I Don't Know Whether To Love You or Hate You

One year ago today, I lost my job from Company X.

My job. My life. The job I'd had for nearly 5 years. The job that had taken me all over the world, the job that was the center of my universe, the one thing that drove me harder than I could ever have imagined I could drive myself.

And I was hit so hard I felt like a semi-truck had smacked me dead on, and for days afterwards, it was as though the truck dragged me along behind it, embedding gravel in my soul and motor oil on my body. I completely caved in on myself, utterly floored and gutted. I was humiliated, depressed, stressed, and horrified. It led to the coldest and darkest period of my life, an astonishing entrance into the purest definition of clinical depression that I had ever known.

As a human being, I was shattered.

Yesterday sitting in my study packed with boxes, taking part in conference calls and whizzing out mails, I never would have guessed a year ago that this would become my life. One year later, I:

- Have a different man in my life
- Live in a different house
- Live in a different country
- Have a new job
- Have lost my family
- Have lost my dog
- Have lost my cats (but get them back in 9 days!)
- Have completely changed my behavior and priorities

The karmic irony is not lost on me that I am moving into a new and lovely house exactly one year later. I have a job that I love and has recently become very stressful, but it does not own me. I have a man I am wild about, and have never been so comfortable in my life.

And the true karmic gift-I am a customer of Company X. I have been wined and dined by them at Ascot Races. I am part of a group at Dream Job helping to decide if they should get a massive purchase order from us. And truthfully? I like the Company X products. They're actually good products. I also like working with the Company X people based in England-they're nice people, a good laugh, and easy to work with. But I have one rule with them-we can talk business and we can work out technical solutions, but they are never to bring Swedish Company X people to present to us. I don't have a thing against Swedes. I have a thing against the Swedish branch of Company X.

But I have to admit, I still hate Company X. They should not have been the ones to decide my destiny like that. I didn't jump into a new life, I was pushed, and it makes me rage to think that the changes in my life-most of which I am so proud of-came about by the business board of a company. You don't get to decide my life, I want to rage. Not even I get to do that, so why should you?

It leaves me really conflicted. When I think of Company X headquarters in Stockholm, I still seethe and am filled with loathing. Nothing makes me shudder more than the idea of stepping foot in the headquarters of Company X and seeing faces of people who knew me, who knew I've been cut, who know what a loser I am.

In a completely sour-grape free way, I confess that losing my job helped me jump into where I am today, a place I love so much that I never want to go, a world that is more comfortable to me than any place has been ever before. Losing my job set me free from the chains I had bound myself in. The job is your life, Ebeneezer! Make it so! Give your holidays, your evenings, your conscience and your soul to us! This job is who you are!

That's all gone now. My job isn't me. My job is only work I do for a paycheck.

Who am I? Well...I'm still working on that one. But in some ways I like myself a lot more than I used to.

One year on I don't know whether to thank Company X or hurl rotten tomatoes at them. I know that they say it's only business, but it really isn't. Not for me. How can you lose your job and not take it personally? How can you be shown the door and not feel it in your gut every time you take a step? Just as I have taken it personally that I was eliminated, in the same vein, I will never forgive Company X. Never.

Not like they lose sleep over that or anything.

I still burn and ache and jerk when I think about losing my job. I still feel like burning my hands off in the oven when I think about the meeting in which I was told I lost my job. I still feel like it's a blight on who I am, a bruise on the apple-red skin on my character.

But one year on the canvas of my world is so incredibly different. I love where I am. I love where I work. I love where I live. And most of all, I love the man who warms our bed, this man I I love more than anything and am so grateful for (even when we are not getting on) and I wonder if I ever would have been able to have him, had I not been let go.

So Company X, happy anniversary. Hope you celebrate like I will-tired, grubby, but in a little house that makes me happy. Happy anniversary of the day you made me redundant. Good luck in recruiting-I hear that you are hiring worldwide but that there are still masses of engineers in Sweden that are jobless. Take care of those I love that still work for you.

Thank you, Company X, for letting me go.

Thank you. And fuck you.

-H.

PS-my carnival of the recipes entry in the extended entry.

Carnival of the Recipes!

Held at the wonderful Boudicca's Voice, here is my recipe-Goat's Cheese and Red Onion Tart.

Ingredients

4 x 15cm/6in circle of puff pastry, rolled to 5mm thick
4 red onions, halved then sliced
1 tbsp of olive oil
12 cherry tomatoes, halved
1 garlic clove
sprig of thyme
2cm/½in cube of butter
1 tbsp of balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp cane sugar
4 small goats' cheeses, soft

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6. Make a shallow cut in the puff pastry 1cm/½in in from the edge and all the way around.
2. In a pan cook the onions, tomatoes, garlic and thyme in the butter and olive oil for 20 to 30 minutes till caramelised.
3. Add the balsamic and sugar and cook for a couple of minutes, then spoon the onion into the centre of the pastry, leaving the scribed edge clear.
4. Dot the top with goats' cheese, brush the edge with beaten egg and bake for 20 minutes.

Posted by Everydaystranger at November 19, 2004 06:15 AM | TrackBack .