Letting go

I lost my job on Thursday, January 18, 2007. I've experienced quite a bit of loss in my recent past, and this was both a doozy and, just another thing. I've been working hard to feel the pain of it in the moment, not to bury it or try to tell myself it isn't as bad as it is; God knows I don't need anything coming back up to bite me in the future. I see it as doing business with myself and my stuff, a new awareness and discipline that I've discovered and tried to practice since the breakup of my marriage. This, however, takes copious amounts of Kleenex, comfort food, and well-timed phone calls from your friends to talk you off the ledge.

There aren't many jobs in which I have a tombstone up, an epitaph that I get to write (and rewrite, when it inadvertently steps on Corporate's toes). When I wrote it, I really thought I could say goodbye, take my severance, and walk away. After all, what choice do I really have? First off, I'd need to replace the income and then some, as my husband has had the idea to play a little financial hardball this month with my support amount. Second, with a d!^o?(@ in the works, I knew my emotional energy needed to go toward preparing to tell the kids (so that I feel like I can actually use the word; that's got to be an important step toward settling in the reality of it, don't you think).

But the past few weeks have been much different from what I imagined. After writing that post, it occurred to me that it was just the first step out of many of saying goodbye. How do you walk away from a blog, an online journal of often private, intimate thoughts, shared in unmistakable community? It's been heartwrenching to go back to read comments, and say goodbye to people with whom I'd made connections. As the IT guys work to erase every trace of my former self from the site (a pseudonym comes in handy at a time like this - HA, you're not really doing this to ME, but to someone else!), it feels like I'm the one struggling to let go.

Starting this blog, I think, is a big part of completing the process. What I have to say does not end with what I've written on ParentsConnect. If I stop writing, I'll do it on my own impetus, not because I've somehow been ousted from the position of representing myself. Something inside reminds me that I have just recently come into my own voice, into feeling the right and rightness of having and speaking that voice, and that I would not give that up for the world.

photo credit: Bill Davenport via stock.xchng