Week 13: Swan shit

I got fired today.

I’ve said it out loud to myself ten times now.

“I got fired today,

I don't have job,

I am not a bartender.” Over and over.

All facts, no feelings.

Although many feelings came up.

Feelings like,

“You’re not good enough,

No one takes you seriously,

You were right.”

Susan says, in a moment of anxiety or panic, to focus on the facts and not the feelings.

It helped me stop crying.

But it didn’t help me stop feeling like the punchline to some cruel joke. Two months of employment. At a job I loved. The first job I’ve ever even liked.

Yes it was hard on my body and only mildly lucrative, but I had started looking forward to work.

And now I have to start all over again.

---

I walked into that meeting thinking my boss and I would have a constructive chat about my brief time there. Complemented his hair, and greeted my co-workers like they were long-time friends.

I told my boss,

“This is the best work environment I’ve ever had. This is exactly what I was looking for in my job search, and I’m so glad to have found it.”

Verbatim.

And then I was fired.

He called it “the hardest conversation he ever had to have” because I “didn’t deserve to be shit on”.

And he shit on me anyway.

The Swan family shit all over me.

The unnecessarily aggressive geese on the eerie canal.

The Geese family.

---

Growing up, my grandparents had a small piece of land on Lake Norwood.

During summer visits, my cousins and I would swim and camp there on occasion.

But you always had to pick up the goose shit first.

You see, no matter the string fence that my Taita made herself and kept along the shore, geese would come onto the land and shit.

I’m familiar with picking up goose shit.

---

I genuinely thought that last year would be my only year on unemployment.

November 17, 2021 I filed for unemployment, again. At 23.

I have to cancel the tattoo appointment I just made.

And I’m not sure I can keep up with my savings goal on unemployment.

Which means pushing out my National Park trip start date.

The light at the end of this tunnel is beginning to dim faster and faster.

xxoo Ten