Change of Plans

The last seven days have been a mountain of stress for me. Just when everything was swimming along nicely in my life, it was announced that my shift is being eliminated at work in two weeks. I’m unsure yet as to what this will mean for my employment overall, but you can imagine how news like this can affect you emotionally. Especially when you just had new living room furniture delivered to your house the weekend before, with a large credit card bill coming due.

The first day I was in shock. When I was given the news that morning, I couldn’t sleep. (I work nights, in case you’re new here.) Once I did get a few hours of troubled sleep, I woke up and couldn’t even face the idea of dinner with my family. You KNOW I’m upset if I can’t eat.

I barely ate the next few days as well. The reality slowly sunk in, and while the shock has worn off, the uncertainty at the moment is still very present. It will likely be a few more days before I’ll know the future of my current job situation.

Suddenly the five stages of grief makes sense to me. I went through denial and anger already, and while bargaining doesn’t really make sense in this situation, I know depression is just around the corner. Here’s where I get worried, because depression rarely shows up at my door without a bag of powdered donuts, a pint of ice cream and an extra large spoon. (And as an adult depression also usually brings a box o’ wine along as well, making sure to get the most alcohol for the value. Depression is thrifty like that.)

At this time, I’m thankful that Aaron has a job that he loves. I’m also thankful that his employer loves him as well. It wasn’t that long ago that Aaron was unemployed while I served as the breadwinner. I still make a little more, but Aaron’s job provides our health insurance and he has paid time off while I don’t. No matter what happens with my job, we can meet our essential bills and will still have health insurance.

It’s still unsettling. Any illusion of security that I thought I had was pulled out from under me. We had a lot planned for this year, and now all of it is in question. It hurts. My weekend was spent playing endless games of what if? as we tried to come to terms with this upcoming change and discuss what might happen next and how we’ll deal with it.

Before any of this happened, of course, I had planned to attend Blissdom later this week. I’m still going, and I honestly can’t wait to escape from this bad dream for a few days and immerse myself in blogging.

Stepping away from it all may help me clear my head and reach that final stage of grief: acceptance, of whatever the outcome might be.