Breaking Up is Hard to Do: Finding Oneself Through Turbulence

Different date, same outcome.  I should start a collection.  

I got a letter yesterday. I've seen it enough times (five in fact) to know what entailed without reading it. It was a layoff notice, the same exact, impersonal, layoff notice I've seen five times from my school district. The last line glazes over my contributions to the students, to the school, to faculty and administration in only the way a form letter can. Nowhere does it acknowledge that I am an individual, rather, just one of many for whom there is no longer a need and/or funding to keep employed.

It hurt the first few times I received the letter. Maybe because there was no administration that came along and said, "You know, Chris, it's not you, it's us. We just have no money."  Or, "This is just a technicality, we'd love you to be a part of the _______ family, you'll just need to reapply next year." --I used to work in the Human Resource Department at Sears, and even in a fortune 500 company (back then), we had a more humane way of handling layoffs, firings, and cutbacks.  Oh well, whatever...

The boys of my wife's Cuckoo's Nest play in 2011.  

I guess in the "real world," we're supposed to realize that it's all just numbers and dollar signs, and I'm just a replaceable cog to the machinery known as education. Just a piece of the combine, that Chief so elaborated on, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.  I can be plugged in, pulled out, reformatted, melted down, repurposed, recycled, or tossed out, with no emotional impact to my personage.

And sadly, that's becoming true. I don't really care anymore. It doesn't hurt so much. I'm jaded, and ready to walk away from the career that I once loved and felt called to do.

Like a long term relationship where "I love you's" were tossed around with future implications, then the relationship sours, and hurtful words replace the "I love you's,"---it seems like time to walk away.

I'm not saying I am walking out on teaching.  I'm saying it reminds me of all my breakups. Breakups where I wasn't okay with the outcomes. You see, I've never broke up with a girl. Not once. They always broke up with me. Oh, sure, there were many times I should've pulled the plug, should've saved some self-respect, but decided to tug desperately at the fissured ends of a broken heart, desperate to pull it back together for one last hurrah.

It never worked. My wife is the only girl/woman who hasn't broken up with me. And now that we have children, a mortgage, and my super unstable paychecks, I've entrenched myself in her future. Self-deprecating aside, and giving her due credit, she is an amazing woman who agrees with me that marriage is a lifetime deal. Surely there are ways of fouling that up, but neither of us intends to go those routes.

She was horseradish.  

And thinking about life in that way makes me lucky. I've been broken up with any manner of ways: from parking lot arguments, to living room couch agreements; to Post-it notes attached to my locker; and being embarrassed in front of my friends; with letters with long explanations, and letters with brief complaints.  I've felt sad, like $#!+, oddly optimistic, mildly depressed, severely depressed, and briefly happy. I've loved and lost, and eventually regained my integrity along the way. And so did the girl. That's the cordiality that humans deserve to give each other.

Not the cold business letters informing us that we are no longer needed. Not the Friday notices that leave us packing our belongings after everyone else has left the building, careful not to "cause a scene." Breaking up with someone, whether that be in a relationship or through a job, should be handled by a human being. This stupid informal age that severing ties with people via cell phones and internet and form letters, is not humanity, it's immaturity. Human beings deserve a "scene." It shouldn't be easy to destroy a part of someone's soul.

But at least my family doesn't treat me that way. Despite the lifetime of breakups and failures, and unreached goals and dreams, my family, my wife, my loved ones, have been unconditionally there for me. Never threatening to take a break, or walk away, if this or that career plan again falls through.

I don't want to burn the place down.  Just tell
me in person what I'm doing wrong.  

And so, instead of feeling sorry for me, which was never the intention of this article, I hope you feel jealous.  Because at the end of my life, I don't give a flying F what I did for a living.  I care that my wife still loves me, my parents are proud of me, that I raised daughters who bring me joy and happiness, and that my God will graciously welcome me to a place where I will never be broken up with again.

And so, if I'm not appreciated in this life, it will be nice to be graciously accepted in the next life.  That's not a childish suicidal statement, rather, a realization that as a person of faith, I'm not living for the acceptance of man, but rather the glorification of Another.  I hope my tragic flaw of pride, doesn't get in the way of my real message of Hope.  I've been hurt a lot in this life, but I refuse to give up Hope, no matter how personal or impersonal the world tells me "you're not good enough."  I know something they don't.