The Lottery

I'm operating on less than 4 hours of sleep. Whenever I close my eyes, my mind quickly fills with strained images from the day before.

The look on her face. The door closing. The quick way the words "You've been laid off" were uttered.

It's unreal, the sudden public understanding that what you do-- all you've done-- for an organization are complete non-issues. The days of awards and successes are long past. Nobody there remembers those days anyway.

The cruelty simmers under the surface; I'm a number. A line on a budget. Tears well in my eyes as I think of the kids; the house; college tuitions; survival. The tissue box lays mockingly across the room, forgotten. Try as I might, staring as hard as I can, I can't levitate the freaking box.

Tiny spark of past life lessons flame into memory: Nobody is going to whisper platitudes let alone hand you a tissue. Need something? Take care of it yourself.

The tears threaten and evaporate as the situation is discussed in terms of the lack of my existence; how hard it will be for "the rest of the team" to perform my workload once I've departed. These words are somehow meant to be comforting, as in, you were valuable, you did do important work that the rest of us will now somehow have to manage. NOTE: These are not phrases that should be uttered when letting a person go. Noting how the survivors will suffer by my being hacked does not actually make me feel better. It makes me feel more alone than I can describe.

It makes me feel sorrow and grief for my friends who went before me and suffered under my patronizing, self-victimizing rhetoric. Saying,"I'm next, I know it" didn't make me sound concerned and thoughtful. It made me look like an asshole. I get that now.

The letter, however, is delivered with solemnity. A sort of seriousness bordering on awe.

I don't open the goldenrod, sealed envelope. I go home and hand it to my stunned husband, who is on furlough this week. He reads it.

The letter is addressed to "Theresa." My legal birth name, used only by doctors reading charts and my mother when I'm in really, really big trouble. Fitting.

I feel embarrassed. Like a failure. Like this is the first of a long string of disappointing events my husband shall be forced to witness and suffer through.

Embarrassment brings on anger; anger fades to embarrassment; it's all covered over with humor.

There was a time when I felt valuable. Right now I feel exactly like the protagonist in Shirley Jackson's, "The Lottery." I stood by long enough; my turn for the stoning.

And yet...

The goldenrod envelope, the terms of my severance. The lesson of the tissue. The first lesson of single motherhood.

A new start. Go for what you want. Above all else, survive.