Wow. What a roller coaster of fucking emotions.
A few days ago I began to write a post on here talking about some recent, important events in my life. "A new chapter" type of deal. I was speaking on leaving the job I hated so, some health complications, and my upcoming marriage and plans for the future. And before I could even finish the post, everything changed, again.
So, yes, I did leave my job. And yes, I am still very happy about doing so. At the beginning of March(timeline is very loose here, I don't keep track of time and I don't care enough to investigate), I woke up one morning with some pretty intense abdominal pain. I spend a few hours on the bathroom floor, suspected I had food poisoning, and called out of work.
Over the course of that day and night, as things did not improve, I came to realize it was not food poisoning. I had a fever. I could not do much of anything at all. I was concerned it could be COVID, as were my employers, and I was told I would have to get a negative test before returning to work. I went to a pop-up testing site and got my test, convinced I had a common flu and there was not much I could do about it.
Days went by, my test came back negative, but I still felt horrendous. I had all but locked myself in my bedroom, leaving only to take the dog out or to make food now and again. I suppose, in interest of transparency, I might as well add that I did split that time in half with hanging out on the bathroom floor in front of the toilet. My fever continued. My nausea came and went. The pain came and went.
I attempted to go back to work one day. My fever was down, and I felt a little bit better; I think I was also just bored and depressed. I knew I wasn't at risk of getting anyone else sick as I really only interact with one other person during my work days- and even that is avoidable. We don't necessarily even interact- we just have the same "home base".
For those who don't know, I work as a chairlift mechanic at a ski resort. It was a job I took last year and I really enjoyed- up until the winter. This winter, I have been absolutely miserable. Our wintertime duties essentially entail arriving at the mountain around 6 am, and immediately heading out on snowmobiles to our own designated lifts. We spend the next 2-3 hours giving the lifts "clearance" for the operators to open them; which is really a rather simple thing to do, but we have to be the ones to do it for legal reasons.
Once that is finished, I go and sit in a really loud "drive room", with a miserable old man(that I like quite a bit by the way) in total silence, other than, of course, the deafening whirr of the drive. Radio in ear; we have 10 minutes from the start of any lift failure to fix it or the lift has to be evacuated. I do this until noon. At noon, I go around to the lifts and do some mid-day paperwork. That takes about 45 minutes. Then, back to sitting in the drive room until 415.
I did absolutely nothing for an average of 6/7 hours every single day. It sounds like that probably could be appealing to some; but it was fucking miserable for me. And it really made me reflect on why it is I chose to work at a ski resort. It's certainly not the money. But here I was, finding myself sitting around for 50 hours a week, no chance of snowboarding, watching my mental and physical health rapidly deteriorate with a bunch of hardened, grumpy, old, alcoholic seasoned mechanics- who wanted nothing more than to talk shit and be miserable.
I'm sorry to get so off track hahaha. I literally wrote all of that to explain that I use a snowmobile. But, it was something I needed to factor into this somewhere or another. Anyways, yeah, I returned to work one day and my snowmobile starter was out. I had to pull-start the sled all day, and I think that could have contributed to the abdominal pain that woke me in the middle of the night.
It got pretty bad again and I realized I had really jumped the gun. I contacted my supervisor to let him know- and he respectfully understood. He was never unkind or anything like that throughout this process- but he certainly didn't help me out much either.
Throughout this period I was in and out of the doctor's trying to figure out what was wrong with me. They thought I could have a minor and unthreatening appendicitis, took blood tests, and put me on antibiotics. I was pretty clear that I did not want to get surgery and they didn't believe it was necessary- as long as I followed their directions and monitored myself, and obviously sought medical attention IMMEDIATELY if the pain was bad. The comforting part of all this is that the pain I was experience was not where my appendix is; so it gave us some hope.
During my absence from work, I got a few troubling text messages from one of the older, grumpier guys at work. He had in the past been the supervisor, but stepped down from the role because he didn't want any responsibility- people call this his "retirement job". Point is- he's more or less as "in charge" as anyone else. He told me how angry the VP of the mountain was with my "no call no show". I said what the fuck are you talking about. This conversation went on for a bit until eventually he apologized for talking and starting shit.
What had happened was our manager failed to check his phone one morning and did not see that I was still not feeling well(like really? I have to contact them every morning at 5 am? apparently, and that's what I did). So, my coworker took it upon himself to call the VP and complain about me- about something that never happened. This caused quick a ruckus between the VP and myself.
As time passed and I began to feel better, I attempted to return to work. The night beforehand, I spoke with one of my coworkers; one that I'm actually good friends with. He was the old head of terrain parks at the mountain; the family I call home, and the reason I work at the resort. Anyways, apparently he had told the manager at the end of the day that I would be coming into work. The manager laughed at him and said flatly "no, he'll be sent home". When asked why, he was told that I needed to provide a doctor's note saying that I was physically able to work.
Now this was kind of the final tipping point for me. I was already unhappy with the job. The fact that I received nothing but drama during the previous week from my employers, especially while I was in horrendous pain and trying to avoid undergoing a serious operation, not even 2 months before my wedding in another country. And then, this. The fact that the VP required me to provide a letter saying that I could work that he very well knew I would not be able to receive. The doctor didn't want me working. As he put it "I wouldn't suggest it but I can't stop you". And the fact that this new requirement was solely due to him having a problem with me stemming from a lie/rumor spread by a coworker. But what really got to me is the fact that absolutely no one contacted me about this. The VP never once reached out to me. HR only reached out to me to get my negative COVID results. This motherfucker wanted me to wake up at 5, come in, just to be surprised by a "go home".
The following morning I quit. I was so proud of myself for doing so. I looked back on my winter and how absolutely miserable I was, how much weight I had gained, how I had lost contact with all my friends and family, how I had stopped doing any of my hobbies because I was constantly thinking about the next time I would have to be at work. It was one of the best decisions I've ever made.
As this has already gotten rather long I'm going to save the big PLOT TWIST for the next post. Everything's still all good, but as always with my life, especially in these recent COVID x international relationship collab I've got going on, things like to take real, sudden, life-defining changes.
I hope everyone's been well. This little "stint" that has been my horrible, horrible winter has kept me away from my computer fairly effectively; however over the past week I've gotten it back out and have actually been writing a fair amount. Mad love to the HIVE community.
One final thing - I apologize for the pixabay images. I'm aware that my embarrassingly personal mental health posts do not pair well with photos taken by strangers. However, as I'm sure you can imagine, taking original photos while locked in your bedroom for weeks is quite difficult. This is not forever!
I don't proofread these, so, sorry if something doesn't make sense haha. This series is an outlet for therapy and ranting aimlessly
