Laid Off Equals Mental Liberation

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On a beautiful spring afternoon in March came word that the company would send a mass email at 2:30 P.M. announcing the termination of over 300 positions within the company.  Those individuals who were to lose their job would be called one by one into their manager’s office.  The entire office came to a standstill, everyone paralyzed with fear. I continued to go about my day, making calls and answering the phone. I’m not sure if I was thinking it couldn’t happen to me, after all, I had devoted a lot to the company and I was well liked, or so I thought, or maybe I just refused to participate in the dramatic theatre that the layoff process had become.  One by one, we saw some of our coworkers walk humbly into the manager’s office and walk out with tears and an empty box, which was to carry their personal mementos that adorned their cubicles.

I was one of the last persons to walk out of that office that day.   The process was humiliating to say the least. To this day, it’s hard to describe the feeling I felt at that moment.  It was not sadness nor was it joy, but I’m pretty sure it was the feeling of finally being free.

I worked as an auto adjuster for three years with the same company. The last few months had become corporate hell.  I was drowning in files and phone calls to return.  I was gasping for air, literally. I had developed an abnormal breathing pattern as a result from being exposed to prolonged periods of stress and I had been living this way for over a year.  My self -diagnosis revealed I was suffering from Chronic Hyperventilation Syndrome. In short, I had screwed up my breathing pattern and was over breathing. Yet somehow, like most of us, I put up with it for the purpose of “a better life.”

It seems to me that a lot of us value the quality of life based on our current job title and the amount of our paycheck. Don’t get me wrong, I do miss certain things about my employed life: obviously the steady paycheck, the friendships, the coffee runs, the happy hours, and the sense that I was something in life because I had more buying power. However, I am probably something more now than I was then.