It is always when a difficult situation begins to be over that I wish I had chronicled the entire saga. How better to communicate the gradual distress of dealing with something hard on a regular basis? Saying now, “a cloud settled over our family for a long time” doesn’t quite capture the way the cloud creeped in and took up residence, or the way we could barely recognize that there was a cloud, or the moments when we would see a glimmer of light, or the anguish when those glimmers would be extinguished and we would be still left in darkness.
After the fact, it is impossible to go back and capture the immediacy of the experience and re-chronicle the journey. Life must be written as it is lived, or the writing does not truly reflect life.
My husband lost his job on April 27, 2009. It was our 18th anniversary. This job loss was the 3rd such loss in 25 months. All three losses were due to an economic downturn in his industry. The previous two times, he had a job within just a couple weeks. When this journey began, we had no idea that it truly would be a journey rather than another blip. Other than short-term and part-time census work in late spring, he has stayed unemployed since then. I have been immersed in a morass of emotions, woes, crises, and unrealness; perhaps I will figure out how to write about them at some point. I couldn’t even write about them privately at the time because the expression of the words made the situation more real than my soul could bear.
So here I am, trying to figure out how to get out of the cloud. Yesterday, my husband was offered a job. The pay will be pretty much the same as he’s been getting for unemployment, so our short-term financial future has no improvement. Hopefully, we will soon be able to look at options like refinancing the mortgage that can make a financial difference in other ways. So, yes, this is a good thing—but it isn’t awesome. I’m not feeling the euphoria I’d thought I would feel. I’m the recipient of good wishes and congratulatory hugs, yet I feel kind of numb.
Yesterday, it was 17 months—to the day—since my husband had lost his job. It was 518 days. (No, I hadn’t been counting; it was only after it was over that I could bear to do so.) I don’t think it’s possible for someone to snap out of a 518-day experience immediately. I’m deeply grateful for my friends who are rejoicing for me. At some point, I will be able to rejoice with them. But for now, I’m still in the cloud—just a little closer to the lighter edge than I was on Day 517.
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