Confessions of a libra

Black fatigue | Credit: Here

[ Read after Oracle In The System & Meritocracy as Myth ]

05.09.25

When you’ve lived in a city as big as Melbourne most of your life, it starts to feel small – excruciatingly so. I’ve always lived in such a way, that what I do not want to interact with, I reposition myself away from. I will go as far as I need to avoid interacting with someone I don’t like. So you can imagine my surprise when I get accepted to work for this Disability Support company and on the first day, as I waited to be collected, who should walk past but J, a very close friend of my first love. The one who broke up with me when I exited from the job at the postal service. The one who said I should have asked him or waited longer, despite being there for every health appointment.

He was there to collect me after having a colonoscopy to try and figure out what was going on with me. When the doctor said it was stress, he was there for the morning meditations. He was there for the yoga. I transformed his life, and his health through transforming mine. A part of me believed that he hated that I had been out earning him since the start of our relationship. Once I moved in with him, in his parents’ investment property, that’s when slowly but surely his attitude changed, leading to the break up.

I spent years trying not to hyperfixate on how he was likely twisting what happened between us. I swallowed that out there his friends, his family and any of our mutuals likely had changed their opinion of me based on his words. Spirit dropped me so many dreams and updates about him, which in a sense we helping me heal from him in real time. I was able to see women he was engaged with after me in my dreams. I was able to see when he was suffering mentally and emotionally. Yet all I wanted, was for my psyche to be free of him. Honestly, the limerence that wouldn’t end, should have told me that he was a karmic partner.

Back to the new job, J walks past me and says hi. I responded and only after he left the reception I told someone who he was to me. No matter, we were not directly in the same team, despite it being a small company. I thought to myself if life wants to test me this way, bring it on. I was hired to be a part of the Rostering Team, rostering support workers to go support different clients with their various needs. I chose this industry because it’s still aligned with people care. I have always been a compassionate person, and I wanted to learn more about those in need.

I was trained by this White lady, my direct report. Let’s call her Angel, because I like irony. I quickly picked up on rostering and enjoyed how similar it was to dispatching Technicians to respond to faults – per my earlier career. There was a new addition to this role. I had days that I would have to be on call. Taking the laptop and work phone home, being available essentially the whole night to make rostering updates. I would typically not receive anything from midnight to 5am, but from then the morning sick messages would start coming in. I would then start calling and texting around to cover shifts. I didn’t mind the logistics of it, but always wondered if the conditions and support in the industry were better – would people be more willing to pick up shifts?

Angel was a chain-smoking, bogan, lesbian mum who had genuine passion for her children but a messy private life. The first week I started was actually the week of the Christmas Party, so it may have been an unfair way to be acquainted with her. She was super messy, exposing her breasts to the men present. At work, she was a different beast altogether. Seemingly could not control her own emotions, her particular issue being anger. She would get herself in such a tizzy and start yelling expletives to staff or about them. She was the part of the job I found the most challenging.

By the end of the month, I had a lot of things mapped out that I wish I didn’t. Angel had made herself indispensable to the owners; one Indian man and his business partner this Black man. This meant both that she had too much on her plate causing her stress, but also she had the monopoly. Her horrible attitude, inability to regulate her emotions and talking down to staff grated on the others who joined our team after me. Mainly 2 other White women, both lovely human beings that deserved more than that job. Angel was causing us all literal anxiety, because she was feeling it.

I also felt really bad that the Disability Industry is FULL of people of colour, yet their altruism didn’t stop them from experiencing racism. There were clients who told me they didn’t want an African or anyone who wasn’t ‘Australian’, a code word for White. As with many of my jobs where I am primarily on the phone, the only thing tipping people off that I might not be White is my name. But even then, they would forget because I sound like them, I joke like them and I use their language. The brain would override the name thing, and people would confess all sorts of prejudices to me.

Over the years I have had a man complain to be about the Indigenous populations he lived amongst (a man from WA), a White woman at the blinds job who had a lovely conversation with me only to talk about ‘Rhodesia’ and how the Blacks there were dangerous. She immediately thought when I said I was from Zimbabwe, that I was White. That’s what I mean by prejudice, people do not expect someone with my accent and intelligence to not be White. It’s a kind of erasure I am well acquainted with.

One of my colleagues told me that she contacted her doctor and was prescribed Valium to be able to stand working with Angel. She offered me some, and I took half to try it. I had never had it before and had suffered anxiety for so long. I wanted to see if I was missing out and if it was something I should push for with my own doctor. I felt that it calmed me, but I didn’t like my own mind on it so I didn’t pursue it further. It was very telling though, and as usual I decided I would leave this job. The thing about me though is, the day I first decide to leave is rarely the day I do. I have my theory on why this is.

I do believe Spirit sends me into workplaces to test their integrity, and to usher good people out who do not have the courage. I have the courage of a 1000 lions, and I often let people borrow from my well. As such, me and the girls started talking about an exit plan. It’s not that the work was impossible, or not enjoyable. It’s that Angela had too much unchecked power. I’m also not surprised to see men of colour deferring to White men or women. Sometimes, it makes them feel safer or White-adjacent. They don’t see things with the glaring c clarity that I do. I have never seen Black or men of colour, defer to White people and it benefit them more than just on a surface level. People’s racism and prejudice runs way deeper than you think.

Just the fact that a White person would treat you ANY differently from the next White person, is all the data you need, that they think you are beneath them. Even if in their own mind they aren’t thinking it in those words. When they say actions speak louder than words, that’s what they mean. I’ve never cared how many companies told me they care about diversity and inclusion, I just watch them. I see how many people of colour were hired before and after me. When they say they care about mental health, I watch how they treat sick days. Someone like Angel, took people’s inability to do what she wants, when she wants as a personal slight. Someone wasn’t just sick, they were being a bitch.

I watched the first woman leave, then the second. They were trying to beef up rostering and instead people were leaving more than they were arriving. I was the last of the ladies to leave, which irked me but is a pattern I have seen before. Before I left, I had enough one day though I won’t lie I don’t recall the exact trigger. I know it was a way she spoke that I didn’t find to be professional or appropriate and it offended me. So I went to the Indian man, out of the business partners he acted as the more in-house operations type. I told him that I needed to escalate Angel’s behaviour, I was watching for a while and wasn’t seeing it get any better (as could be corroborated by the discontent).

He told me that she had had a breakup with her partner (which I knew about), and that is likely why she was taking it out on other people. That maybe he just needed to give her a few days off. I told him I knew about her breakup, but it didn’t excuse her unprofessional behaviour. I STILL wanted this taken further. He decided not to pass it to his HR person but to mediate himself. She did NOT like being pulled up on anything. She sat with her legs crossed, body angled away, huffing and puffing. I do remember her snapping, ‘well I didn’t mean it like that!’. The mediation from the owner was sub-par at best, which is why he should have had his HR person do it instead.

That was a test in itself, and he failed. He showed me how much of a cuck he was. A cuck because he chose to let Angel be indispensable. It was easier for him. It didn’t require him to take extra steps and he was choosing the easy way out. No integrity. Yes, Angel was super-efficient and got things done. But at what cost? So I left, I lasted a cool 3 months. By the time I left I had no will for another job. After the promotion debacle of the blinds job, then having to deal with someone who actively messed with my nervous system. I bought my first car during that job and I recall driving to work, body shaking. I put my system through it because I didn’t want to believe that I didn’t walk away to something better. Was it worse, or was I so traumatised that I had little capacity? We’ll never know.

I was grateful in the aftermath that J got to see me at my job. I know he got to see what a hardworking person I am. How assertive I am. And ultimately that I don’t take shit. I didn’t take it from his best friend my ex, and I wouldn’t take it from an employer either. So I left him at that job, that was the last time I saw him. I spent about 9 months unemployed but active. I applied to be a part of the NEIS program, to learn about entrepreneurship. I woke up while I was off one day from a dream, with a business idea. One that had always been humming in the back of my head. One I had heard in readings from Psychics even when I was 18. Suddenly I thought, I have to make skincare products. Makes sense for me as a triple Venusian with my Ascendant and Sun in Libra, with a Taurus moon. I was born for beauty and business as they intersect. I will talk about that journey another time, because it deserves its own post.

I enjoyed having a break from working directly with other people. I didn’t know how to out-strategise structural racism, only how to identify it. I desperately wanted this business to work, but unlike some people I have met since who were born in wealthy families and had access to investors – I was just doing this with money from my tax return. By the time I accepted I couldn’t continue with the business, I realised that I likely would have gotten a lot further with it, had I started with high-enough capital. Alas I did not have access to assistance. I have also not been in a family where I could ask for that sort of thing. Money has always been a contentious subject and as such a point of trauma for me.

There’s something particularly cruel about working for a company that is involved in the health sector, and have it be toxic. That’s a particular kind of irony, that I cannot live with. My next role I worked for a group of Cosmetic Clinics in the affluent suburbs of Melbourne; Windsor, Brighton and Toorak. That was an absolute shit-show, but you have to wait for the next instalment to hear that story. If you work in the Disability Sector know that I see your sacrifices both for your families and for the clients at hand. I have heard so many disturbing things not just about this sector but, related sectors like Youth Justice/Housing. Many of the people I worked with, worked across these industries over time. The structural rot I have heard about even in industries I have not explored, is burned into my brain. It’s burned in because my brain picks up on patterns. I live for knowledge that corroborates other knowledge I have acquired.

People should not start businesses, if they don’t want to get their hands dirty and have hard talks with their favourites. You should not have a business if you want to selectively fire and hire, in a way that is inequitable. We should not have to put up with abuse, because you couldn’t be bothered to do your homework and look up WorkSafe recommendations. We shouldn’t be underpaid because you hoped none of us would call Fair Work. Yet at the next place I worked, I did just that. May your next job be aligned intellectually, emotionally and support you in all the ways you need. Asé.