a therapist would tell me to write my feelings out in a letter to get the stream finally off my chest. my therapist left me when i told him i lost my job and couldn’t afford a session, so i guess i’ll give advice to myself.

i’ll admit i wasn’t the perfect employee. to be completely fair, i was out of the workforce for 2 years stressed out of my mind and literally the week after i dealt with hospitals for 3 months straight, i was told to move to NYC.

i had my initial fears of working for you. i could tell you hated that i didn’t have a college degree. it buged the fuck out of you. i decided to let that slide. i remember the 3rd day crying. i don’t know what the consequences were for messing up the firewall and i figured they were pretty severe. i had this gut feeling that anything i did wrong would result in some sort of harsh punishment. like an angry mother screaming at her son for breaking a vase. little did i know at the time, but that’s the exact relationship we’d have. where you’d pretend to be my mother and scream at me, while i’d sit there on your couch hoping it would stop.

i think about my friend telling me that he considered killing himself and directly blaming it on his boss. he wrote the note and everything. he had it all set and ready to go. he was pushed to his absolute limit and i don’t blame him. i forgot her name but i know if you search “want to die” on his notes app, i’m sure you’ll find it.

i never actually wanted to kill myself at work, but i understand the thought of wanting to and blaming it on a boss. it’d be relief. it’s like the best way to say “i blaming for you for fucking me up” and it’s the ultimate power move to uno reverse card all the ones you’d dealt before.

the fact you thought you pushed me that far says more about me than it does about you. i didn’t think about killing myself. i got stressed out, sure. but that was mainly being burnt out. it was an easy fix btw. i just wanted to work remote. i would be able to get up out of bed right before work and sleep immediately after. i didn’t have to look nice and iron a shirt. i’d wear what i probably slept in. i could work from my parent’s home as they grieved my aunt. i’d be able to comfortably dad as he mourned the loss of my cousin. and maybe the other cousin too.

you never understood the stress you put me under, but i don’t think it’s something i had a problem articulating. i was stressed out constantly. i asked to work more days remote, you told me “i need to bug you in the office more, so you’re lucky i give you one day”.

i never took that day remote actually. in fact, i’d tell you a week in advance because even though anyone can work remotely twice a week, working one day out of the week resulted in a

“Anthony, we’ve missed you here in the office.” despite me working from home on a Friday and coming back in-office on a Monday.

I remember you threaded to fire me because I wanted to work from home more. I told you it was easier since i always had a lot of medical appointments - which I was open about. i failed a cardiologist stress test. diagnosed with graves’ disease. often had bad reactions to ozempic, and randomly. and a sleuth of other things.

i kept an extra trash bag by my desk in case i had to throw up from my ozempic because i wasn’t allowed to stay home in the event i was actually sick.