Song Of The Day: One Republic "Secrets"
I've been living a life of seclusion for the last couple of years and I don't want to do it anymore.
Anyone who knew me then would tell you that I loved my job. It was were I spent my days, many nights and often my weekends. I never thought anything of the fact that work came before friends and family or that I postponed semi-important things like vacations and doctors appointments to meet deadlines or avoid missing a potential production meeting.
That is until I didn't have my job anymore. I should have seen it coming; I should have known that I was headed for a let down, but I honestly didn't see it coming. Maybe that was because just a few weeks earlier after treating me to a birthday lunch my boss assured me there would be a place for me as long as I wanted it, but I digress.
I will never forget the day it happened. My supervisor was out of town (conveniently) and I remember before she left the previous day that she gave me an awkward glance before she walked out the door. Had my head been in a more analytical space, I might have given it a second thought, but I didn't. At 5pm on a Friday afternoon I got an email from my boss. It simply asked me to stop by before I left for the day. As I entered her office all smiles and little bit excited at the possibility of being asked to work on a new project it never occurred to me that our meeting was about anything more than that. Boy was I wrong.
She asked me if I was headed to Washington for Obama's inauguration. 'No', I replied. 'I plan to watch it on TV like everyone else I know.' This wasn't an unusual question. It had been no secret that she and her family were very powerful members of the Republican party. However, I never felt I had to hide my liberal beliefs or my support for Obama. Still the timing of the question was now a bit suspect. She quickly moved on to the matter at hand.
During her entire monologue she never actually said the words 'you're fired' or 'we're letting you go', in fact, it was me who had to ask the question 'are you letting me go?' to get the final answer. Before she could answer I began to feel a lump rise in my throat and the first thought that ran through my mind was 'I'm going to have to work with all new people', a thought that invoked feelings of pure terror. The answer, of course, was yes, but the reasons why are still unclear. The only real explanation I was given at the time was that I had accomplished every task the company could offer me. It was during this time that the reality of the situation began to set in. I felt like someone had kicked me in the stomach and I could no longer breathe. I remember trying to look at one object in the room (ironically, it was a framed invitation to the White House from G.W. Bush which happens to hang next to the door of her office) to keep from crying. Eventually, even I couldn't control the tears and they began to fall uncontrollably. I remember that she walked to her desk and picked up a folder which contained a letter informing me that I was being let go, a severance check and a few random documents that I needed to sign to make it all complete. Everything that happened after that was a complete blur.
It took me a while to pull myself together. Both in her office that day and in the weeks and months that followed. I was so truly content with the ridiculous schedule and workload that I had become accustomed to. I felt so secure and optimistic about my future with the company that it never occurred to me to look for something else, let alone put together a resume. In the conversation that day I was offered a position working on a campaign for the would-be governor. A few weeks later, I received an email from my former boss offering her contacts at a local PR firm. Had I been in a better state of mind I would have jumped at the offer, but I was still trying to connect all the dots to figure out what had gone wrong and I just couldn't bring myself to accept her help.
I've spent nearly two years trying to connect the dots and I have to resolve myself to believing that everything happens for a reason. I could be petty and blame it on the cowardly supervisor who couldn't share a spotlight but that won't fix me and it doesn't really fit with how I operate. So, instead, I have finally chosen to accept that I won't be getting my job back and while it was truly the first thing in my life I ever fell in love with, it's over and it is time to move on.
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