It was now Wednesday, the fifth day of my parents’ visit. We were still having a great time, although I could feel things really starting to unravel at work.
Things had already been a bit tense due to some conflicting ideas on where exactly the company should be headed and how it should be managed. On top of that, I was feeling a greater and greater sense of being micromanaged, and while I knew part of this was due to my boss’ management style when under stress (we were in the midst of significant expansion as well as some key turnover in staff), I also couldn’t help but internalize this as a blow to trust in our relationship and yet another hit to my own life’s sense of control. This was not a good time for someone to be playing with my reigns or my feeling of being contained. To make things worse, I had just realized that I’d been left in the dark on several significant changes to the organization that I felt I should have not only been told about, but consulted on. The timing could not have been worse.
I rarely took vacation time and was known for regularly working over 12 hour days throughout the week, with little time to myself on the weekends. My work ethic had never been anything to be questioned, so when I asked my boss for additional flexibility in my schedule while my parents were visiting, stating that I had just found out about some family stuff, and explaining that I might not be as quick to respond as usual, and when instead I felt that the communications and requests for my time were being ramped up, I felt incredibly frustrated, taken for granted, and betrayed.
My patience was frayed and my usually poised, professional demeanor was quickly dissipating. My annoyance with my boss wasn’t something I was able to contain at that point, either.
I just wanted to be a good host for my parents so they could have a good trip and so we could spend what time we had left as the “normal” family I had always known just being HAPPY. Soon I would be dismantling what about my family I had always known, and I didn’t know what that would feel like—I just knew it risked a lot of heartbreak down the road that I wasn’t ready for that day. Let me be with my parents a little bit longer in the way I wanted them to remain unchanged.
Jesus, haven’t I worked hard enough here to deserve that much??
—–
That night, after my parents went to bed, I logged back into my AncestryDNA account.
I re-read Jessie’s message to me, then looked around AncestryDNA’s platform to try and view her family tree. At this point in time, I was still wholly unfamiliar with the site, and had no idea how to access someone else’s tree, yet I was desperately curious to explore hers for more information. So I emailed her back.
Afterward, I put it all away in my mind again, as best I could, and went to bed.
…
That Friday, the last full day I had with my parents, my boss and I got into an argument. I was livid at everything, but agreed to meet up with her to talk more that Monday. She said she wanted to talk about the direction the company would be taking and my role in it.
Great. That just sounds great. Everything felt ominous, tenuous, and like it was just about ready to fall apart. I was dead set on not being taken advantage of. I had already been shut out of enough choices in and truths about my life, and I wasn’t about to take on any more.
I went to bed, then said goodbye to my parents and to my former life in the morning.