Team Meeting From Hell

It's Monday morning. A heavy dread sits in the pit of my stomach. It arrived late Sunday afternoon, bothered me through the night, and was waiting for me when I woke up. Today I work from home. I make coffee. Open my laptop. Sign in to the weekly team meeting. Their faces appear, one by one. Tired, wary, anxious And some trying very hard not to look anything at all. The meeting begins with the ritual rant. And we find ourselves in a familiar rhythm. Someone is asked to report. They are interrupted. Another cross-examined. Another dismissed. Picked apart, one after another. No one dares to challenge Tight faces and brittle silence speaking volumes. Everyone holds their breath, carefully chooses their words, hedges their bets. To no effect. I notice how each shrinks as they speak. I'm listening and counting. My turn getting closer. I look out the window beside my desk. The sky a dull, endless grey. Rain hanging heavy in the air, ready to fall. Then my name is called. I take a breath to speak. And before I've said a single word, it begins. Not a question this time or a directive. A torrent. And then, in front of everyone, I was told I wasn’t delivering. My responsibilities were being reassigned, while I was left to get on with the day-to-day work And it kept coming A needle-sharp onslaught. I remember trying to make sense of what was happening while it was happening. Trying to work out what I had missed. Where was this coming from. I started mentally checking out. The voices became muffled and vision blurred. My voice weakening, no longer sounding like mine. Tears threatened to fall down my burning cheeks. I remember it was almost as if I were watching someone else choking back the bitterness and shame. Where is she? The woman who knows what she’s doing. The woman who knows what to say. The woman who knows her own mind. Checked out, I couldn’t reach her. The meeting carried on. As meetings do. But I didn't. For weeks afterwards, fear seemed to run the show. Fear of the next humiliation. Fear of what was being said about me when I wasn't there. Fear that perhaps I really wasn't coping anymore. What stayed wasn't the criticism, It wasn't even the tears. It was the question I couldn’t make sense of How I had allowed it to happen? I thought I was tough enough. I thought I could protect myself. But when it came to it, when I needed myself most to stand my ground, I wasn’t there.