Get your own
 diary at DiaryLand.com! contact me older entries newest entry

1:10 a.m. - 2002-12-31
Yin and Yang
Last night seemed to be one set of memories and aha moments after another, as I sorted throught the documentation I mentioned in last night's entry.

I watched a couple of tv shows as I was sorting. There was a special about Shirley Temple on the tube. I loved her movies when I was small - mostly because of the music and the dancing - who couldn't with dancers like Bill Robinson (Bojangles) and Buddy Ebsen featured. When I was little, my Mom and a volunteer group in the community had set up a weekly evening program of fine arts activities for children. Each child got to choose three activities to learn. Mine were gymnastics, tap dance, and baton. I got to be the lead dancer in the tap dance classes, but it always bugged me that my baton teacher got to have fire on the ends of her baton when my sister and I didn't; the fringes and costumes we got to wear did ease the pain somewhat though. My Mom also put us in fashion shows and our fine arts group got to be on a float in the community parade on Canada Day. What has that got to do with Shirley Temple? Well much as I loved her movies, I didn't want to look like her, but my Mom always did my hair in ringlets and tried to persuade me to wear clothes that were similar. I hate sailor suits to this day and I think it is part of the reason I prefer my hair long and straight. Shirley Temple was born in the same city as my Mom (Winnipeg)and was about the same age. Mom remembered going to see her perform live at the theater there. I think that was just such a positive thing in her childhood, occurring as it did during the Depression, that she wanted to share it with me. When I watched the special, a lot of memories of that part of my childhood came flooding back and it finally clicked that that is probably what my Mom was trying to do.

Later, I watched Grease. With some explanation from my sons, I finally caught some of the jokes and innuendos. Don't you hate it when your kids know more than you? Finally, there was another documentary on the making of "The Two Towers". My youngest son and I watched that. He commented that the strongest reaction in the theater crowd the other night was to Gollum/Smeagol and the debate he had with himself about killing Frodo to take back the ring. Despite years of reading the story out loud to my guys, there were still facets of that particular character that didn't really stand out for me until I saw them on the screen. Reader's block if you will. Sometimes looking through someone else's eyes is a very powerful awakener.

I've written about a fairly traumatic series of events that happened a few years ago, when I was working in a major company in this city(September 08). I had been questioning some things I had been witness to, with respect to the arctic and international data, that I was handling along with a team of other staff. An attempt was made to distract me, by pushing me into a relationship with one of the males that I thought was involved. When I protested, I was threatened with being fired. A lawyer helped me with that, but the treatment after became worse and working conditions deteriorated so badly, that often I would go in in the morning, go to the washroom to throw up, then go on to carry out my duties. Why? Well first, I was waiting for an election to be called soon, so it didn't make sense to try and get another job just so I could quit shortly after. Second, I lost my references for work of the past three years when it appeared my supervisor was implicated in the mess. Third and most importantly, I'm not very good about backing down from bullies. Doesn't mean I don't pay a price for it though.

When I was going through the documents I wrote about in the last entry while watching the programs mentioned in this entry, it triggered a flood of memories that I had managed to suppress about what had happened after the blow up at that worksite. This was because the work I was doing at the time was with the international material. My guess was that the data we were working with was being sold once it was stored offsite by some of the people who were working on the project. They kept trying to change or suppress certain documentation about the material. I refused to sign off on some of the inventories as a result and others followed my lead. Also, I had seen the inventories of some of the other boxes stored offsite and then seen what was left in them when they were brought back on site a year or two later. Looted might be a good term. I knew the value of a lot of the material was very high just in the straight acquisition of it, but there was also the issue that a lot of the material was one of a kind - environmental benchmarks one might say - and could not be recreated very easily. I realized, as I was sorting, that a lot of the stress I felt this year was because I felt I was reliving some of that time over again, and I was, quite frankly, scared. Between that, and the B and E stuff I sifted through, I think too much of what I had tried to mentally bury just took over and demanded that I confront it. Memories of innocence and fun mixed with memories of fear and frustration. The upshot was I spent the night dealing with flashbacks. Hopefully, the bad stuff is out of my system now and the good memories can supplant them.

previous - next

about me - read my profile! read other Diar
yLand diaries! recommend my diary to a friend! Get
 your own fun + free diary at DiaryLand.com!

web stats