People who know me in real life know that I tend to be a little high strung. My co-workers are well acquainted with this. Work becomes extremely important to me and I get in these states where I’m convinced the weight of the company is resting entirely on my shoulders.\n<\/p>\n
I’ve done some thinking about this and have decided that this overwhelming sense of responsibility started in the bathroom at May Nissen Park.\n<\/p>\n
Anyone from Livermore knows about May Nissen Park. It has a playground, swim center and when I was a child there was a grey cement building on site that was used as a pre-school. (I’m not sure what is there now.) There were bathrooms at the back of the cement building that were open to the public during the day.\n<\/p>\n
I remember using those restrooms when I was very young, maybe age 4, during a family picnic. We were eating at a picnic table on the edge of the grass, close to the building and this is likely why I was allowed to go in by myself. (Also, this was the late 60s. Parents weren’t as “hands on” back then.)\n<\/p>\n
There were two other people in the bathroom as well, an older girl with a very young child. They were in the other stall and didn’t know I was there. They left before I was done and on their way out they turned out the light and shut the door.\n<\/p>\n
I was cast in total darkness. It was startling at first but I wasn’t scared. Somehow I managed to find my way to the light switch and turn the light back on. I remember being proud of myself for this. I wasn’t afraid of the dark! However, I then discovered that the door was locked and I couldn’t get out. That was when I started to panic. I was scared, more than I had ever been in my life. I cried and screamed. I so desperately wanted to be out of that bathroom and with my family. I was afraid they wouldn’t find me.\n<\/p>\n
They did of course. I wasn’t locked there for long at all. My mother, I’m sure, was keeping an eye out for me and when they saw the closed door they came and got me. I was so relieved to see my mom and even though it was an innocent mistake I hated that girl who locked me in there.\n<\/p>\n
That level of fear and panic is something I have never felt since. Being cast into total darkness and then discovering I was locked in a cement building, knowing there was nothing I could do to get out was a very helpless and terrifying feeling. I truly believed at that point that I would never see my parents again.\n<\/p>\n
I believe this was my first “out of the loop” experience. If only that girl had known I was in the bathroom too, she never would have turned out the light and shut the door.\n<\/p>\n
Fast forward 48 years. Today, making sure others don’t get “locked in bathrooms” is extremely important to me. The other day, someone at work asked me where building 250 was. I pointed to the building across the lawn and kept walking. As I watched the guy head across the lawn I hesitated for a moment and wondered if I should offer him more information. There are several entrances to that building and he would likely wander around before he found the reception desk. Should I tell him to head for the north side of the building? Or maybe he was meeting someone at the Starbucks\u2026should I find out where in the building he needed to go so I could make sure he got there?\n<\/p>\n
This overwhelming sense of responsibility brings me down. It slows me down. I makes me crazy and takes away my sleep. Learning to let go is slow and difficult. The other day while I watched that guy walk over to building 250 I forced myself to let go. He would just have to figure things out for himself while I had to take care of me. The nice thing is realizing that letting go of other the problems of other people s is not nearly as scary as that feeling I had when I was locked in that bathroom. Not to self: remember this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
People who know me in real life know that I tend to be a little high strung. My co-workers are well acquainted with this. Work becomes extremely important to me and I get in these states where I’m convinced the weight of the company is resting entirely on my shoulders. I’ve done some thinking about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ladyjessop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ladyjessop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ladyjessop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ladyjessop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ladyjessop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=923"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ladyjessop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":924,"href":"http:\/\/ladyjessop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions\/924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ladyjessop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ladyjessop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ladyjessop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}