Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Light On The Vulnerability, Please

Climbing into bed last night, it felt like one of those nights where I would lay there awake, tossing and turning. But, as I laid my head on the pillow, it felt like the events of the day were piled on my chest, dragging me down into sleep.

The day had been wrought with lay offs and pay cuts, and when someone tells you that you're pay is getting cut and you don't have a choice about it... you suddenly realize just how vulnerable you and your life actually are. You realize you're happy just to have the job and the pay cut seems suddenly like a bonus.

Granted I work in a place where the owners took the largest pay cuts, it still stung As the emails from my co-workers who were let go on Friday came rolling in, I suddenly realized that my job, the job that I love so very much could be ripped away from me. I don't "belong" there, I just work there.

I came home and watched my son struggle to breathe. Vulnerability is like an albatross around my neck today. Sitting on my back, watching my struggle with the realization that my life is not made of steel and brick, it is flimsily constructed of paper and strings. Creatively wound in the form of a soft hammock that cradles me, but that may just tip and drop me to the hard, rocky Earth below at any moment.

Also? If you're my neighbors, that flashing light wasn't code for 'please fucking help us we are being murdered', not that you offered. It was my kid and I fighting over which position the light switch would be in while he fitfully slept.

He won. Light on.

5 comments:

Miss Yvonne said...

I'm so there with you on this. We've really found out the hard way how flimsy our life as we know it is. I used to get mad when we stopped getting yearly raises at my job, but then they started layoffs the next week and now I'm just grateful to be working.

Blues said...

I know, I've never felt so thankful to get up and go to work everyday. It's strange how my attitude has changed in such a short amount of time. I have a six month contract and now I'm shitting myself waiting to find out if it will be renewed. This bites.

Rassles said...

Here you go, being all profound and understanding again. It sneaks up on me, and I likes it.

Anonymous said...

Advertising is so unstable. I finally got tired of being laid off at ad agencies and went to work at a univeristy. It's not nearly as much fun, and not nearly as much money, but lots more security. (at least for now.)

Gypsy said...

These are troubling times.