Personal Apocalypse

And today is the beginning of the end. 

 

Sounds rather apocalyptic, but in all reality it’s not.  It’s the beginning of the end of my tenure as church secretary.  Tonight is a Church Council meeting, and I have my letter ready to be submitted to the trustees.  Two weeks from today I’ll be done with that position.  

I know it’s a good move, and one that’s needed to be done for a long time now.  Yet it still hurts.  I loved doing the actual work and took pride in making the bulletins and newsletter look good.  However, circumstances beyond my control have made the job rather unbearable for me.  

Not working there means I will only HAVE to be in town about once a week.  The rest I’m at home, taking care of my girls and keeping house.  That won’t be too horrible, either.  I don’t like going into town to work right now, anyway.  I have to pop a Xanax for the anxiety and then still need my mental cheerleader telling me I can do the job and not freak out while I’m at the church.  Then, when I’m done for the week, I have no motivation to go back for Sunday services.  It’s rather pathetic, I know, but that’s where it’s at.  This last week was even worse than usual, because I felt that I would be forced into conversations with Pastor that I don’t want to have quite yet.  His emails to me hinted to something to that effect, anyway.  So, in order to handle being there and working, I asked Matt to meet me there after he got off work on Friday and just be there to deflect anything that may come up.  And Matt, being the saint he is, agreed to it.  This after a hellish couple of days when a server move didn’t go well and computing services had to go into disaster recovery mode.  He still made time to help me get my stuff done.  

He even helped me compose my letter of resignation.  I’m grateful that he didn’t take my first draft seriously.  I just wrote it to get out my feelings and used some very strong words.  He did laugh at some of what I said, in an almost incredulous way.  I needed that.  Therapy, and all.  My real letter is very short, to the point, and doesn’t give much in details.  

So, now, today, before I go and pick up Kirstin from preschool, I will deliver the letter to the council secretary to be brought to the trustees.  I don’t trust others well enough to deliver it to the church and have it get to the trustees, the way it’s supposed to.    The secretary is a good friend, and knows what’s going on. 

I fear what will come from this, to some extent.  I don’t know what kind of repercussions this may have.  I know I will have to have a conversation with Pastor, but I really don’t want to until I’m out of the situation for a while and have time to reflect back on it.  I will talk with the trustees, as they are officially my bosses, and the elders, for any spiritual matters.  That’s fine, and they’re all people I like and trust.  I just cannot speak with Pastor quite yet.  Hopefully after I have a bit of a “cooling down” period as it were I’ll have enough strength for that.

When this is all over, I’ll finally let myself have a good cry and be washed of it that way.  Until then, I just leak tears every now and then and move on to the next thing that needs doing.  Just sorta in survival mode.  The next couple of weeks will be rough on the anxiety levels.  Thank goodness for good people and lots of stuff to keep me busy.  I shut down over the weekend, and then realized I can’t do that again because it doesn’t do anything but make me feel worse.  When stuff doesn’t get done around the house I start getting overwhelmed and that doesn’t bode well.  Now I just channel the energy into those chores.  If I keep this up my house will be sparkling and all my little crafty projects will be done!  I guess there’s a silver lining.

And maybe this is a personal apocalypse.  I just needed to figure it out and get through it.  Now I can have positive changes in my life and go on and get better again.