That's not rain...

I commented to my husband, last week, that everything seemed to be falling apart around the house. The washing machine only works on the hot cycle, the dryer now requires two cycles to get clothes dry, the garbage disposal hasn’t worked for a couple of weeks and then the AC went out late in the evening and we only realized it when we woke up to 89 degrees of drenching night sweats. “When it rains, it pours” was our general sentiment. Little did I know last week, that that wasn’t rain falling on our heads, it was the sky.

Yesterday, I lost my job.

The official reason given was “resizing”, but we had just hired two new people the week before. I can’t even begin to absorb the absurdity of that, as I must first try and get this chunk of sky back where it belongs. I simply can’t function under the weight of it all. But, how does one go about getting the sky right again. How do I pick up these pieces and put them all back in their rightful place? Is it even possible, and if so, do I have the right tools to get it done?

This is the real question…do I have what it takes? Honestly at this stage of the game, less than 24 hours after the crisis began, I feel like I do not have the skills or drive to recover. I have been fighting a mild depression for the last four months. Now I feel the undertow of a full blown shut down tugging at my limbs. How do I do this? What just happened? Where do I go? Where have I even been? Why is this happening to me? Did I do this? Will I do it again? Where do I even start?

I am so overwhelmed with humiliation, fear, and anger that my brain seems to be incapable of logical thought. I have always been a left-brain thinker. I like plans. I like to think out the action steps from start to finish and then just follow the map. I need to know what comes next, what the goal of the current step is and how it will impact the subsequent steps. I consciously plan to use my current efforts proactively to allow for the best possible outcome of the next effort. But I can’t even think of an outcome, much less what effort to take.

I feel destroyed, in every sense of the word, in every aspect of what is me. My ego, my outlook, my skill set, my appreciation of people, my belief in good; all that I thought was right is all gone. It’s just gone. I feel empty. Like all hope has just been sucked out of me into one of those locked vacuum canisters at the car wash. It is gone and I saw it get sucked up, but I am now powerless to retrieve it. I want it back. I want a rewind, a do over, a re-dub. This is not what I had planned. It isn’t on my map. This is my life and I had no intention of disposing of it. Give it back! Why is that stupid canister locked anyway?

Then it occurs to me... The canister is locked. With a lock. You know, one with a key?

 So…there is a key? There has to be. This can’t be the fate of my self. It’s not like it was sucked into a black hole, right? It must still be there, inside that thing. I mean it wasn’t incinerated. Not yet anyway. Maybe I can get it back. I can’t see it but I know it must still exist. It can’t just end like this. I don't just fade out to black. There is a key. Somewhere...