Stages of Grief: Unemployment

Now in week 4 of my unemployment, I have had the opportunity to reflect on the past few weeks, and it has been brought to my attention by those closest to me that ups and downs I've gone through are much lose those of a grieving widow.

To quickly refresh, those stages are:

Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

My loss, obviously, was my job. Looking back, it could have been a lot worse. I wasn't there for decades, I don't have kids to support, no mortgage, etc. I have rent, car payment and other normal expenses, but nothing that should break me. These factors I realized right away, within the first night. My stage one was acceptance. What made accepting the loss easier was that I wasn't too fond of the day-to-day work I was doing. It is tough to not see the people who I worked along side for over a year, and learned a great deal from--that was the hardest part. But the work, not so much.

Denial was never really a stage, as I had played the scenario through my head many times over the last few months, so to say it was a big shock, would be incorrect.

Depression was there, to a certain extent. Great friends and a supportive family disposed of any outward depression quickly, but every so often I have a 30 second panic attack--after which I remind myself that everything happens for a reason.

Bargaining was an interesting stage. I kept thinking to myself, "Why couldn't the company just cut my hours, or salary, etc.?" But I soon realized they probably held out as long as they could. Understandable given the economic nosedive over the past few quarters.

Finally I have dealt with anger. I kept thinking, "I worked really hard over the last year, and was promised things that I ultimately never received. F that!" I can't make those feelings go away and I'm not going to try. I was not let go for performance or lack of, or out of spite, the ball just didn't roll our way for too long. I could blame a lot of people, but what's the use?

After all, I feel that I've been given a chance to start over. To look for something I really like doing. Time to get up and go after the possimpable.