The bad turning to good and the job that almost wasn't

How's that for a cryptic title?  lol  This all might be a little random at first, but trust me, it's going somewhere.  I think.

Sleep continues to be one of my biggest issues.  I have seen improvement...my vivid, wake up in a panic type of nightmares are almost non-existant now.  where I used to sleep maybe a couple of hours/night and 5 would be a miracle, I'm now averaging about 5 hours/night.  In that sense I don't have much to complain about, but it's still a struggle.  I have so much fear at night that it's so so hard to get to sleep.  No matter how much I try to convince myself I'm safe, the closer my subconscious feels me getting to drifting off the more it'll start to fight it.  My whole body just gets terrified of sleep and night and darkness.  Once I finally do get to sleep I sleep really well and really deeply because I'm so tired.  When I get in to sleep like that, a freight train couldn't wake me up (which makes me more scared of going to sleep, because that little voice in my head reminds me that if someone came in to my room and I was sleeping like that there's no way I'd hear them right away).  I think my body feels safer sleeping in the daytime, so my bedtime will start to shift later and later into the night and I'll start sleeping later and later into the day.  I hate that because the daytime is the time I can enjoy without the fear, I'd much rather be awake for all of that and sleep through the darkness which I still hate.  But over these last few weeks where I haven't had work or school, it's gotten pretty bad.  Some nights I can't even fall asleep until it's already starting to get light.

Sooo...the problem with all of this is that I'm now starting in to my summer work at a summer camp.  My summer job requires me to wake up at 5:30.  For someone that often can't fall asleep until 4, that's not a good thing.  Yesterday (Monday) was supposed to be my first day of full time work after a couple of days of training the week before.  I did everything I could to fall asleep early.  I did ok all things considered, and managed to fall asleep by about 1:00.  Unfortunately I forgot to set my back up, across the room, noisy alarm and the 3 alarms from my cell phone were not enough to wake me out of sleep through a freight train mode.  (When I have everything set, there's 6 different alarms that beep at various times, patterns and volumes....that generally works but I've still slept through all of them!).  Unfortunately yesterday I woke up to a phone call from my boss, 20 min. after I was supposed to have been at work.  Ugh.

Thankfully I had laid everything out the night before so I raced out the door as fast as I could.  Even still it took me 25 min. to get there (which is impressively good for me since I'm so not a morning person), so I was 45 min. late all together.  Not a good way to start.  I went to the camp director to apologize, and she told me one of the other director type ppl was waiting to talk to me in the office.  Ruh roh.  So I go in and she tells me that since they weren't sure what was going on with me they'd call someone in to replace me for the day and they were sending me home.  Ok sucky but not a big deal.  Then she added in "Oh and Mark wants you to give him a call.  Sorry."  Mark is one of the head owner guys (this camp has multiple branches throughout the city, so having to talk to Mark is a big deal.  The addition of "sorry" at the end of the sentence made it that much scarier.

I went home and called Mark right away.  I wasn't sure if he was waiting for my call or what.  He didn't answer so I left a message.  I was actually pretty proud of the message I left.  Short and simple, and I took responsibility.  I just said I'm really sorry, I screwed up, I forgot to set my backup alarms, it won't happen again.  Then I spent the next few hours staring at my phone waiting for him to call!  I didn't want to do much else cus I wanted to be ready when the call came.  What amazed me about all of this though is that I never freaked out.  Yes I was frustrated and upset.  I cried, and I shut myself in my room and I didn't want to talk to anyone.  But I never had that omg the world is ending what am I ever going to do type of panic attack.  Even when my sometimes overly lovey/supportive roommate came and wanted to talk and hug me and whatever I was able to tell her calmly that I just needed time to process everything and be pissed.  But I didn't panic, and I never once had the thought that drinking over it would be a good idea.  I didn't get the fuck its at all.  One of my very first thoughts was that drinking clearly wouldn't make anything any better, and I was glad to be sober to work through it.  I didn't have the desire to cut either.

I had made it back home a little before 9:00, and by noon I was already out of the house and at an AA meeting.  The topic of the meeting was what has changed for us in sobriety.  I was able to speak and say that I might be losing my job, but the change was that I felt strangely at peace with it.  I was upset about it (which was obvious cus i got a little choked up while talking), but I felt in my heart that somehow things would work out.  Either I would get to keep the job or maybe it wasn't the path I was meant to be on and that god was directing me towards something new.  Even as I said that it was weird to hear it coming out of my mouth.  The more I think about it, I think that peacefulness is the definition of faith.  Faith is something I've always struggled with, but I really felt secure in that somehow things would be ok.  So that was the first bit of good that came out of the bad: I realized that I have the ability to be calm and not panic under stressful situations.

For the rest of the day I panicked about the phone call, but mostly because I just needed to know one way or the other.  I had already determined that neither answer was going to define me as a person.  About ten min. til 5:00, when I was dialing the number to call Mark again, he called me.  Gulp.  He said that I had really let ppl down because I was one of the few returning staff ppl at this particular location, and that they'd really needed me to be the voice of experience and help out the new staff.  I told him I felt really bad about this, and was bummed that I didn't get to be a part of showing the new staff around as I'd been looking forward to it.  (I really had been excited to be in the position of knowing what's going on since I'd worked there last summer, rather than one of the ones walking around confused like I'd been before).  Mark went on to say that everyone had talked about it, and that some of the higher ups just didn't want to deal with me anymore.  But Mark had fought for me, because he's seen how good I am with the kids and the parents, and what a hard worker I am, and he didn't want to lose me.  See Mark and I also worked together on a project last fall and I think we bonded during that (I needed hours for a class so I ended up helping run this event with the two owners of the camp.  Talk about nerve-wracking!).  It was really cool to know that he had stood up for me.

But here's the part that really wows me.  While yes we came together well on the fall event, and it did go amazingly well, I almost blew it completely just a few days prior to it.  I was supposed to have picked up a bunch of the materials that had been made.  Instead, on that particular day I was passed out drunk on the couch in the middle of the day.  Mark didn't know it was because of drinking that I didn't do what I was supposed to, but really it doesn't matter.  I'd had a whole day to do something that was my responsibility and I didn't do it.  He ended up having to rush out and do the pick up since he was much closer to the place, even though he had a ton of other stuff to do.  So it really is just so so amazing to me that someone will still stand up for me and give me a second chance even when I've so blatantly screwed up.  It's hard for me to trust anyone for anything, so to know that someone has seen me mess up and still fought for me to have another chance brought tears to my eyes.  In my eyes Mark had every reason to be done with me...after the event last fall, then calling in sick to training last friday (I really was sick but I can see how it would look bad), and then being so late to the first full day of camp.  It's just good for my heart to see somebody look beyond that and still value me.  It really just amazes me and moves me.

So the official deal now is that the guy who was called in to replace me yesterday is going to continue to replace me for the week.  We get a different group of campers each week and it doesn't make sense for him to bond with them the first day and then put me in there.  Also, if I'm even 5 min. late to work again for the rest of the summer that's the end of my employment.  Ugh.  I have to say this is absolutely TERRIFYING to me!  It's not just the sleep issue either.  Punctuality has always been a struggle of mine even when I wake up on time.  I think it's an anxiety thing, that I subconsciously put off going out anywhere because everything scares me.  I really don't want to let Mark down, and I want to show him he's made a good choice in keeping me on staff.  But I just feel like there's so much pressure on me right now to do something I'm really not very good at doing.  I know how to be on time in theory, but for some reason stuff gets in the way.  I'd set my alarm yesterday so I could be there early and was going to bring a book and read.  Yeah, oops.  I had planned on getting up every day this week like I'm going to work so I can practice, but I already blew that this morning.  I didn't get to bed until really late so I decided to again not set the back up alarms.  I realized later that that was stupid bc it's training my brain again to not have to wake up when the alarms go.  At least this morning I vaguely remember hearing them.  Monday I don't remember hearing at all though I remember there being weird noises in my dream!  To show you how ridiculous the sleep thing is for me....by the time I woke up this morning the sun was fully up and it comes straight in my window in the morning.  It was so hot that I was literally drenched in sweat but even that hadn't been enough to wake me.

Anyway, as I was driving to my Monday night meeting I was thinking about what an amazing day I'd just had.  I'd learned that I have the ability to be at peace, have faith, and see the bigger picture.  I saw that ppl will stand up for me even when I've screwed up in the past.  And I saw that work I put in is noticed and respected, and does have meaning.

And best of all...I still have a job.  :)  I never lost a job while drinking, I'd like to keep that true in sobriety too, even though I almost lost my winter job!  (For the same issue of showing up late and calling in sick for lots of days....though I was dealing with a ton of shit with getting sober and it was at least an hour drive to get there.  Bad decision making on my part taking that job, but there wasn't much choice then!)