It’s late summer 2025. I sit staring at multiple spreadsheets on an aging monitor, in a dim basement. I’m locked off from vitamin D but also from 90 degree weather, so hey it’s a win.
Back to the spreadsheets. My brain is tracking three of them as I prepare monthly reports for the incredible organizationnI work for. Numbers are NOT my thing.
This job’s listing had intimidated me, but the mission fascinated me, so…
I scraped together the post-2020 me… slapped some clay on a wired together skeleton of “prior experience”, put legs and a smile on it, and applied for the admin position.
Over a year later, here I am; tracking spreadsheets in a church basement.
To not make a complete hash of this, me and my AuDHD brain require intense focus.
And quiet.
Our basement is shared with a preschool.
Did I mention quiet?
When the kids bounce down the hallway, I put in headphones and turn up the Lofi hip hop.
Me. Now. Headphones. Lofi. Tracking an error in the spreadsheet math.
I hear more noise in the hallway.
I turn up the music.
My office door opens, and a stranger walks in.
???
To be clear - I am not a receptionist. Except for the occasional four-year-old making a break for freedom, people just don’t walk in here.
I look at them, headphones in, they smile, nervously, and put their phone on my desk, and walk out.
What in the…?
I can hear a bit more chaos, and my supervisor’s voice in the hall… it seems they’re having a meeting…
That wasn’t on the calendar.
Oh well.
Back to the numbers.
Ah! There’s the -
The door opens again. Another nervous look, another phone.
Soon there’s a parade of people leaving phones. As the pile hits about four or five, my supervisor comes in, and explains that the meeting is confidential, and they’ve asked people to put their phone in here.
On my desk.
“Um… ok…”
I shrug, go back to the spreadsheet.
Weeks later, that deposit is ancient history, and my supervisor and I conclude our weekly planning meeting.
I feel good.
We’ve had some rocky communication, but this meeting feels good, like we’re turning a corner and things are smoothing out. I’ve asked for some changes to support my work and they’ve agreed.
Meeting finished, they go to leave. I’m packing things away when they turn back, “Oh…. I have some feedback.”
The parting shot is never good.
“Multiple leaders in the community have told me they feel you are angry with them,” my supervisor continues.
My first response is confusion. Who? I don’t even work with the leaders, that’s the supervisor’s job.
What??
So I ask for examples.
The phones-on-the-desk incident comes up.
Apparently, I was supposed to “make them feel welcome.”
Yes, this is unfair.
Yes this is a shitty way to give feedback. Yes it is disrespectful and not supportive for me, a neurodivergent trying to do the best I can in a dark basement dealing with spreadsheets and numbers. Not to mention, my reviews have glowed. GLOWED.
I breathe ———
A bell rings through my bones.
But I’m nice, not mean, I think.
I breathe ———
The bell keeps ringing, and I feel cracks forming throughout my muscles and skin.
I have worked so hard to do this right…
I breathe ———
The ringing just gets louder and louder. My skull hums.
If I’m not nice, what am I?
I breathe ———
I see my boss’s outline blur with the vibration, and the bottom drops out from beneath my squeaky office chair.
I’m nothing.
I breathe ———
I’ve crashed somewhere rock bottom, all the cracked pieces shattering, falling to the ground. There is nothing left of me except a pile of dust in the chair.
The pile of dust I’ve become speaks:
“I’m feeling very triggered right now, I need time to process this,” I say.
I hear the death knell in my voice.
They hear a reasonable “nice” golem answering in her dutiful way.
They have no idea that the driving power of the golem has turned to dust, and it’s just a matter of time before the golem winds down, and stops working.
At the end of my day, I pick up my shattered pieces, rattle them into my backpack along with my computer and lunch dishes, and dutifully cart them home.
Over the next few weeks, I try to glue them back together. I try to figure out what broke. I get some helpful advice on what constitutes useful feedback, how what they did was so unfair, etc., etc.
But… it’s all missing the mark.
Eventually, I go back and give my supervisor feedback on how their feedback would have been more useful.
On the heels of that, I hand in a resignation letter.
I tell them that I’ve figured out I can get social security, which replaces the income I’m making at this job.
Although it’s true, it’s a lie.
The truth is: I WAS angry.
I built a golem, a nice golem, that I could don every work day, and it did all the things they asked. They kept kicking it. It was never enough.
But the real anger? Was at myself. I molded myself into a job, compromising my passion, my boundaries, and let myself hang in the background because it was safe.
I hid behind my golem of “a nice person”, stoking a slow burn with each boundary crossed.
That anger leaked out through my pores, fooling no one.
Apparently, I’ve aged out of the golem-wielding prime of my life.
Their “feedback” drilled in and rung though all the golem’s wire bones, and set up a harmonic resonance that shattered my nice person self I’d clung to, not just to “fit in” at this job but to fit into the life I thought I had to build.
Now, I’ve begun to wonder: how much more energy will I have now that I don’t have to maintain this giant, awkward, nice golem? What life do I want to build?
In our culture we love to skip to the end of the hero’s journey.
“And here comes our hero - victorious! With the golden elixir! Triumph!! Yay!!”
But what we skip is how the hero has changed.
When the hero goes into that dark cave, they don’t really face a dragon. They face a dark shadow of themselves. And heroes can’t really cut those things off.
We - us heroes - have to embrace them, and in the process, something dies. Illusions, fantasy, defenses…
Things that at one time served us, but, if we want to move on in our journey, they have to go.
On the surface, I quit that job because the environment was toxic, I felt disempowered and disrespected, and burned out.
Dig a bit deeper, though, and what really happened was I faced my shadow in the dark cave, and the person that emerged could no longer pretend that the work was ok for me.
For months I couldn’t sort that out. I pushed myself, grew, by going in and standing up for myself in response to some truly toxic communication, in a professional way, and gave constructive feedback to their toxic feedback. I felt good, like it was an action I could be proud of, and then I quit.
This REAL hero-in-the cave death lesson eluded me for months, masked by my righteous anger about that day of feedback. I didn’t want to look at that death in the chair moment.
During a recent group story gathering, I found that moment. I found the courage to fit into that story, and I realized why I didn’t want to face it.
Because they were right. I WAS angry.
And that shattered an illusion of myself - my “nice” self - that was no longer serving me.
I encourage you, if you have an experience in your life that just won’t reconcile, find that moment. The one you want to avoid.
Find a supportive group, a friend, or a safe supportive environment ( privacy, music, candles, soft blankets wrapped tight, tissues ), and sit with that moment, and breathe.
Ask yourself:
What is breaking?
Why do I need to protect that?
Who am I without this broken part?
Has it served its time?
Journal or record your answers. Draw them. These don’t need to be coherent, just let them flow.
As the waves slow, and the pain drains, find a way to say goodbye.
I build safe, unyielding spaces for exactly this kind of narrative excavation.
If you want a safe space to figure out where your story is stuck, ping me directly for details on my offerings. If you feel like sharing, please hit “Reply” I’d love to hear your story.