as i’m sure my fellow bloggers, complicitgrace and thewomaninvisible , can attest to, as well as understand, last week at work was brutal. while a (current) survivor of the round of layoffs as well as one of the project leads at the global company my career is tethered to, there is the aftermath to deal with.

the aftermath of assisting those impacted by job eliminations but those that have survived and frankly, those of us on the project team as well. believe it or not, it’s hard to switch back to “normal” given the size and scope of what we just undertook. and we did it without outside consultants or hired guns (think “up in the air” starring mr. clooney above) which can really, suck. there’s nothing like being the one to have to notify a colleague, neighbor, former lover (not me but my colleague inadvertently was assigned to deliver the news to a team that included her first ex-husband!), etc. that they no longer have a job. even with a severance package that is generous, it’s crappy work. and a bit of you dies inside each time.

darling husband has known i was on some secret project for the last 9-weeks. it’s come up during our counseling sessions due to the inordinate amount of stress and some of the medical complications that my treatment has encountered  as a result of that stress.

yet on the day of the actual milestone not one word of good luck, thinking of you or don’t worry you will get through it. instead he asks me to remember to pick his shirts up from the cleaners and to pick up a baby gift for one of his co-workers. and yet, he wonders when we sit in our counseling sessions how i can say “you just don’t get me”. i swear i wanted to scream and walk out the door. but that’s too easy. i know some folks, specifically a vitriolic troll, are always saying why don’t you leave and the reasons are numerous and complex. likely the same reasons dh hasn’t left either. yet.

so in practice of what we’ve been coached on in counseling, i tell dh what i need in that moment and for that day. and was clear that if he couldn’t provide it, i was going to reach out to my long distance friend for the reassurance and emotional connection he provides me. if even for a moment of solace. it’s the first time dh has acknowledged that maybe our son gets his autism from him because while he can see that kind of connection is important to me, he doesn’t understand why emotions are important. of course, i don’t have to reach out to “him”. when i finally log in to my laptop at work the first message that comes through is a silly limerick and a simple sentence telling me to take a deep breath, let it go and know that he’s thinking of me. and so it goes…