She held on to the railing tightly trying to ground herself in reality with its help. She could feel tension building up in her forehead, and felt as if her nostrils were closing in, allowing just a tiny amount of air to flow through.
‘I am ok, I am ok, I am ok!’, she repeated to herself working hard to stabilize her emotions.
Instead of trying desperately to breathe Pamela decided just to stop trying, and forced her self to stop breathing. She managed to count to 11 and then the body, by itself, overriding her state of mind, drew in a huge gulp of air. Pamela was able to walk to a low wall in the back of the office building where she worked.
She looked around. She was safe there. Nobody could see her from the building, and, people coming out usually followed the street towards the little park close by.
Pamela had this urge to just go to the bus, go home and hide there for a good while. She still could not believe what had happened. When she was called in her manager’s office she was sure it was to be promoted, or at least congratulated for how she had recently dealt with one of the most impactful escalations her team had had to deal with for some time.
She was happy, she was cool, she was there, and then, boom!
‘The team has grown so much that we decided we need a Director in the region and we have hired you a new colleague. We need you to train and mentor them to get ramped up quickly as they will need to attend the company wide meeting in HQ in a month. OK? OK. Thank you!’
Pamela was fuming!
She had been with the company for more than four years, given it all she had, and they did not even open the role or inform them, they just hired somebody new that she was supposed to train and mentor, asap! The audacity!
She felt like slamming the door, screaming, leaving, just to show them what they were missing, but she was too old for all of that. She knew better.
At fifty-two Pamela knew she was not so much in demand on the job market. She often read on LinkedIn horrible stories of people in the same age bracket as her looking for jobs for months and months and having difficulties finding anything.
No, she could not be rash. She had to swallow her pride, hide her frustration and just go on. She needed the job and could not afford to be cheeky and to endanger her position.
‘That is the way the cookie crumbles!’, she told herself encouragingly. ‘Life is not meant to be fair! Roll with the punches! It is what it is!’
She was too old to have dreams of winning the lotto or of an unexpected inheritance, it was all up to her, and that was that.
Pamela felt her heart rate settle and air started to flow a bit better through her lungs.
‘I’ve been through worse! I can do this! Keep your eyes on the ball!’, she was better than this.
Pamela got up and walked back into the building determined to manage herself.
Best laid plans …
When she got to her floor and to her desk the first email she saw was the announcement for the new hire. The mirror cracked from side to side … It was not a new, new hire, the role had gone to one of her newer and more obnoxious colleagues.
Pamela felt the tension rise in her forehead and her throat closing in.
‘No! Stop it! You matter! Your work matters! Don’t be stupid!’, she snapped out of it and exhibited a huge smile on her face for anyone to see.
Pamela was too old not to know better, so she did what she had to do and just got on with it. Keep your eyes on the ball!
Was she still frustrated? Oh yeah, for sure. But that is just the way the cookie crumbles!
I really appreciated the visceral description of Pamela’s anxiety attack. The specific detail where she forces herself to stop breathing, counting to 11 until her body finally overrides her mind, did a great job of grounding the scene. It made her struggle feel very immediate and real.