Ep 42: I Quit My Job over Verbal Abuse | A Narc Boss | Panic Attacks & CHOOSING MY DAMB SELF!

The mic is on, the map is clearer, and the mission just got sharper. We’re opening Season Two with Survival Diaries—a deliberate turn toward stories that center how Black women survive, heal, and reimagine life in a world that keeps testing our limits. This isn’t about polish. It’s about truth told from a steadier place, where faith can shift and still affirm that God wants us whole.

We trace the path from early social posts and mommy blogs to a podcast born after a near‑spiral, then plant a stake in what comes next: intentional storytelling, cultural reflection, and moments to breathe. Along the way, I share a raw work story—public belittling at a post office counter, a 20‑minute tirade over a spreadsheet, and a last‑minute commission yanked to wound on purpose. My body remembered old patterns of verbal and narcissistic abuse: shaking hands, tight chest, sleepless loops. The lesson is simple and hard—if survival costs your nervous system every day, it isn’t survival. It’s self-erasure.

So I chose a different cost: boundaries, no‑contact, and walking away despite rent due and court dates looming. Community stepped in where cruelty tried to starve me—support arrived and, with it, proof there are other ways to live than enduring harm. We talk about decentering men, why romance can’t bloom without accountability, and how self‑love can look like closing a laptop and refusing to negotiate your dignity.

This season brings guests—Black women at every stage of the journey—plus tools that have helped me heal, including a digital journal packed with prompts and reflective questions. If your nervous system needs a place where your story is honored and your safety matters, you’re home. Press play, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find these conversations. And if you’re a Black woman with a survival story to tell, reach out—your voice belongs here.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

I have an announcement to make. For the past three years, the Out Here Trying to Survive podcast has been a place for me to tell my stories and kind of relive and unearth my trauma. I told the truth, but while I was still living inside of it. As many of y'all know, I started my first episode directly after almost unaliving myself and I decided that I really wanted to live. Now, for those of you who don't know me, I started this journey of sharing my life online and sharing my traumas online in 2005. That is when www.thefacebook.com gave me access.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Yes, yell I got on Facebook in 2000 freaking five.

From Early Sharing To The Mic

Why “Out Here Trying To Survive”

SPEAKER_00 0:44

I thought it was so cool that I could say something like, I had a sandwich for lunch, y'all, and have people be like, What kind of sandwich was it? And just share. I just found it to be so fun right away, and I loved sharing my stories. And I also had a baby that year. So in 2006, I started mommy blogging on MySpace. And then as the years went by and I continued to experience various traumas with both my mom, having a very difficult marriage, struggles in ministry, getting a divorce, getting remarried, going through an abusive marriage, having another child late in life at 40. I shared all of that on MySpace and then on Zanga, all the while on Facebook, and then WordPress, and then Instagram, and then TikTok, and then Vine. That is way out of order because Vine was like three before that. Sorry. But y'all know what I'm saying. I was sharing and I've been sharing. And then finally YouTube. But in 2023, after I almost unalived myself, I decided I want to do what I really love doing, which is public speaking. And that's something I've done over the last 20, 25 years of my career in various forms. And I love public speaking. And someone said, Why don't you start a podcast? And I thought, Oh, it's like public speaking, but I'm giving myself a job but it's not paid. Yes, sign me up. Why the heck not? It sounds perfect for me. Now I will say, like most people, when you get started with something, I had no idea the amount of work it would be to produce this podcast. I had no idea. Someone said, Oh, if you're going to record, just turn on a camera and act like that's all you got to do is just turn on a camera when really there's so many layers and multiple steps, especially when you're doing it alone and you don't have extra money to pay people to help you do all this stuff. It's crazy. But it's so much fun, and I'm not complaining because I absolutely love doing it. And when I started the Out Here Trying to Survive platform, it was because I was going through so much on the tail end of leaving my abusive ex and then just surviving post-separation abuse and also at that point now having three kids, having a really young kid, being completely fully on my own, having no help from anyone financially, and just literally climbing out from the bottomless rung of emotional depression and anxiety. I started like hashtagging different things I was writing online, hashtag out here trying to survive. And one of my friends was like, that's what you should call your YouTube channel. And then that turned into like my TikTok handle is Out Here Trying to Survive. And then when I started the podcast, I'm like, you know what? I'm just gonna keep it with that name because that is really what I'm passionate about, not only like my survival, but other people's survival. I've always been deeply, deeply invested in how to pull myself up, but also bring others with me. Now I think part of that is the way that I've been socialized as a woman. I think part of that is that's the way that black women are socialized, is that we have to help other people. But I also think that is how God made me. I literally feel like I remember thinking that way as little as like six or seven or eight from the first time one of my friends down the street her house burned down, and I was literally standing out there with her watching it burn down and she was crying. And I thought to myself, like, I it wasn't this exact thought, but something along the lines of I want her to survive, how can I help her survive? And the only thing I had at that time was a$5 bill, which is actually crazy because I never, ever, ever had money as a little kid. Never. I don't even remember holding money, cash, especially as a little kid. I don't know how I came across a$5 bill. But I thought to myself, if this will help her survive, I want to give it to her. And I remember handing it to her, and she looked at me so shocked because I I said, like, where are you going or what's next? You know, I didn't know what to say. I was a kid, okay, y'all. And I gave it to her, and I don't know. I just it's something that it's it's one of those childhood memories that's crystal clear for me where I knew this is what I'm supposed to do. I'm always supposed to help people, I'm always supposed to care for people. And that is what I hope my podcast is. And for these first three years, I feel like I've been kind of floundering a little bit, just trying to figure out where I fit in, what I enjoy, what kind of things I want to talk about. But I realized recently I've been thinking and praying a lot about the direction I want to take the podcast, and even if I wanted to continue to do it, and I decided at some point, like, of course you have to keep doing it because it's fun and I love doing it and I enjoy it so much. I really do have fun doing it. But if I keep doing it, it has to change and it has to have a little bit more direction. So, first of all, the first announcement is welcome to season two. I'm finally gonna switch seasons. This is episode 42, so just consider that season one was the first 41 episodes. I decided not to wait for an even number. I'm just going for it. We just going for it. Season two is gonna be a little different, not because the story has changed, but because I'm telling it on purpose now and I really know what I want this to be, and as it grows, the direction it's going to go in. So new themes, a new template, a new story. This season is called the Survival Diaries, which I love because it's right on theme, right on brand with who I am and the podcast. And this season is going to be a very distinctly storytelling season because I love telling stories, if you don't know me. But it's gonna be about what exactly I'm passionate about, which is how black women survive, heal, and reimagine a life in a world that consistently tries to break us. Every episode is going to center the story of how we as black women are surviving in our body, our heart, our mind, our spirit, and our soul. Even though I don't believe the same way I used to when I was walking as a, you know, quote unquote evangelical Christian, I still am extremely spiritual. I still believe that God loves us and made us and wants us to be healed and whole. And that includes all of us: our heart, our body, our mind, our spirit, our aura. So as I tell these stories, my own and others, I want to center our lived experience. There's gonna be personal stories, there's gonna be cultural reflections, there's gonna be moments to breathe, but it is going to, in no uncertain terms, center and celebrate black women and our survival. And one of the biggest changes that you're going to see is I'm going to start having guests. I have loved being a solo podcaster. I've loved yap yapp it yappity. I love yapping. But I decided that I would like to infuse some energy in here and start inviting black women who have stories to tell about their survival to come be a guest on this episode. Not on this episode, I mean in this season. So if you are a black woman who has a survival story that you would like to share, whether that is in the beginning process, you're in the midst of it, you're still processing it, or is long processed, I'm inviting everyone at every stage of their journey to share. If you are interested in being a guest on this podcast, please send me an email at outhertrying to survive at gmail.com. And if you're feeling maybe a little tug, but you're scared to share your story because people hate on you. As someone who shared my life since the year 2005 online, yes, people are mean. Yes, people will hate on you, maybe, who knows? But here's the thing, and this is my life principle that I live by. I would rather share, and I would rather any other woman share or anyone share their story, whether they it is perceived as cringe or TMI or whatever. I'd rather you share than not be here. And for me, me sharing online and me taking the time and the energy and the space to film myself sharing my stories has really saved me in many ways. And I would like to give other women the opportunity to be just as cringe as me and share their shit too. So if that's you, please email me and let me know. This change for me is a reflection of me growing as a person and really healing and wanting to share stories from a more healed perspective, my own at least. And it doesn't mean that I have everything figured out, not at all, y'all. But it is me honoring the work that I've taken to get to this place where I can now share my survival stories from a very core foundational healed level and invite others to do the same. It's really exciting. So thank you so much for listening to this long ass announcement. Welcome to season two of the Out Here Trying to Survive podcast, episode 42. Happy Valentine's Day weekend, y'all. I hope that whatever you are doing for Valentine's Day, whether you're going out with somebody's son, somebody's daughter, somebody they or them, or whoever, I hope if you got somebody special in your life that that person is loving you as well as you love you. As for me, I'm not doing anything but hanging out with my daughter on Valentine's Day. I think this is probably one of the best Valentine's Day that I'm gonna have in many, many years. Many, many, many years. And let me tell y'all why. Because I'm single. Somebody's son, there's one somebody's son who might get me some flowers. I don't even know if he will. That's how very, very single I am and rosterless I am. And I ain't sad about it at all. Actually, I'm going into this Valentine's Day so happy that I'm single, so happy that I'm unattached, so happy that I have intentionally detached myself from men. And when I think about where I was last year on Valentine's Day, last year Valentine's Day was the most painful, the most painful fuckery. I was talking to someone and I remember hoping to get a Valentine's Day text from him. And I wasn't going to reach out for to him because we were not in that place. It was like a situation ship kind of thing. But instead, I remember Valentine's Day morning last year distinctly. I have this memory of laying in bed. I, you know, just woke up. I was excited because my kids and I were gonna go out to lunch or dinner. I was gonna take them out for like a Valentine's Day dinner. And I'm just laying there and I get on, you know, I open up Facebook, and the first thing I see is this man has posted a picture of another woman and it said, This is my Valentine.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

And I was so so so shocked and sad because like three weeks earlier I had told I'd confessed to him that I felt like I was falling in love with him. So embarrassed, even telling y'all this. See, this is this is part of the healing process. This is what I was exactly what I was talking about.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

But it was a really awful situation, and I am embarrassed and ashamed of myself in some ways for how I held on hope for him, held out hope for him, because after I expressed my love for him, he expressed that he loved me too. He didn't say he was in love with me, but he expressed his love for me too. And I had said, you know, should I continue to wait for this situation? Because it seems like it's not going anywhere. He he acknowledged that yes, he had taken some time, he wasn't sure what was going on, but yes, I should continue to wait. That was like late, mid, mid to late January. And so on Valentine's Day last year, when he posted that picture of the woman who was his girlfriend, I was embarrassed, ashamed. I felt dumb. I, you know, I felt a myriad of emotions and I started bawling my eyes out. And it was it was a really weird level of grief because it had been a while, y'all, that we had been in this situation. It was over a year and a half, and so my feelings for him were very developed. My delusions of us getting together eventually were very developed in crystal clear technicolor of how our lives were going to merge together.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

I'm sorry, y'all, it's crazy. And so the pain was very acute. I had talked about him to so many people, it was just sad.

Season Two: Survival Diaries

Centering Black Women’s Healing

Inviting Guests And Stories

Share Even If It’s “Cringe”

Valentine’s Day And Choosing Single

A Work Story About Toxic Power

SPEAKER_00 12:34

And then every hour or two, I would start crying again. I would, it would hit me again every hour or two. It was a very sad Valentine's Day, and and I guess I never would have thought that I would be like one year later just in such a better place and fully, fully detached and fully decenter men out of my life. It's such a wonderful feeling. And if you have not fully decentered men yet, I would suggest you try because it is it's like heaven here. I love it here. I love it here. And the thing I'm most looking forward to for Valentine's Day is just hanging out with my kids and figuring out how to love myself. If I can, whatever I can afford to do for myself, I'm going to do. So, y'all, let's get into this episode. Again, this new season of the Out Here Trying to Survive podcast is about survival diaries. And sometimes survival means walking away from what we are taught to want. So there's a few different segments I want to share. The first segment is a story about me realizing how much I have grown and changed. But first, let me tell y'all a story. A lot of the stories that I've told y'all about me and my healing journey with men has been in a romantic way. But I want to tell y'all a story about recently dealing with a man I was working with. And it's a little different with somebody you're working with because you can't really choose who you're working with, whether or not they're toxic. If that was the case, none of us would have any jobs because there's toxic people around us. But I did go into a working situation knowing that I was going to be working for someone who had shown some pretty high toxic traits before. But like a lot of us, I just need to make money. So I'm like, let me give it a shot and I'll do my best. I think in hindsight, I probably should have thought a little bit more about how I was going to respond when toxicity came up. For some reason, I had it in my mind like he won't be toxic to me anymore because he was toxic to me before. It's just a long story. I don't want to get into it. But I wish I had decided no matter what, when I experience the toxicity, I'm going to push back as opposed to being deferential because this man was my supervisor. So I thought I just should probably be more deferential and just keep going and believe it will get better. Because the thing is, in a dating situation, now I'm at this place where if a man even sneezes at me wrong, I'm like, you're out of here. At this point in my life, I have like my tolerance level is so low for cis heterosexual men in dating. But like what I put up with in this job situation, it's crazy. It kind of went into that blurry, like, I don't even know how to respond because this man is supervising me, but also I still need to make money. So I realized as we kept working together that he was becoming more and more unhinged with how he talked to me and there was no pushback. So he just kept doing it. Now, let me give you an example. I'm in a post office and I'm supposed to be mailing something for the company. And we had previously talked about how this project that these products need to go for, it needs to get out fast. We gotta wrap this up, it needs to happen quickly. So when I get up there, I need to FaceTime him because he's going to give me the credit card number. And so when I get up to the counter, we decided that I was gonna call him because he was gonna give me the company credit card number so I could pay for it and just agree on like shipping costs and things like that. So I texted him a question and I said, Hey, you have the address wrong, it's incomplete. I need you to send me the address. It had like the final zip code numbers. There's only three of them, not five. So for some reason, when he called me, he FaceTimed me. Now, you know how when you're on FaceTime with somebody, it's on speaker. So he's on speaker and I'm trying I have the volume down. I'm trying to like keep it super low to my face because I just think it's rude when you're on the phone or you're on speakerphone in a public place, it's just weird. But I was like next in line, I felt the pressure of people behind me, like, girl, what are you doing? So I was trying not to be like, oh, call me, you know. I just was like, I'm not worried about the speakerphone thing. So I said, you know, standard rates for shipping are this, and I'm like listing off, and he's like, whatever is the cheapest. And so I'm like, oh well, if I ship it ground, it's going to be, and I was trying to explain to him if we go ground, which is yes, it's significantly cheaper, but it's gonna take a long time to get there. And I'm referencing how just of like about a three days earlier, he's like, We gotta get this project done, you know. This is we gotta wrap this up. I'm sick of this, da-da-da-da. So I was trying to explain to him, like, if we just pay like maybe five, six, seven dollars more, we can get it air and it'll be and it'll get there faster. So don't forget, I'm on speakerphone, I'm holding the phone, and so I'm starting to explain this to him, and he's like, Whatever is cheapest. Now, again, I'm in the post office and everyone around can hear this man talking to me in the rudest, most demeaning tone. Because he cut me off, there was something in me just thought, if he really understands how much longer this is gonna take, he's gonna want to pay a little bit extra. So I said, But if we pay, and I launch into it and he's like, I said whatever is cheapest, and it just goes into that like super rudeness. I was so embarrassed. I like looked up and just somebody caught my eye and like looked down. Because whenever you see or hear a man talking in a demeaning way to a woman when it was not necessary at all, it's embarrassing as hell. That was like one of the first indicators to me. Nothing has really changed because I still had a little hope. Then maybe like a week later or so, not much longer, he's frustrated at me about something. We get on the phone, and he launches into this tirade about something, and it was a very minuscule thing. And he argued that because I did this minuscule mistake, and what I did was about a spreadsheet. I did not delete some of the rows and the cells in the spreadsheet, and so he was like, Does that look done to you? Does it look done to you? Now let me state it was a school day and my daughter was home because it was a s because it was a snow day. So I had started off the the start, the call started off fine. So he he was on speakerphone and my daughter was like sitting over there on her iPad, and he's starting to argue with me about whether or not it looks done. And I'm just like, oh, okay, you know, I'll I'll delete the cells and the roads, it's not a big deal. I'm thinking I could just keep him on speakerphone because he's probably not going to go more about this. Like, hey, moving forward when you submit a spreadsheet to me, make sure there's not rows that need to be deleted. To me, it did not seem like such a big thing, but he started amping up and amping up and amping up, and then he kind of launched into how if he can't trust me with this spreadsheet, he can't trust me with this and that and this. And then that led into other things that he was frustrating me about, which were also minor things, things like when I use too many exclamation points in an email, and I need to be mirroring other people's things, y'all, that are not costing the company thousands and thousands of dollars or offending clients or customers, but exclamation points, things of that nature. He starts escalating and going deeper and deeper about all sorts of things in a ways that were very demeaning to me. And so I decided to come to my bedroom because I did not want to even risk my daughter hearing this man going off on me like that. Again, I'm just taking it, trying to be deferential, thinking, I don't know what I was thinking. I don't even know how I thought this could potentially get better. But at such a heightened stress level, I started crying because I could only take so much of the verbal berating. I looked at the clock, the meeting started at 12. He started the verbal berating about the spreadsheet at 12.05. By the time I got into my room, it was 1225. So it was almost 15 to 20 minutes straight a verbal berating. And I could not take it anymore. My body was so amped up. And as a survivor of verbal abuse and narcissistic abuse, my body knows exactly what that feels like. It knows exactly what that feels like, and I could recognize by the way my body feels. This man is verbally abusing me. And I just started crying, I couldn't take it anymore. And I thought, I tried really hard to hide it, but I thought if I explained to him, I hear you, I recognize what you're saying. This is easily fixed. I can present spreadsheets to you differently. I can easily start using a notes app or different things because he was frustrated with me about I have really severe short-term memory issues. I can start doing some things differently. If that's what you need to me to hear, I'm acknowledging it. Now let's move on. But he kept going. It took almost 10 minutes of me crying and trying to be deferential and telling him of changes I was going to make and acknowledging the mistakes I had made, albeit very little ones. It took 10 minutes of that before he calmed down at all. And what really tipped me off that I had to go at some point was towards the end of the call, he said, I'm really glad we have this talk. I feel a lot better now. I feel so much better. And what I realized from again my previous experience, both with being married to an abuser, and then a couple years after I was abused, I did uh coaching for women who are been through narcissistic andor verbal abuse. Is that a lot of times abusive men. Feel better after they abuse, whether it's battery, whether it's emotional abuse, psychological abuse, financial abuse, verbal abuse, they feel better. And it's extremely sadistic, but they in some ways get off on, they get their rocks off on taking power over people, which is why men grape. Because they feel better after they have lorded their power in a way that was unwelcome or harmful to someone else. And when he said that he felt better after verbally lambasting me for 15 to 20 minutes straight until I was crying, I knew in my heart I couldn't stay. And I was just like, I need this money so bad. But I also recognize you are literally being abused. So for the next couple weeks, I decided that I was going to do more to push back and and more to defend myself because I realized I'm probably gonna have to go anyway. So I might as well protect myself as much as I can in these next few weeks, particularly. Because I was thinking if I push really hard to try to find another job, maybe within a month I could find something else and then I can leave. But until then, I can get some money and get myself together because I came into this job financially vulnerable. So I started trying to push back, but it was very obvious that that was just leading into larger arguments. And there was one time my son was my 16-year-old son was stretching in the living room while we were having a Zoom. And after the call, my son said, Is that your boss that you were mentioning is kind of hard to get along with? And I was like, Yeah, he was like, Man, he's a jerk. And I was like, Wait a minute, could you tell? You could you could tell? And he's like, Yeah, he was that was awful. Have an allergy attack. It's you, Harley. You're giving me an allergy attack. He don't care. And just seeing that my son even recognized it, and this was not even one of his worst episodes at all. It it just it it helped affirm for me that my intuition is not wrong, that this is terrible, and that even in his quote unquote good moments, things were off. Before the straw that broke the camel's back happened, I recognized that I was getting to the point that every time we I knew that we were gonna have like a solo meeting, which we had quite a quite a few, very small company, was my hand started shaking. Going into it, I realized that my body was having like involuntary shaking over fear of just speaking to him because I knew there was going to be something, there was always something. Whatever, there was always something. And if there wasn't something, he would create something. And I'm giving y'all examples because I know y'all have experienced something like this. Like he gave me a spreadsheet with examples of how to fill it in. And he said, I want you to start putting this information in this spreadsheet. So I start doing it. Then he comes back a day later and says, Hey, don't put the names in the spreadsheet, just put the numbers. Why are you putting the names? And then I said, Because when you gave me the spreadsheet, the names were in it. But again, it's just another example of him being preemptively angry at me about something, even if it was his own doing. So my hand started shaking going into meetings because I knew I was gonna be in trouble. And I told someone that I feel like I'm always in trouble. And my friend was like, Why does it feel like you're like feeling like a little kid and like he's your dad or something, and like you're gonna be in trouble with your dad? I'm like, it does feel like that. It's terrible, and I can't I can't live like that. But additionally, after one of the times that he was really mean about something, I don't even remember what this time was about, I started having chest pain. Having chest pain was something I had consistently when I was married to my verbally abusive ex. It was a consistent issue so many times that I probably went to the hospital about eight times for chest pain. As it turns out, many of you know it's often a sign of a panic attack. I was having consistent panic attacks from being married to my ex even after we were divorced because we're co-parenting, and after our co-parenting interactions, sometimes I would feel traumatized again. I would have the chest pains. A couple years later, I got into a big fight with a girlfriend of mine, one of my dear girlfriends, and I had chest pains and ended up in the ER that night. It has been an indication that my body is at a very heightened stress level. And I'm also diagnosed with complex PTSD, but I actually don't even think that's necessarily the reason why. I think it's my body's way of letting me know you're doing too much. Whatever situation got you here, please exit the situation. And I had chest pains after one of our arguments that I was so frustrated and felt so demeaned and belittled. And I was like, girl, you got two weeks. I knew I had I had like two weeks left in me. Two weeks. But the straw that broke the camel's back that I didn't even have the two weeks anymore, was one day we get a call, a client wants to meet with us in three hours, and he tells me that he wants me to, he says, Okay, I'll give you this lead. Now, part of the reason I think he gave me the lead, because we're doing sales, by the way, is because I had been telling him and he knew that I was in a very financially vulnerable position. I was behind already in my rent, and you know, if you get any length of behind in your rent at this end to 2026, they will be like, Oh, you guys are go. So they had already scheduled a court date for me, they had already started papers for eviction, and I was feeling really heightened stress. Now, one of the agreements that we made when I started working there was that I would get a percentage of all inbound and outbound, meaning when people come to us for the products and when we went to them. And this was an inbound, and for the inbound, he made it a lot higher, like 50%, which is meaning I get as much as he gets. And he was like, Hey, I realize you're taking some risk in working here and maybe not getting paid for a little while on your outbound. So I'll give you 50% of everything I got going on so that you can be good financially, because he kind of knew I was starting off in a financially vulnerable position, having just got my master's degree last December. So, you know, when you're in that in-between stage of just getting a bachelor's or just getting a master's and you don't have your like big girl job yet, and the bill's still coming in like a flood, like that's the position I was in, is in that like weird in-between where I'm applying to a lot of stuff, but I don't have much going on yet because the process takes a while. Not to mention the whole thing about 300,000 black women losing their job in 2025, but let's not go there right now. So I saw this as an opportunity to make some money right away. I'm like, oh my gosh, yes, this is great. I'm gonna get 50% of this inbound. They're they're coming to us with a budget. They already know what they want, they already know what we can give them. They see the value, the price was high, so I knew that my commission was gonna be high, probably enough to cover several thousand dollars of rent being behind for a couple different months. So he asked me to do something about 45 minutes before. About 45 minutes before I had to go pick up my son from school. I also had to put myself together because we it was a last minute meeting, and you can't get on a Zoom for, you know, a sales call when you're dealing with six figures selling something that's worth six figures and not look presentable. So I had to take some time real quick, do hair and makeup, look presentable, go get my son from school, come back and do what he asked me to do. I was in the process of doing what he asked me to do, and as it turns out, I was not doing what I thought he was asking me to do. I didn't think I thought he was clear about what he was asking, but he was actually asking for something completely different. And so he was texting me 10 minutes before the sales call. Hey, did you do this? And I'm like, Yeah, I did. And so he's like, Okay, well, put it in da-da-da document. And so I'm like, Oh, okay, I'm sorry, just to let you know, I just had to go get my son from school. I just got home. I'm putting it in there right now. But what I put in there was not what he thought. Anyway, so he was like, You didn't put in there, you didn't, you didn't do it right. I was asking for this. And so then I'm like, oh, I did, I did do that. It just took us a while to realize that he was asking for something different. And again, it was not clear what he was asking for. It was also something that we had never done before as a part of sales calls of getting ready for these sales calls. He had led all of the sales calls up to that point because again, I'm new. Today is February 8th. I started this job on January 3rd. Okay, so I'm still pretty new to be leading sales call for products that are over six figures. So he didn't also say that I was going to lead the sales call. What he said earlier was he was going to give me this lead. So I was not prepared to lead the sales call. So he said, right before, like three minutes before it's about to start, we're literally about to hop on the Zoom and we're both scrambling and texting each other. And he says, Are you ready to lead the meeting? And I'm like, I have never led the meeting. I'm not prepared for that. I'm prepared for the call. I'm not prepared to lead the meeting. He never said that. Nor even if he had said that earlier, I would have said, Hey, I'm not comfortable yet leading the meeting. I have not done this yet. I'm not ready for that. Because watching him do it, I know that I'm not ready to do what he was doing. And so he says, You're off it. You're off the lead, you're off it. Don't even bother showing up to the call. And this has happened with him before. Well, he will have a temper tantrum and then punitively remove you from the ability to make money. So he said, and at first I thought, oh, he's having a temper tantrum per his usage. I will just go to the call anyway. Because in any other instance, he would always say, Come on the call for no other reason than just to learn the process. But for him to be like, don't even bother showing up, I'm like, okay, he's having his little temper tantrum. And then, but I'm like, whatever, it's fine. I'm still gonna go and just deal with this later. And then he says, and by the way, you're not getting any commission from this. And that's when I was like, Oh, here is the sadistic part again. Here's the sadistic part again. Because anyone would know after you just get done talking with someone who is expecting to maybe get a percentage of a large amount of money, knowing that they are financially vulnerable. I was literally just talking to them earlier that day about having to go to court on the future Monday to be potentially evicted. And this is the first opportunity that I will have had to make a chunk of money. And two minutes before the call, maybe even one minute before the call says, by the way, you're not getting any commission on this. I was like, Oh, he's getting pleasure from this. There is some sick pleasure he's getting from harming me like this. And then because the call is starting, there's no way for us to talk about it or even deal with it. And then he's telling me, Don't even, don't even come on the call. So I just said, like, you really need to calm down, bro. I think that was the most I'd ever said in terms to him, like in terms of like, please calm the F. You're doing way too much. And then I was like, I'm coming on the call anyway. And it wasn't like to change his mind, but I I did think I still want to learn the process. But while I was on it, my I felt my eyes starting to wander water, and I felt myself like realizing what he had just said. Like, did this man just tell me that he's gonna remove this commission from me? And just kind of the implications of all of that, and knowing also, I did not share this, but I had just a couple weeks ago asked for a specific contract to specifically lay out how much money I would get from every inbound sale and every outbound sale and all of that because I wanted to feel protected because I just know how he moves and stuff he's told me before, he can move real petty, and I know that he does things intentionally to hurt people because I know he's told me some of those stories before and he laughs about it. And I'm like, girl, get your contract. He never gave it to me. He never gave it to me. After the call was over, he resumed texting me about everything I did wrong, and I was trying to explain to him that I actually was prepared. He just made up this narrative that I wasn't prepared because I did not read his mind correctly and respond in the sales document with what he thought I needed, but that's because it wasn't clear what he was asking. So I was trying to tell him I actually was prepared, but you didn't take the time to gather the facts before you immediately remove me from the commission structure. And he was like, Well, you didn't do the work, you didn't do the work. And so then he goes into this whole thing and he's just texting and texting and texting and texting. Like if we were on the phone, he would have been verbally berating. He just would have gone on and on and on with no desire to actually understand or hear where I'm coming from, and with mounting cruelty. And so when someone is mounting cruelty in a text exchange where it's just like them, because you know, I'm I could just see it coming in on the computer, next long text, three or four paragraphs, and where he's just essentially having a conversation with himself, and I said I could feel myself shaky, I could feel my heart tightening, and I could feel I am about to go into a full-blown panic attack. What am I gonna do now? I thought maybe this deal could potentially give me anywhere between three and five thousand dollars that could last me for a while until I get my next sale. So I'm starting to worry, and this man is still going on and on and on, and I just wrote back and said, Hey, I need some time to cool off. I feel I don't even know exactly what I said, and I don't want to go back and look at it because I'm gonna have to see what he said. I don't want to go back and look at it. But I said, I'll come back to this, and then he said something kind of baiting. You know, someone can bait you, so he baited me a little bit. He said something like, Well, if you know how to do the work, then you wouldn't be in this position. It's not my money, it's your money you're messing with, or something like that. Something that's just kind of a little bit snippy and rude and mean, just for shits and giggles. That's the kind of person he is. And I just decided to close the laptop and silence him on my phone so that I couldn't, even if he kept texting, I wouldn't see it because I understood you are not going to garner compassion from someone who likes to harm you, which is a a conclusion I had to come to when I was married to an abuser as well. But if you're a good-hearted person, you know where I'm coming from with this. If you're an empathetic person, it's really hard to get that through your head because I would never treat anyone else like that. I almost always lead with empathy and lead with compassion. Lead with sympathy. And so it doesn't occur to me if someone is hurting, even when it's my children, because as a parent, you know, I have a responsibility to what you know what I mean, carry out the consequences or or help them understand the severity of their decisions or whatever. But if they're hurting, I'm still leading with empathy and compassion. Even if they do something stupid, even if they did something as stupid as put their hand on a stove, directly on a hot stove, like, oh, I see it's hot. Let me put my hand on it anyway. I'm still going to lead with empathy. I'm still going to lead with compassion. But there are some people in the world, men like him actually, who I think have high narcissistic traits, who when some see someone is hurting, be like, that's why you shouldn't have put your hand on a stove, bitch. They really want to make you feel worse while you're already in pain. And I recognize that that was happening, that's what was happening. And so I closed it up.

SPEAKER_01 37:36

And the next morning I went to ChatGPT and I talked for like 45 minutes, voice to text, to ChatGPT and told ChatGPT the whole story.

Public Berating At The Post Office

From Spreadsheets To Verbal Abuse

SPEAKER_00 37:49

Every microaggression, everything he said, everything he did, everything I did. Like, you know, I gave it a balanced perspective. Here is what I did. Here are the mistakes I made. Here is how I frustrated him with my issues with my short-term memory. Here are the things I did wrong. Here's the spreadsheet I did wrong. Here's where I added too many exclamation points. You know, here is where I didn't keep up with something. Here's where I forgot something. You know, there were things that I did legitimately forget. Now, did it cost us thousands and thousands of dollars? No. Did it make any big major mistakes? No, but I did forget random things like someone's name one time. Things like that. I took responsibility in my explanation to ChatGPT. Okay, y'all, I took responsibility. But I I told it every single thing, and I was like, listen, I would like to keep working here for a couple more weeks because I have at least a little bit more money coming. But at the same time, I feel significantly traumatized by this man, and it's only been a month, and I need to know what to do. I'm thinking of right now what I need to do is I need to just say I need the day off because I am so frazzled. I feel so frazzled by the day before. I took the day off and then I proceeded to have a whole conversation with Chad, and Chad GPT really helped me to understand like you are in fact dealing with some level of verbal abuse, psychological abuse, and or financial abuse just based on the facts. Now, Chad GPT said it, but my friends were also saying the same thing too. Like, girl, what are you doing? And one of my close guy friends, he was like, This sounds like a nightmare, and you need to go. So, probably like two or three hours later, after I told him that I took a sick day, I said that I wanted to leave effective immediately. And he immediately asked me for any money I had made in January back. Just so you know, the amount of money I made for working an entire three and a half weeks in January was$400. That was for some hourly work I did that I filled out a time card for January and was paid for that time card in January. He said that I didn't, I can't just quit on a dime and that he wanted the money back. And so I let him know I quit on a dime because this is fully, completely emotionally unsafe. I'm experiencing psychological and verbal abuse. I cannot keep working, even though I wanted to. I was actually enjoying the actual job. But he said he was going to leave me a detailed explanation of why I owe him this$400 back after working full time for three and a half weeks. The fucking audacity. But also keep in mind, this is someone who knows that I literally at that point had started a GoFundMe to help me to figure out how to cover back rent from being in this weird in-between and not working and then working for him for three and a half weeks, getting$400 and then him asking for it back while he knows me and my children are about to get evicted. I think it just takes a special sort of psychopath potentially to expect that to even ask of that. It's weird. And um, I basically told him to go f himself. Not literally, but I did write a very strongly worded email in as much legalese as I could, but I still was basically saying fk you and f your money and f your company because yeah, no, just no. I wanted to share that story because what happened to me was so different than any other point I've dealt with men like him. I have one, let it last longer and not did what I need to do to protect myself. In this instance, I was a little bit tempted to just take it for a little while longer so that I could get that money. But I realized my nervous system can't handle that, number one. And number two, I should not have to live a life where I have to keep enduring men's abuse in order to survive. And I'm putting my foot down and declaring to myself, to my children, to my friends, to the universe, to God that I am not willing to sacrifice myself, my love, my love for myself, my mental health so that I can survive. There has to be other ways of surviving in this world other than willingly allowing yourself to be abused. Like that's not okay, not anymore. And I've done it in the past and I refuse. I'm drawing my line in the sand, I'm drawing it. And I realized that I could try to appease to him, try to do this or that, but I'm not going to prioritize or center men's comfortability anymore in any way. And I had been doing that with him, and again, it was that blurred lines of like, this is my boss, but like in it, if it were a romantic, like we're dating or seeing each other, it never would have gotten as far as it got, just period. But there was that money on the line, and being in a financially precarious place, I was like, I could take someone being mean to me a little bit longer. And I did that from January 3rd to whatever it might have been February 3rd or February 4th. So for one month. But when I finally sent him that email, the end of the email, the final email that I sent him said, I do not consent to any further communication from you at all. I do not want to hear from you ever again in my lifetime. And I did let him know, like in 30 years of working, I have never experienced a supervisor be so demeaning and so belittling to me. This is the most obnoxious treatment I've ever received from any supervisor. And that includes my teen years when I was working at like fucking Taco Bell and Red Lobster and shit. Even then, you might have a shitty supervisor, but just being full on demeaning, belittling, psychologically and verbally abusive is something I'd never experienced before. And at my big fucking age of 49, I hope to never experience again, especially from a young man. After I sent that email, and this is the part that I want to tell y'all, even before I sent the email, when I got his email to me that said, like, can you please return the laptop and da da da da da da? Every time I saw an email exchange from him, my whole body just flipped, my whole stomach started turning and flipping, like any communication. From him was completely triggering my body. But I had three nights, maybe four, I think three nights, where I literally couldn't sleep. And this is the part I want to tell y'all. I decided already to stick up for myself. I decided already I was going to leave effective immediately. I sent him the email, the text. I decided already I was going to return the things and let him know, please do not ever try to contact me ever again in your lifetime. I'd already decided these things, but I couldn't sleep very well because my mind kept replaying stuff that he said, stuff that I said in response. It kept replaying how sad I felt, how angry I felt, how I felt betrayed, how I felt scared, just constant ruminating thoughts and then also constant looping thoughts. My mind couldn't stop ruminating on everything. I couldn't stop looping what he said, what I said, what he said, what I said, even rehearsing almost by heart the email that I sent back. And I just wanted to share with y'all that part because I think sometimes when we know we need to do something to protect ourselves, we forget like there is still a cost on your nervous system. And it takes a while for your body to calm down and recognize that you're safe again. It's not always instant. And in this instance, it wasn't instant. It was three days of my body trying so hard to be like, hey, you're you're actually safe now. You don't even have to keep thinking about this. You don't have to replay what he said. You don't have to replay what you said. You can literally just take some deep breaths, know it's over, know that he has no way of contacting you. I mean, I'd swear I do not ever want to hear his voice again. That's how traumatized I feel by this situation, even still. And I just wanted to give y'all a picture of like what self-love can look like in action when it's not just affirmations. Because for me, this story is a reflection of my self-love and my decision to love myself. And then you know what happened that felt so great afterwards is I was so worried about this little$800 that I was maybe gonna get from him. I only say maybe because I don't even know if he was actually gonna pay that to me since he kept changing his mind about pay. But I did end up putting all of my energy into sharing the GoFundMe and just letting people know where I was at. And it ended up getting funded and even overfunded, not a whole lot over, but enough over. Oh my god, I just realized something. I just realized this, y'all. It got$800 overfunded. That's crazy. I just realized that. Oh my god, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 46:30

That just gave me chills. Like, literally, look at this. I got goosebumps. I have actual goosebumps.

When Your Body Says “Leave”

SPEAKER_00 46:37

It got exactly$800 overfunded. Oh my gosh, wow, that's cool. That's really fucking cool. I never thought about that before this moment. It just was a it was it was like God in the universe letting me know, like, hey, I got you. You do not have to remain in situations where you are being abused by men in order to survive. Y'all, I was gonna talk about some other things that have to do with Valentine's Day in this political moment and how us women out here are tired of men. We are tired about male violence, about the epiphiles, about men's silence, about women's rage. I had this whole list, but I feel like since this episode has gotten kind of long, I'm going to honor the story I just shared and let that be enough. And actually, I think I will film this one for another day. But one thing I will say about this Valentine's Day that I really feel very acutely, particularly given this most recent instance with the man that just was very troubling. But I think this is a reflection of where women are at in general, a lot of us. It's like, why would our nervous system crave romance right now, in at least in America, in a country that refuses accountability for the many, many, many, many crimes towards women and children? There is just no part of my mind, my soul, my body, my heart that is craving romance right now when all I see is men not taking accountability for themselves and not even speaking out against the men who've done this kind of violence, and then also seeing other men who are gasp still aligning with and siding with people who are responsible for committing such atrocious crimes. It's just I'm disgusted. I'm disgusted with men right now, just disgusted. So yeah, I think part that's part of the reason why I'm going into this Valentine's Day happier than I've ever been. It's in part because number one, the men who I have any sort of talking to, communication with, again, I don't have a roster right now. I'm not dating anyone. I have someone I'm kind of talking to like a little bit, but we don't even talk very often and we don't date very often. I don't even remember the last time I saw him in person. So it's really not like a thing that makes sense. But even the men I am attracting who have come to me and have said to me, I would like to be in your life in some way, are higher quality men, like actually men who I've known for a while, I trust, they're good men. And for one reason or another, it's just not moving forward in part because I really don't want to date right now. But even then, part of what's making this Valentine's Day lovely for me is a really solid clarity. Because I would have thought before maybe that like fully decentering men would have made me feel lonely, but it didn't. It's actually made me feel clear. I just want to give y'all the same permission that I feel. If you need permission to not feel romantic, permission to rest, permission to be angry at men right now, permission to not be desirable or to make yourself more desirable, if you know what I'm saying, permission to choose peace over proximity to men or others. Baby, you got it. You you got all the permission from me. You have all the permission from me to choose yourself and to choose self-loyalty. I'm excited to tell y'all that I have an out here trying to survive journal coming out soon. If y'all know me, you know that I love journaling. I love putting words to paper and I love getting my thoughts out there and I love prompt questions. I love me a good prompt. So my journal is going to have lots of great prompt questions for you, lots of space for you to fill it in. It is going to be a digital product, which you can print out, but it is created for you to look at on your phone or iPad or computer. And they are prompts and questions and things that I've used to facilitate my own healing journey. And I want to share that with y'all. So if you are not yet, please sign up for my sub stack. You can sign up here and you will get more information about the journal as it becomes available. And a quick little note, yeah. If you haven't yet, you can pick up my book, Grace Actually, Memoirs of Love, Faith, Loss, and Black Womanhood. It is available on Amazon and digital, and so you can get it on your Kindle. If you are still here, I am so grateful. You could be anywhere in the internet streets. And if you're still here with me to the end of this episode, I thank you so much and I appreciate you. I'm so excited about this new season, and I look forward to sharing with y'all. So I will see y'all on the next episode. Bye.