working so hard to try to get me where I need to be without success, and I really don’t mean to be so much trouble for them. But I’m doing everything I can and I still can’t get past the inability to absorb and use massive amounts of information, let alone the utter impossibility of mastering the subtler nuances of this work. I can see the goal, but I can’t touch it, and I’m wasting people’s time (including my own) by continuing to pursue it.
That’s what my mind says……I wish someone would explain it to my pocketbook, because I can’t afford to quit. I would imagine it’ll be talked about fairly extensively at the postmortem (AKA debriefing session) on Monday at the office; then again, I’m also sure that there will be a lot of dialogue about how best to fix the problems so I can move forward. Unfortunately—for perhaps the first time in my life—I am fresh out of ideas. I’ve run headlong into a reality I can’t escape, but I can’t tell these people what it is. How do you fix THAT?!?
Answer: you don’t. Even if I could talk to my superiors about all this, they could never truly understand the place I’m coming from. No one but another bipolar really does. Hell, I don’t even understand it half the time, and I’m the one who lives with this magnificent, creative, broken brain. But I’ve learned enough about the nature of my condition to know that although it has rendered me incapable of some things, my intelligence and critical thinking skills are still intact; I just need to find a way to use them that doesn’t demand what I don’t have to give.
In the meantime, I’ll just keep limping along until I can find another job, or until they decide they’ve seen enough and let me go. As Dr. A says, sometimes life really sucks, and this is one of those times. 😦
bpnurse 