After my last job working in addiction, I absolutely swore to myself that I'd never jump down this rabbit hole again, but alas, here I am. I took this job to get out of the nightmare of a company I worked at before. But I've come to love it already, only a few weeks in. My clients challenge me, but in a good way.
The job that I previously had in substance abuse grew me a lot. I'll be honest and admit that there are things I dropped the bag on. But that does not take away from the toxic environment that I was in. I literally cried in my car the day before my last day there. And 2021 being the whirlwind that it was, I'm back.
Coincidentally, I'd applied for quite a few jobs, and got responses from most of them wanting me to interview. It came down to this job and a job at a methadone clinic that was closer to home. I initially wanted the methadone clinic and it looked like they were leaning toward me too, but they had some last minute staffing changes and literally forgot about me. I'm glad to be at my current company though. My current supervisor is amazing and my clients are a bit more functional here (as functional as you can be for an addict, at least) and the supervisors aren't all practically blood-related, the way they were at my last treatment facility. Knowing what I know now, it makes a world of difference.
Overall, I'm feeling good this year. I feel energized. The last shit year I had before 2021 was 2017 and I remember how by the end of 2017, I just wanted it all to be over. And how excited I was for 2018 and how once 2018 hit, I was like a phoenix, shooting up into the air, ready to make the world my bitch, and I did! I started a job I liked and grew a lot from, made new friends, traveled, got to know me more. 2018 was a good year, followed by 2019 and 2020, in spite of the latter bringing essentially the apocalypse.
2021 was a doozy on all fronts, and was quite possibly the longest decade of my life. 2021 was LONG. It was painful. It started out fairly well, but the job started to fall to shit, then Andrea died, and shit just snowballed. I moved to Cali, which was cool, in spite of moving back. But it taught me what I needed to know about L.A., so when I move back in 4 years, I'll know what to expect.
And of course, the elephant in the room, my actual boyfriend. Like most relationships, things started out warm and fuzzy. I was hesitant to get too hopeful too quick, because I knew that we were still in the honeymoon phase. Knowing what I learned about myself and codependency, I wanted to make sure that things were where and what I needed them to be before I fell head over heels for Theo.
And full disclosure, I wasn't too hopeful towards the end of 2021 that things would make it. I know he cares about me. A LOT. But my caution comes in because I want to make sure that he likes the actual me, not just the idea of me. It seems to happen a lot with men. I, Malika, am the perfect woman and then some, but the reality kicks in that I'm human. I'm a real woman with emotions and feelings and expectations and wants and needs. Men have a tendency to meet me and think that I'm just the pretty walking vagina party girl, and the moment I expect honesty and connection, men look at me like I somehow tricked them. It's happened far more than I care to admit.
So anyway, things got rocky with Theo and I started to question if this was what and who I really wanted. I can say quite truthfully that I'm not afraid to be alone. I'm not afraid to be single. Sometimes I fear that getting into a relationship can derail my plans to live my life to the fullest, so I'm not really itching to move back into combining my life with that of another person.
I laid my cards on the table with Theo and demanded that he do something that I needed for us to remain together, because I was absolutely done. I give a lot of my business here as it, so I won't say what I needed from him (to protect his privacy), but I will say that he was immediately willing to give it when a lot of men wouldn't (and some didn't).
Since then, things have been absolutely smooth sailing with us. We spoke today and he said that he realized that if he wants to stay with me, he had to change some things about himself and accept what I need from him. I admitted to him that I realized (just today) that I have a dominant personality. He told me that he'd realized that already, but that it isn't a bad thing.
So things are continuing to sail along. And that's not a bad thing. Here we are. In 2022. A new year, a new space.
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