Okay then. I have a trigger.

[fullygoldy]

This week at work was a little rough.  We're trying to close the big project I'm on, and some of it just doesn't want to finish.  In particular, the biggest part that gave us the most trouble over the winter is still not signed off and the customer wants some answers about technical things like "did we even give them the right size stuff?"  So we've hired an engineer to do a post-mortem of sorts on the design.  It's been taking awhile for various reasons, but I was told since last Fri that we'd have the report on Wed.  Unfortunately the weekly meeting is Wed morning, so I knew I had to tell the customer yet again that I don't have it.  Finally, Thurs am I open Wed night email to find a report attached. 

It was on one question in a list of 4 or 5, and it wasn't even the most high priority item in the list.  I am confused and upset. I send email explaining my confusion and upset and requesting clarification.  The engineer calls and (he's a very nice man I've been working with off and on for a couple of years) explains the other team member, R, asked him to shift priorities around.  He's working on the rest of our stuff, he's going to send the reports as he finishes them, he just started working on our stuff Wed!  I am trying to speak to him and suddenly I'm just crying and can't talk anymore! WTF?! I apologize and tell him I'll call back.  Then R calls and we discuss the issue, and as I'm explaining to him that I don't appreciate the position he's put me in (he was in the Wed mtg and told the customer the report would be ready) I burst into tears again, and I AM SO EMBARASSED!  I don't do my job this way.  I've been on site less than an hour, it's not even 8 am, and I've already cried in front of 2 of my peers.

The rest of the day was pretty much a loss.  I managed to pull myself together enough to call B, where I just lost it all over again.  "I don't understand! I wasn't feeling fragile or emotional or anything when I headed to work, and then it just jumped all over me!"  This is B's phrase, so he knew what I meant, but it was just so weird to be experiencing it.  Sure, I had a reason to be upset, but not to lose it this way.  At least, I didn't think so.

Friday, I saw my therapist.  I told her about this, and she asked what I was feeling at the time it happened.  She specifically said, "what triggered you?" and I was thinking, "what trigger? I don't have a trigger."  But she kept pressing, and I finally came up with this: I was feeling that this project would never end.  The customer would never sign off (he's kind of an ass). Nothing I was doing or could do would change the end result, so why was I even trying any more.  I was thinking I don't know how to do this anymore. I don't want to do this anymore. Why won't this ever end?

Huh.  Kind of the same way I feel about B's illness.  Where kind of = exactly the same.  I was feeling exactly the same way about B's recovery before I admitted he no longer has an acute illness to be overcome and then done with.  The acute part is over. The chronic part is just beginning (for me at least).  We're not in recovery anymore.  We've moved beyond, to a place where he's as "recovered" as he will ever be, and it's not pretty, and it's never going to be "over."  And I'm still learning to cope with that.  But in the meantime, I've acquired a shiny new trigger all my own.

It really did help to have a reason though.  I mean, I'm on my period, but wasn't feeling particularly hormonal, and the heat was a bitch, and it could have been the combo, but it was just so UNLIKE me.  It probably shocked me more than the two guys I cried on.