Wow, I never knew...
This has been one crazy bumpy trip for me over the past several months. I left my job with no promise of a new job and so far, I've had fairly terrible luck in landing one. Let me give you a bit of history. The place I was previously working for four years suffered greatly from certain individuals blatantly abusing their authority, retaliating against anyone who would dare speak the truth in the multiple investigations that occurred (four in four years...unheard of, yet the higher ups continue to protect the corrupt likely because they are just as corrupt), targeting people for abuse, bullying, and hazing, and discriminating against individuals on the basis of color, gender, and religion. Let's not even cover how they bluntly did not care for patient safety because "it's not like they can sue us" (guess what...some of them can! It is no excuse for sub-quality care and possible intentional endangerment of a patient!). Needless to say, it was a fairly terrible environment and the last year I spent there was full of anxiety and depression. I considered the place I worked as The Gates of Hell. I was burned out, exhausted, and I was actually starting to hate people, and I'm not like that. I was also doing 90% of the work there by myself.
So I left, a friend of mine left, another friend of mine left, another person went into rehab (drugs and alcohol...can't blame her in that place), another got arrested for fraud (that one can be blamed on him alone). While myself and a friend kept up with one another, my other friend only kept up with me for a little bit. We talked about how much of a relief (physical, mental, and emotional) it was to be away from that place, no matter the financial difficulty it would bring us. We talked about meditation, exercising, cooking, spending time with our loved ones, the hobbies we had left behind due to the stress... When she stopped emailing me, I thought she had decided to move (she had talked about it) and wanted to cut off all friends and memories of that place (I wouldn't have blamed her). I hadn't heard from her for three months, then she sends me an email out of the blue. She had been far more depressed than the rest of us. She had almost taken her own life.
I knew she was very depressed. She was treated far worse by our supervisors (even though she hadn't been there nearly as long as I had) and truthfully, I don't think legally that they should have been able to treat people the way that they did. When myself and my other friend left, I believe that she felt alone and solely targeted. She didn't stay longer than a month after we left. I can only imagine how difficult the healing has been since then. Truly no one can understand how bad it was unless you were there. Even now, I know they curse my name because now they have no one to do all the work for them (the people who are left are worthless and incompetent, but their incompetence makes them not a threat to the incompetent management). All I want is to move on and never feel the way I felt while working there for the past 4 years.
I hope that she stays in contact with me this time and I hope she never feels that low ever again. This universe can be so unfair sometimes but in the end, things will even back out. They have theirs coming to them. I can only hope so anyways. I think if I make it through all of this, I just might leave this profession forever. Plan my exit. Or at least invest in an alternative income source. Anything to never feel as though I can't freely leave a bad job again. I'm so thankfully I had months saved up to support myself through this.
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