Emotional Leftovers - Nothing like Thanksgiving!

I have ended a few less-than-desirable relationships in the past year and have some observations to share.

After the initial shock, buyer's remorse, grieving stages of a loss, you go through stages of realizations, changes, and growth.  However, the "ptsd"s from the relationship stick around a lot longer than you would think.

For example, my new boss (who is tote fab) came up to me the other day and said, "do you have a minute to talk to me about your time off requests?" I instantly started to panic.  A million thoughts ran through my mind - all relating back to my previous, shitty boss.  What did I miss? Was there a form I was supposed to fill out?  I am too new here, I shouldn't have asked for ANYTHING!  Crap, she's gonna fire me.  Turns out - she wanted to know if I wanted to earn some comp time so that I didn't have to use vacation time... I lost a year off my life because of THAT?  Wow.  It has been over two months and I still cringe sometimes when she approaches me.  I can not WAIT for the day that the leftovers from my previous boss are gone.  

Another example - I was texting the new dude the other day and he wasn't responding so I wrote something snarky like "ok never mind then!" and he responded with "one minute...crazy".  Well, that touched a nerve, a big one, like the kind that run through your spinal cord and I flipped out.  I think all I said to him was "please don't call me crazy" but in my mind I was thinking - ohfuckyou, you think you're different from all the rest of those scumbag assholes out there?  well, you're not! you want crazy? I'll show you crazy!  ... turns out what he meant by his text was "hold on a minute, work is really crazy right now, I'll text you as soon as I can..." Ooops.  My bad.

So the moral of the story is ...  when you let people treat you like shit, you start expecting it from them and  everyone else around you.  What you have to do is learn to expect kindness from people and when they are not treating you with the respect and kindness that you deserve  - move on.  The bottom line is don't let anyone treat you like crap.  It's not worth the time it is going to take to rid yourself of those emotional leftovers that they leave behind after they are long gone.