From the day after the tragedy

Not even 12 hours after my dad’s death was confirmed, the next morning, my manager from work came over. I greeted her and went back to my room where I had my two friends who had been with me in Spain,  providing some comfort. I was in a daze from shock. The manager interrogated my mum, trying to find out when I could go back to work, it was a busy time for this to happen and I was needed there. Apologies that my dad’s pain and tragic ending was at an inappropriate time because semester one was coming up. 

My mum was in shock and this distressed her. She replied, “Why are you talking about work at this time? Where’s my husband? Where’s the children’s father? We haven’t even planned the funeral yet, you know?” Are people seriously human or completely devoid of human empathy? No wonder the dynamic with this manager changed as soon as I had a team to manage. She began bullying and harassing me to treat certain staff on my team the same way in times of grief and illness. And here I am, abused by the current university senior executive group, for being an ethical, law abiding, and more importantly, compassionate and humane citizen and supervisor. 

I’m so afraid. I lost my dad to suicide, with all the attitude and stigma that still exists in communities, coming at me in full force from the very beginning. Then someone I thought was actually good and kind, killed off my future dreams. And then all my hard work surrounding my career, my purpose (in addition to the family I always wanted), there have been massive attempts to destroy this too. 

Are the authorities going to let it happen? It’s the job and core responsibility of SafeWork NSW and SIRA NSW to stop it. Everyone else is letting it continue to happen. I had one bully I needed to resolve an issue with – now I have the Hydra of Lerna, to use Greek mythology in my heritage. A head made up of snakes. You cut one off and two would grow back in its place. Even Hercules needed a helping hand with that challenge. There has to be something good around the corner. I can’t survive all this anymore. Can the reader see how strong I’ve been to tolerate all this? The malicious rumours by the Hydra and power abuse supported by undisclosed conflicts of interest, is a massive no no, in a time the Australian and NSW Governments are promoting mentally healthy workplaces and managing psychosocial hazards.

Going back to the day after the tragedy, there were people coming over constantly at that time. It was overwhelming. On the Thursday, the phone wouldn’t stop until we finally disconnected it. Mostly because we had more relatives calling with toxic words. A cousin, who was my first traumatic experience of the toxic and destructive nature of narcissism, from as far back as a child as I can remember, had the audacity to call.

She called to say awful things including, “Your father was a piece of work, rip the suicide note and throw it out.” My dad never said anything bad to her or about her (but she is the same personality type as the manager). Narcissists ultimately have nothing good to say about anyone and kick you at your most vulnerable. That’s beyond cowardice. It’s an extremely low and immoral act. This cousin was living interstate at the time, making an extra effort to pay airfare, to come to Sydney to attend the funeral. To pay her respects? Obviously, no. It was a somewhat theatrical show of pushing back her father (my dad’s brother), to demonstrate how much she hated him, and also to engage in gossip. This cousin has a poisonous tongue (refer to the incident of the call two days after my dad took his life). But it seems, as I came to realise, many in society do. 

Everyone walks away from personality types like that. I’ve become aware of the patterns of behaviour to stay away from the start these days. But what happens when you’re meant to work closely with your manager in a new role and she is that personality? You can say I almost died from toxic poisoning with what I’ve been through. Intolerable. I felt something was not right. Every time I ignored that gut feeling in my life, I ended up paying the price.

The last thing we needed back then was a call from the US. A cousin of my dad’s. He started interrogating my mum demanding to know if she was to blame. Glad she told him he was distressing her and hung up. When his son died, I told my brother, don’t call to give condolences, they’re all (expletive). He just lost his son and my brother’s call gave him ammunition to attack us on different things – a man I’ve rarely seen in my life.

I’ll leave it there for now, because it gets worse and there’s only so much I can cope with writing about in a post. I’m in shock and my body’s shaking from trauma. I can’t believe the cruelty of so many people. As I said in the premise: the greatest disease of our time is indifference coupled with narcissism. 

Many people targeted in such organisational, systemic and institutional abuse don’t make it this far. I have to do my part, using my skills and attributes, to change that. I’ve compiled so much shocking evidence. I can now see how the high priests and religious in Jesus’ time successfully persuaded and coerced people to free Barabbas and crucify Jesus. People condemned the systemic abuse I experienced in my past. But they are the ones also doing what they condemned. They shouldn’t be so quick to think they’d never be coerced to free Barabbas and crucify the innocent Jesus, had they lived in that time. If we look at human nature and history more closely, we will find that history repeats. When will the lesson be learned?