The generous offer to stay in my current position for 12 weeks is going to prove to be challenging, I think. Week one is over now and I have 11 more to go. It is important for me to leave things in the best possible way I can for whomever succeeds or has survived me, for I know the challenges of the work I have been doing. Having been at a director-level for years, I have worked to develop policies, people, and successes for my department. Now I worry about leaving that department and those people, being unsure of who will "take care of them". I don't know if that is common or not, but it feels strange and conflicting to want the best for an organization that betrayed me as a person. Just this week I packed up several rubbermaid containers with my personal things and had to get a cart to wheel my many plants out to my car. My office is very barren now, but I think I will appreciate that in the long run, as I cannot let myself believe anymore that my contributions matter. If I continue to invest my whole self into that job, I risk hurting even more. I can certainly do the job for 11 more weeks while reminding myself not to invest so much of myself in it that I have to grieve further down the road.
There are other difficult situations to deal with, such as the meeting of the management team that I was invited to prior to being laid off and uninvited to after being laid off. It was not with cruel intentions that I don't belong in that meeting but with the realization that my vision for the future of the company is no longer needed. So while my peers go off-site for the day to strategically plan, I will stay behind.
Speaking of peers, I really feel the loss there. Several of my peers have not spoken to me since this announcement. I wonder if they think that being laid off is contagious? I wonder if they avoid my eye contact due to their own insecurities? I also spend a bit of time wondering if they know something about my situation that I don't know? Perhaps there was a meeting in which they all discussed why I had to leave? Or perhaps they "voted me off the island"? These thoughts I have actually make me smile sometimes because I wonder how I could come up with such absurd things to think. Yet I still wonder "why me" and since I can't come up with answers, I imagine some crazy things.
Well, eleven more weeks to go. Have you heard the term "dead man walking"? I feel like I am on death row some moments. I don't think that feeling is going to get any better.
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