The 5 stages of Grief

Grief is universal.
It has touched each and everyone of us in some major way in our lifetime;
Grief could be trivial or life altering.
We find ourselves changed in the end but to first live and survive through it we must first come to terms with the thing.

I find myself in the throws of what are known as "The 5 Stages of Grief."

Stage 1. Denial.
When I first heard that they were replacing both pharmacist at my job and two of my useless coworkers, I thought great new people!

 I've been under a constant bombardment of stress, all of December, ever since they bought the pharmacy next door and acquired all the loons that came along with it.
New pharmacists and coworkers, why it's just the thing this place needs right now.
February was looking like a bust, the car had me miserable, surely March had to be different.


It was on a very busy Sunday that the rumors began swirling about Dragon.
I couldn't believe it, did not want to even entertain the idea of her possible resurfacing into my little calm life.
I've managed to dodge her for a long time, avoiding floater shifts at her pharmacy.
I couldn't picture hearing her whiny, nasally voice barking orders at me.
I didn't want to imagine her shiny scales shimmering off the computer screens  behind me.
I couldn't imagine her lasting for long at my pharmacy anyway even if she was to transfer there.
My pharmacy had become infamous.
We were officially a "challenged store."
Every single one of us had a horrible nemesis patient who sought out to ruin our day with constant complaints and outlandish unmedicated outbursts.
Dragon is an anxiety riddled large child, throwing temper tantrums here and there.
This pharmacy would eat her alive.
They can't send her here, what are these people thinking.
No way she's going to be my new boss, no fucking way!

Stage 2. Anger.
Monday Morning and there is a very flashy Red Mustang in the parking lot.
I immediately knew who's car that was.
Holy fuck nuggets, Smaug has taken over the Mountain.
As I open the door to work, there she is.
Smug Smaug.
She starts making changes immediately, remodeling the pharmacy to make room for her enormous ego.
She's making stupid choices too, like taking down the shelves with all the OTC (over the counter) meds because "It's ugly to look at."
What!? Ugly? No stupid reptile, you're ugly.
Don't go touching things here, you're a tourist, a drifter just passing through town. Don't you dare grow roots here.

I am livid.
I am stuck with her again. No!
God I couldn't believe I would be having a birthday in the presence of this monstrosity.
It's bad enough I have to age, I don't want to get older with her!
I hate that I have to kiss her ass and pretend I don't hate her stupid guts.
Why is she here!?
Why Lord, am I really such a bad person to be punished this way?
 Fuck man as if this stupid job wasn't hard enough already.

Stage 3. Bargaining. 
It was official, she was here to stay.
She was already making waves at the pharmacy.
There was even an incident where she had one of our more colorful patients make her cry.
She had made enemies with our more seasoned overly medicated narcotic meds only patients.
She went one complete week denying Vicodin, Adderals, Oxycontin's, Morphine and Methadone..
Our usual customers hated her stupid guts more than I did.
My only comfort was in the little hope I had every morning, as soon as the alarm blared, I would lie in bed for five full minutes and pray that today she wouldn't go off in one of those bipolarish moods of hers.
Please Lord above or below, anyone out there??
Zeus, Allah, Easter Bunny?
Someone please make this woman call out of work or transfer out due to a nervous breakdown or something, please..
I promise that I will work harder and try to be a better mom, or girlfriend, maybe I could look into charity work or serve the homeless.
Please someone out there just take her out.. I will be be ever so grateful.

Stage 4. Depression.
I found myself crying in the shower every morning, crying in the car on the way to work.
I found myself sleeping less and bingeing more.
I am depressed.
My fate is sealed.
Maybe it's time to find another pharmacy to work at, maybe it's time to find another line of work.
You win this one Dragon, the place is all yours.
Working with her is awful. She makes me feel like nothing I do is eery good enough, like I'm a rookie. I find myself making first year mistakes too. I feel like I can't do anything right.
My house is a mess, I work so much I have no time to do laundry or do housework, all I really want to do is just lay in bed.
I chase painkillers with alcohol and pass out into the late night, it's the only way I will get any kind of sleep.
I am a moody mess, fighting with my boyfriend over nonsense, isolating myself and gaining weight. Ugh gaining so much weight. I am so fat. I don't want to be looked at.
I'm disgusting :(
I'm a big sad lonely mess.
I don't feel like anything good is going to ever happen to me. I'm just not one of those lucky people that look so put together and have so much going for them.
I can't have it all, can't even have some..

Stage 5. Acceptance.
The Pharmacy has stabilized finally.
My other pharmacist who had her own reputation for being an uber bitch actually doesn't piss me off.
On Tuesday she and I worked alone for ten complete hours without incidents.
She even kept commenting on what a perfect day it was.
I don't have a nickname for her yet although she talks with a Lisp...
Maybe Lisp lady would suit her.
Dragon is still annoying but she annoys everyone so I thank God for small miracles, at least I'm not the only one getting burnt from her fire breathing flames.
Our new head honcho at corporate is checking up on the progress at the store and scolded me for dropping my score in "Action notes" which is just fancy medical jargon for me being too busy to call patients and let them know if we are out of stock on something or if their insurance doesn't cover their herpes medications anymore.
I was taken aback by him and upset. To imply that I would purposely slack off is to insult my character. I've been busting my ass working six days a week for this place.
I blurted out that I would work harder if I knew that the end justified the means ergo my performance review that was due in October would be done, I was due for a raise last year. How can I work so hard for a company who only acknowledges the bad but ignores the good.
The head honcho said no worries he would take care of that.
So on Thursday Morning Dragon surprised me by having me sign my performance review. It was good, I exceed expectations.
Sometime next week they will sit down with me and let me know how much my raise will be, and not only that I will get retroactive pay for all of last year and this years pay adjustment.
The majority of bad patients from the merger have all but transferred out so now we have less patients again. We are all in the process of just re acclimating ourselves with the pharmacy sans craziness again.
They are changing my schedule around, giving me a schedule of five days a week and promising to not cut my hours so I can continue to receive my full (40) time hours.
If I can just not feel like my carpal tunnel is going to kill me or my legs will stop trying to buckle on me than I can survive this.

So folks looks like I'm stuck here until further notice with Smaug.
Good thing I'm an excellent Burglar or I could be in some serious trouble.

Sleep, Purge, Work, Repeat..

I'm officially a full time employee at the pharmacy.
Since December have been working 6 days a week, 40 hours, and sometimes when overtime is authorized, up to 60 hours.

My pharmacy bought the neighboring pharmacy that's been around for 20 years next door.
With their closing, my pharmacy bought all the patients and even their pharmacist.
The poor patients had no idea of the change and my little workplace next door didn't either.
We were unequipped for the doubling of patients.
Both my current pharmacists were shook up, my favorite one who I just about consider one of the sweetest people I know immediately got transferred out.
I was devastated, not only was she gone they brought in this older male person to take her place.
He was there not because he was more capable than her but because he was there as a transition piece, a friendly face to ease in the sudden changes that were hitting too close to home.

Work had been a mess. Too many new patients with NO PATIENCE.
It's been difficult and strenuous on me physically and mentally.
I find myself exhausted all the time.
My Insomnia at full force, I find myself sometimes surviving on 2-3 hours sleep a day, and the worst of it is when I do fall asleep, all my dreams involve the pharmacy.
The new rich, snooty customers bitch at me daily and call me degrading, insulting names.
I've cried 3 times in front of customers and coworkers. I even snapped on more than one occasion, yelling back at a patient.
I had one woman who was upset that her medication wasn't ready snatch an insurance card right out of my hand, instantly that just caused me to yell at her forcefully and then storm out to cry in the employee bathroom for five full minutes.
Not one of my better days.

It's been a challenge.
Financially the money has been good, but how quickly it goes out.
My saturn has been a money pit, my GOD has that car sucked all my monies.
I finally invested 200 more to the inflated expenses when the very next day my engine blows and I have no more car.

My "mechanic" or rather my ex's has been scolding me practically every time I fucking see him about the importance of taking your time and car shopping (with him) so finally I have no choice but to buy another car, to dip into my savings from my tax return.
The problem with working full time is that I have no time to do anything, let alone car shop.
I missed 3 days already from repairing the Saturn, I couldn't afford to miss anymore so I had to go car shopping with my ex's mechanic on Friday afternoon after work, and then Saturday my only day off.
My ex's mechanic makes me feel uncomfortable. He's constantly eating me up with his eyes and telling me "how good I look" it's awful.
He's an older man, looks like Meat Loaf's character in Fight Club.
The man has bitch tits people.
Anyways he's also lazy and over charges me at every turn.
Case in point my last major car repair with him, some belt that popped in my car as I was with my boyfriend and the kids heading to the bakery. He charges me 200 for the job, my car works again...(very next day car breaks for good!)
I come to find out belt in actuality only costs 50$
He clearly robbed me blind.
I don't know many mechanics, I have no clue what to do if my tire gets flat or when to change the oil? I've just started to pay more attention to things under the hood but you won't catch me rebuilding any engines any time soon.
All of my brothers are estranged and have never taken an interest in my life without getting something in return. I feel alone and vulnerable, who will help me?


So I need a car.
My ex's mechanic suggests I look on Craig's List for auto's.
My max price is $1500.00, I cannot afford any car more than that. I just paid 500 for 6 months worth of car insurance already.
The money is evaporating.
I try my best in my short time to find a few cars in my price range, the mechanic and I agree to meet up on Friday after I get home from work to start the car search.
The car I'm interested in is $1700 or best offer so I'm thinking my 1500 should sway a seller..maybe.
The seller has school and will be available to show the car after 6pm, so I relay the message to my mechanic.
He takes his time and even calls me to let me know he's having dinner with his brother at a pizza parlor!
At almost 9pm this stupid shithead wants to show up and go car shopping!
I told him it was too late, he then has the audacity to say "Hey I'm going out of my way to help you, I don't like your attitude sweetheart, get someone else to help you."
Can you believe this hair band reject?!

What was I going to do now?
Luckily my boyfriend came to the rescue and took me early to look at potential buys.
Oh that Saturday was a memorable one. The day was dark and stormy.
All those potential buyers were full of shit, my top choices were now my non choices.
Last on my list was a tiny Daewoo hatchback for 1200..
The seller was wishy washy at times but in the end the car was finally available for a showing.
At first glance the little silver egg looked normal; no leaking of any kind, it had a motor that made no noise, the interior was simple and clean. The test drive around the trailer park that housed it was different, this car didn't have those awful tell tale signs of the Saturn. The car appears ok.
So the seller tells me the passenger window doesn't go down, and the driver's side visor doesn't go back up.
The mileage on the car was only 47,000 miles, hardly driven.
The paint on the little car is worn, the tires are missing a hubcaps too.
This car isn't the prettiest woman at the prom, not who'd you normally dance with, but given enough peach schnapps...Hey how you doing?!!
So in my haste I convinced the seller to give me the car for 1000 bucks.
And just like that I had a car.
Now I had to rush and make it to the Tag agency before they closed at four, I needed to renew my registration since my birthday was looming.
So 150 dollars and a new license plate later and the car was ready to hit the open road.
It drove like a dream.
I'm scared shitless of course, cars have traumatized me.
So far I've invested an oil change and new tires on this thing, I need to just fix my window and install my radio and maybe then this car will be okay.
I've had horrible buyers remorse but keep trying to see the positive in the decision I've made.

So I'm stressed to the max and have completely given up on exercise, have been binging and purging. I've gained back 10lbs.
I hate my body.
I'm feeling very depressed lately.

While I'm struggling in Miami with my Ed, my sister has been going through her own health scares with her own Eating Disorder.
Her laxative abuse has caused her to develop Kidney stones.
The poor thing has been hospitalized twice now because of it.
I try my best to give her advice but she seems to keep toppling backwards.
I only wish I lived closer to offer support.

The pharmacy is now with all new Pharmacy managers as they have transferred both old Pharmacists out.
Guess who's my new boss again?
DRAGON.
Oh yes, Smaug is back.
She is just as annoying as ever.
God.
I really hate my job now.
My only hope is that the pharmacy will break her.

My daughter is doing well, she even had her aunt flow come to town!
I was not prepared for this.

I've had a birthday recently. (OLD)
My boyfriend and I are still together, on April 15 we will make 3yrs.
He's trying to fix my car quirks for me so I can save on a few bucks. I'm all for it.

Life is pretty much going on for me, I only hope to join its pace too.
That's it for now.
Talk to you al again soon.