Allusions to Flight, Illusions of Flight?

I was enjoying the exhilarating flight on Tuesday after turning in the application, and really loving that feeling that finally things are going my/our way after all these years. Yesterday, I was still skimming the breeze, gradually descending to a peaceful landing, envisioning my rhetorical feathers ruffling pleasantly in the breeze, and enjoying the aftermath of a wonderful, peaceful soar.

Then, early yesterday afternoon, in a back and forth email with DH, he said, "[I'm] stressed out, not sleeping well, everything [department] related in this place is a disaster. I seriously was thinking of finding another job last night...they want to speed everything up to get it done and I can only be in so many places at once."

We knew when he took this position that it was not going to be a cakewalk. Even before he officially started there at the end of December, they were hitting him up on how to handle this crisis and that crisis. So, the ensuing chaos in the department he took over isn't really surprising. What he didn't realize was that they want all sorts of things implemented before an upcoming company-wide event that is about eight weeks away.

DH is in a particular field where impossible expectations are the norm, where people not in that field honestly think what they want can be done in a day or week and not have to expend money, whereas the truth is that it takes weeks or months, and is usually rather expensive.

The relevant point in all of this is that if he's voicing the thought that he'd seriously considered looking for another position seven weeks after starting this one--even momentarily--it puts everything we've planned in jeopardy. The Ireland trip, the weekend in Chicago DH wants to do this summer, my weekend in Indy with my girlfriends this fall, and most importantly, the adoption.

At one point after I got home from work, I lost it. I brayed like a donkey, wept like a shattered child. I'm so fearful that the pattern of plans and dreams being taken away in these last ten years was resurfacing, and with that dark thought I pretty much crawled up the stairs to the guest room and wailed like a child. The surfacing dread came to the fore that if everything goes to shit, we'll have to pass on adoption again... and the certain knowledge that if we don't go through with it now, in this time frame, it will never happen.

~~

After I crashed down to earth in a violent explosion of feathers, I tried to get ahold of myself. I told myself that I'm overreacting, and I'm catering to my wide streak of native cynicism. And yet... yet... there's that streak of deep knowledge of my dearest husband, who is the most mellow, self-sufficient, and engaging of people, is drowning in this lake of job-related despair. If he's being affected that badly, then it is that bad. I know all about jobs that just suck the soul out of a person, where the job is in your head 24/7, and not in a good way--I've had two of them, and at the end of those horrible days, I would go to the bedroom and cry stormily and be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. So yeah, I know all about it. Been there, done it, completely get it.

And so between dealing with the upwelling of my fears and trying to tamp down my cynicism, I'm worrying about DH.

I had bought things for dinner - I was going to make the beef kabobs and the brown rice we like so much. I was such a wreck that I couldn't bear to go down to the kitchen and get it started. I stayed upstairs, stared at the screen, tried to gather my wits that were scattered like the feathers that scattered upon impact. DH said he was heading home; I had to get my brain in gear and my emotions in check--he doesn't need me freaking out too.

When I heard the garage door open, I raced downstairs so that the lights were on and everything would seem normal. The last thing I wanted to do was add to his stressors.

~~

I suggested we go out and talk over a beer, not because we're alcoholics or need the buzz, but because we'd be out of the house, away from the phone, the TV, the computer, and other distractions. It is literally a single beer each together when things are out of whack. There's just something about the ritual of talking over a beer in our relationship that calms the nerves and settles the frazzled brainwaves for us. He had Coors on tap, I had a bottle of a local beer, and we each ordered salads, nothing heavy. We both were so overwrought we could barely think of eating anything heavier than lettuce.

I did not speak to him of the crushing fears in my mind; instead, I found out what was bothering him so much, and why, and why the situation going nuts.

His "problem" (if you want to call it that) is that he does not normally like to play the heavy, doesn't prefer playing the asshole (even though he's fully capable of it as a Jersey Boy), but I think the situation, and the position, requires him to be a hardass. He said that even his immediate supervisor said he has to become more aggressive and push things through, and said that he, the supervisor, would back him up.

My advice was to essentially agree with his supervisor, and for him to push back on all the people trying to dump on him, as his title and his position does allow for that. It's clear that there can only be three or four major projects on at once with the skeleton crew he has, and that he has to pick the three/four and make it clear that nothing else is on the plate until one of the first four get done. And delegate the hell out of things--he's dealing with things now he shouldn't even see unless it's at a boiling point, since he is now upper management, and things along that line.

By the end of the beer and salads, he felt better, and because he did, I did. We both felt lighter, more positive, and more ready to deal with things.

~~

We both went to bed relatively early last night.

Since DH had not slept worth a damn in previous nights, I asked him this morning how he'd slept and how he felt. "I slept wonderfully; I feel fine."

"See?" I said, "You need to vent to me sometimes and not hold it in." Ha, pot meet kettle.

I was very glad he had sleep--he does not function well without it.

All sorts of smiles, hugs and kisses before I left for work.

~~

Now that I've recovered from the abrupt end to my flight, my outlook is better this morning. I've found my feathers and are sticking them back in with superglue and needles. The world is not ending, at least not yet, and everything is intact this morning.