For this present job within a grand corporation, I’d written a resignation letter before but had rescinded it. There was no finality that I was done. I even cried about my decision, which I thought was unusual for this particular place, since I found it to be so very, very toxic. Yet, a gentle nudging from what I believe to be God’s Spirit had compelled me to continue on, even though it made no sense to me.
Despite already knowing that not much was going to change within such a toxic work atmosphere, I could only later fathom the reason for staying was that I had more to learn about myself. I was learning more about my desires, my strengths, and my weaknesses … AND how to deal with toxic personalities. I was also learning how to stand against toxic behaviors I’d been too silent about but also felt oblivious to regarding my distant past.
Perhaps, there was a divine intervention going on that I didn’t know about since the next job I’d get would be a place I’ve driven by numerous times before simply because it was on my path to some specific destination. Perhaps things were being worked out for my good because that position was going to open up, and in the meantime, I’d need the extra income. All I had to do was hold on until that next opportunity was ready for me.
Holding on would prove to be sometimes difficult, though. Thankfully, there’d be a time of reprieve I’d manage to gain when mobster bully members in the workplace went on vacation, were absent from scheduling, or were love bombing me in the idealize phase of their narcissistic work abuse against me. I’d also gain the desire to take some time off myself, which was a rare feat for me because of that rhythmic need to keep on schedule and be at work.
During that time of waiting for what was next, I’d learn to navigate myself into realms of peace just enough to stay away from mobster drama. I’d find that it was better to remain silent and not engage in conversations because of someone’s canny ability to take everything I said back to someone else while twisting my words. I’d also learn just why the toxicity within this particular corporation would likely always remain even if a number of toxic individuals left.
Plus, I knew that the next time I’d write a resignation letter, I wouldn’t have any lingering feelings or doubts. I believed that God would release me because whatever task I was supposed to complete or lesson I was supposed to learn, I’d master enough to move on to the another place (where I’d likely learn even more). Of course, I could still leave on my own. I always have that choice, but I’m one who has to know that I know for sure that my footsteps are divinely guided because I never want to be in any arena without being in God’s will.
Needless to say, some might not understand my reasonings, but that’s okay. I think about my last profession and how I knew I was divinely guided to the specific place where I worked for over 20 years. After the first five years, I was ready to leave. I felt the path I was on was much too difficult to bear day in and day out, but I also wanted to be obedient. So I made a lot of sacrifices and I began self-reflecting on changing my negative mindset, but I also believed that God granted me grace to remain when it felt completely unbearable too.
To keep me there, my positions and assignments changed periodically enough to give me the excitement I needed to remain. I even felt that God granted me favor with specific individuals in superior positions that made it easier for me to navigate being the catalyst for change that He needed me to be while there. I can attest to many miracles and many answered prayers. The job wasn’t easy at all, and I often had to spiritually armour myself up for a lot of visible and invisible battles.
As with this current job, the turnover rate of employees on my previous job was always high, and I never knew who’d remain from even one day to the next. The door of change was constantly evolving and I had to evolve with it. In particular, I had a lot to learn about myself and how I aligned or didn’t align with others, and I had to learn about the way in which the world truly operated that was sometimes more neurotypical than my neurodivergent brain could handle. In addition, I had to even come to grips with my own abilities and inabilities as well.
Yet, at some point, there came a time when I knew God was releasing me from that job even after some time of actually becoming quite content with the idea of remaining. There was no question that my time was up within that arena, and as sad as I was to leave, I knew my assignment was complete. There was a finality and knowing that I could and never go back. In fact, once I’m done, I usually don’t want to go back. Nevertheless, even what felt like a long length of time was just many pages in a chapter of my life’s journey.
So it is with any place that I’m in now … I’m always going to simply know it’s time to leave or be released even though I reason with God every step of the way. In fact, I believe He always knows when I’ve had enough and have done all that I’ve known to do to make things work. I did try very hard on this job in terms of working to do my best, but I was always pushing to further myself for other roles too. Things just didn’t mesh for me there though. It’s as if nothing was meant for me.
Unfortunately, within a working environment that promotes a lot of competition, many in upper management perceived me as a threat more than an asset within the space. My educational background was a problem, even though I never talked about it. Any role that I applied for would be met with immediate denial even though I was overqualified for the applied roles. So I knew I was never going to be allowed to advance any further than the position I was hired for there.
According to one former team lead, I was just too good at what I did, even though what I did was relatively easy. Yet, it wasn’t the job description itself. This former team lead said that it was the way I carried myself. I was seen as someone who appeared highly confident, and this confidence made specific people feel threatened and intimidated. In fact, there was only ever one person in upper management who knew I could handle greater responsibilities without question, but because some of my personality traits rubbed others in upper management the wrong way, they’d fight this manager on every front to keep me out.
Once I learned this, I realized that perhaps God was keeping that door closed to me because this corporation wasn’t a final destination for me. Plus, I didn’t like a lot of the things I saw going on regarding all the toxicity. I’d most likely become too outspoken and a catalyst for proposing and expediting changes in a way that very few were ready for or even desired to occur. No matter the case though, it was interesting to hear what that former team lead had to say. At some point, though, this former team lead distanced themselves from me too, and although I expected it to a certain degree, I was still disappointed by it.
Nevertheless, I find it interesting that the hiring manager within this corporation who so reminded me of my narcissist mother granted me grace and was excited that I’d rescinded my resignation the first time. Her attitude towards me even completely changed, and she no longer treated me with disdain or ugliness when she came across me. Overall, I found her to be an initially mean woman who didn’t seem to have any happiness within her life, but I also knew a bit of her personal circumstances that she’d shared during my week of orientation. To her core, however, I still considered her to be mean. After all, there was a reason she reminded me of my narcissist mother.
That’s when I realized that I needed to discern beyond the surface of a what a person presented to me and fill in the gaps of what would likely be missing. All I needed was to hear and observe beyond the surface to develop a deeper meaning and understanding of the people around me. In some way, this is how I gained an entry way into the lives of the mobsters. They didn’t know me, but I knew a lot about them based on everything they talked about and sometimes even shared with me.
I realized that most of the people who behaved as bullies or antagonists weren’t necessarily happy about some aspect of their lives. Instead of dealing with their issues, they’d project them outwardly onto others instead. Anyone within their pathway of anger, malice or whatever negative energy they projected would always suffer the consequences of their wrath. This was usually the way mostly all of the toxic individuals behaved, and I soon came to recite to myself with acceptance that their problems weren’t ever my problems and their ways couldn’t ever be my ways.
Oddly, if I or anyone else who the mobsters or some toxic upper management person targeted reacted with a foul mood, they’d react mystified because it would seemingly never occur to them that anyone other than them had real lives and real problems outside of work. The one thing I managed on this job was to never ever talk about my life outside of work at all. I rarely talked about the life I had at work either. I might sprinkle something here and there in terms of lessons I’d learned, but it was never enough that anyone knew who I was as a person.
Yet, my coworkers clearly knew me by what I presented daily in terms of work ethic and professionalism. They may have also been able to identify the idiosyncrasies about me that made up most of my autistic traits. A lot of times, I took note of how something I said or did rubbed even the nicest person the wrong way or made them look at me as if to question if something was wrong with me. The former team lead who’s shared with me that some superiors on the job found me intimidating also shared with me that I was a deadpan, funny, but blunt person.
I managed to keep my personal business out of this workplace, and I also managed to keep myself out of coworkers’ personal business too. Yet, these coworkers would willingly share personal details of their lives no matter how graphic. Some of the coworkers didn’t seem to care about professionalism, nor did they seem to understand what professionalism truly entailed for them either. It was a place where secrets were never kept, and offense was taken if one chose to remain silent those secrets.
In fact, I offended someone almost everyday with my silence even though I’d shared with one coworker, who revealed her grandchild’s struggles with selective mutism, that I was also selectively mute. That was one gold nugget about me personally that I shared, but this coworker couldn’t receive it because she didn’t believe me. Instead of it being a teachable moment for the coworker, she turned it into a commentary on what a selectively mute actually looks like, as if selective mutism has a main physical description.
This is where I noticed a difference in levels of management because the higher ups distanced themselves from all the rest of the workers. Although some of the coworkers came into their positions through promotions, I could always tell that there was a major difference in the way upper levels of management treated the rest of the workers. It was as if regular workers were less than, and they were unfortunately treated as such. Unless one had a steady stream of confidence that couldn’t be shaken by the disrespect, then one would play their role as being the underdog.
When I came along, and anyone else who’d shared with me their experiences of entering this particular corporate world from the realm of education, there was an immediate change within the atmosphere. Some in upper levels of management immediately became offended with my presence. If it hadn’t been for the hiring manager spreading my personal experience in previous jobs, I might have been spared as a target for a while. Yet, I was immediately perceived as a threat to the establishment. I was automatically perceived as different, and some of the people that were fired from upper levels of management would condescendingly let me know how they felt about me.
It wasn’t that way with everyone, of course. There were quite a few coworkers and upper management people that I genuinely liked and thought were cool people, but the truth of the matter is that I needed a job that more aligned with my own career desires. The longer I remained on this job, the more clarity I had in what I wanted to do with my life. This job just didn’t fit that objective, and even though I tried entering into areas that I thought would fit my skills of expertise, the door was always shut to me getting any advancement. I’d realized after a while that my presence was really not wanted in the place. I was simply being tolerated, and it was best to keep me in a position of perceived servitude.
However, I knew I wasn’t planning on anything long-term with this job. I frankly went into it to give it a full year, and a full year is what I accomplished. My thought was that I could do anything for a year, and that’s what I did. I wasn’t settling on that job being a final destination, and I don’t even think this next opportunity will be a final destination either. I just wanted to do something out of my comfort zone, and I did. It was the first time I was around groups of people for an entire work schedule everyday, and I couldn’t always run away to retreat.
I learned a lot about myself and others, and I fined tune my learning about narcissistic personality disorder, flying monkeys, and narcissistic abuse within the workplace. I gained different perspectives on this disorder and how it truly affects all involved with narcissistic and emotionally abusive people. Most corporations like this have no plan of action to protect victims and survivors within their workplace, and unfortunately, most don’t even care. It’s a dog eat dog kind of world, and one is lucky to survive this type of atmosphere everyday. I had to get out because I felt like I was dying in more ways than one.
For me, there’s no going back. Once I’m out of one door, I close it for good, and depending upon the nature of the abusive experiences I encountered within a place, I might even burn bridges so that I never have to return. Don’t get me wrong. There’s no one within that work environment that I hate. I even developed compassion for quite a few people, including those that treated me with disdain and their own level of hatred. I just don’t see the point in going back into an abusive situation that’s never going to change though. Even though the pay was better than most places, it was still not all that great when considering the entire picture. I don’t think the people that do the most physically demanding work get paid all of their worth, and they actually put up with a lot in the process.
It’s not because I think I’m too good to be in a particular space. If that were the case, I wouldn’t have accepted a position in the first place. I’m just sincerely always looking to find my fit and determine if and how I belong. In my previous job, I was oblivious to the dislikes of my personality. For some reason, a lot of things just didn’t register to me … as if I was too blind to see what was happening around me. I was not fully aware or even awake to a lot of things. It would be days, weeks, or even months later that I’d become aware of certain issues, and then I’d need to address them, make sense of them, and deal with them.
On this particular job, though, things were very different. I’d learned a lot over the years, and I was living in the moment, no longer blind to what was happening around me. I was very aware and very awake, and that’s made so much of a difference in how I’ve handled things occurring around me. In the past, I believe I lived more dissociated and detached from things that I simply wasn’t in a state of mind to actually feel things occurring even if I discerned or sensed things might have been off. Plus, I’m in a stage where I’m getting my voice back and making it heard. The more unchained my voice has become, the less I feel the need to remain in a detached and dissociated state.
In fact, I’m often astounded and marvel about my personality. I didn’t always recognize that I was so blunt when it came to my responses. I wasn’t always aware that I can come across as aloof to the negative responses of others around me. I don’t always easily react to things because I spend a lot of time processing what is going on – what I see and what I hear. Now, I feel like I’m more in tune with what’s going on because I’ve found that I will sometimes have to stop myself from speaking my mind about a lot of things happening. In fact, one coworker told me that I was very outspoken – so much so that I made some people uncomfortable because I tackled hard topics that were usually swept under the rug.
This resignation the second time around was clearly one in which I couldn’t turn back. My thoughts are even that if this next opportunity turns out to have some diabolical kinks to work through, I’ll work through them. I’m forever learning and forever realizing that there’s toxicity within almost every job. People have issues which they most often project onto others wherever they are, and that’s just a part of life. Yet, I think I can face remaining in toxic work spaces for very long. Even a year at this particular job was a year too long, but it was the limit I set for myself.
Needless to say, there’s no turning back. I resigned with clarity, and I’m grateful for the experience, but it’s not one I’d want to repeat again.
My Voice Unchained 