Losing It

When I was 38 years old, I belonged to a large Unitarian church on the west side of town. One of the parishioners, an older woman acquaintance, was a palm reader. She offered to read my palm quickly and I agreed. “You will soon meet a woman who will change your life, a ‘bolt of lightning,’” she said. “In your late forties, you will begin a very difficult time. Many things will go badly. Eventually, though, you’ll get through them.”

These may sound like easy predictions to you but they were uncannily accurate. A month later, I met Mrs. CA, indeed a bolt of lightning, whom I married shortly thereafter. When I was 48, the bad stuff started to happen. I joined a very stressful, undermanned project that drove me crazy for most of the next three years. My mother died. My father went blind, came to live with us and suffered prostate and skin cancer. Finally, late last year, I had to accept a “special early retirement” (the “get out or else” plan) from my job because of the bad economy.

The hits have kept on coming. Our tax bill ended up higher than expected because I lost my job (it’s complicated). I haven’t found a new job after over four months of looking. I have worried about paying the bills. I have often felt useless.

Some people whom I tell about my unemployment act as if I have a disease. This offended me at first but makes sense the more I think about it. Unemployment and the setbacks that preceded it are all losses. This explains why I am going through the five stages of grief from the Elisabeth Kubler-Ross book, On Death and Dying.

It started with Denial. I was sure that I’d get a job within a month or two. After all, I had good technical skills and years of experience. Then, I felt Anger. I couldn’t understand why employers wouldn’t even interview me for positions I was four times qualified for. After a while, I was Bargaining. I’d take any IT position, even if it didn’t help my career and didn’t pay enough. Finally, Depression set in. I became convinced that I’d never get a job that would pay even half of what I made before or let me use my intelligence and training. Here I’d come, Wal-Mart and McDonald’s – with all the other white-collar workers – if you’d take me.

That’s where I’ve been until today, when Acceptance arrived. Today, for the first time in a while, I see my situation clearly. It is what it is. I have no control over the economy, my lack of mobility or employers’ willingness to pick my resume from the pile of 200. I can’t know if and when my situation will get better. However, I can control my reactions. I can feel the pain without letting it disable me. I can be resolute without forgetting to have fun. My future may not be the one I always imagined for myself but that doesn’t mean that I have no future.

For the first time in a couple of months, I feel some peace and satisfaction. The irony is that I coped with my losses by losing some more: the idea that I’m responsible for and in control of my status; unreasonable pessimism or optimism; a sense of entitlement; and a feeling that I’m nobody if I don’t have a well-paying, intellectually-challenging job. I’m sure that it will be difficult to maintain this posture but I’m going to try because I feel reborn. Or, given the day, should I say resurrected?