When we arrive at a new place I always say two things: A new place is a new beginning and let’s make the best out of it. The first one has been no more to the truth than this time. This is a new beginning.

The last couple of weeks and months were a rough time. But last week I hit the ground. For months now I am unhappy and frustrated. And this isn’t all due to the bad weather we had, it is mostly because my work sucks. It’s not the work per se, it’s the company’s culture that’s hard on my mood.

I feel being pushed around and not seen. And I have no saying and therefore no control at all. Other people are deciding about what I do and when I do it. I feel ignored and not respected. And then there is the work itself. It’s going nowhere. I do nothing that requires my experience and expertise. I feel cut of and put in a dark room.

I don’t want to throw the big *meaning* thing at this topic, it’s not about this, it’s about the small, but essential things like how we want to work and where this is all going. Nobody cares about it. Or if they do, nobody cares to tell me or to ask me where I can be in this picture.

At the end of the week I was emotionally destroyed. Everything around me was covered in dark shadows and fog. It started to completely overwhelm me and throw me off course. Deep darkness arrived. It throbbed inside me like the heart of an animal facing its end. None of it was under my control anymore. And I realized that day after day, this is the rhythm. For far too long.

This was the landscape of my inner world. And this held on for the complete weekend. It only faded away to a blurry background after I came to conclusions that I have to change something. „You have to set your boundaries“, she says. How simple and powerful put. And she’s right. This is the only thing I can do. Set my boundaries. I cannot know how other people will feel an react, when I do it, but I have to protect myself. 

This frees me, but first it scares me. It is something that is extremely hard for me. It is hard because no one ever cared about my boundaries. And maybe this is the reason why it’s happening again and again. So, first I had to discover where they are and what they are. Which is the area inside of me that is holy and needs to be protected? I had to learn to recognize it and now I need to protect it. 

I come from a very limited world. Limited in expression. Limited on words. Limited on chances. Limited by imagination. Limited by poverty. Limited by fear. Drawing from the full was impossible because there was more emptiness than fullness in me. And there is still too much of it inside me. 

Emptiness sets the rhythm. And it only wants one thing: to be filled. And who fills it? Someone else but me. But somewhere behind this emptiness is my true self, which wants to be seen in every situation. I have to find a voice for it. Until now it was that the absence of language silences me. Everything inside me has fallen silent. And although I could scream, I remain quiet. 

But now, after a horrible but cleaning weekend I know what I have to do. This is the change. It will happen in the following days and weeks, but the main part happened over this weekend. I feel often tired of life that I want to give up and disappear, especially in this kind of situations. But there is still a part of me that hungers for life. I have to protect it. This is the part who wants to be seen and heard. And it has all the right in the world to get it.