Food, Home and Style

Love in the Time of Layoff: Of Uncertain Times

Last week marked the two-month anniversary since my dear husband got the axe. A lot can happen in two months’ time. We canceled a family pilgrimage to Puerto Rico and put the apartment up for sale. Marco quit the gym. Our cat died. We both have gained some weight, but other than that, we’re actually doing okay. Fat but happy, I like to say, with a roof over our heads (for now). We’ve got our love to keep us warm.

The other day, Marco came home from a day of freelancing feeling blue. I tried the usual—kissing it away—but no go. “You don’t like it when I’m moody,” he said. “I’m going to be moody sometimes.”

“I know,” I said, reminding myself that my hormonally-induced-fertility-treatment-related moodiness was not the only game in town. A chronic optimist by nature (hence, my feeling at home on a website with a tagline that reads “the upside of downturn”), I find myself needing to accommodate to the reality that my partner’s internal weather system isn’t always going to be in sync with mine.

But in truth, weathering life post-layoff isn’t all that different from what it was before. The lessons I’m learning are lessons I would have learned eventually. The situation is just accelerating things, that’s all. And maybe [Pollyanna alert] that’s even for the best [Pollyanna alert ends].

Before you think me a hopeless lemonade maker, here’s what I meant by that: Before layoff (B.L.), Marco and I lived in fear that he’d lose his job. After layoff (A.L.), we obviously don’t worry about that so much. Sure, we worry about other things, like how we’ll continue to make ends meet, but all the more minor things I used to worry about seem more like nonstarters now, and frankly, I find that a bit of a relief. Nifty perks like healthcare and knowing where the next paycheck is coming from are nice, but since I freelance and Marco has freelanced fulltime before, as he’s doing now, we have a jump on living with—and tolerating—uncertainty.

Ultimately, I’d like to learn to do more than tolerate uncertainty. I’d like to learn to embrace it. Because really, what in life is certain, even when the economy is strong and chugging along?

I haven’t always felt this way. In fact, I used to feel the opposite, wanting, indeed needing, my ducks in a row. When I was in graduate school pursuing my doctorate, for instance, I went through a period of intense doubt about my chosen path. While friends were marrying, starting families, and launching lucrative careers, I was busy writing about representations of strong women in literature, feeling infantilized, and growing depressed. The uncertainty—Did this stuff really matter? Would I get an academic job? Would I ever find love?—kept me up at night. I wrote a poem back then, just before I took a six-month leave of absence from my program, offering up this wish:

Suspended between dreams
I pray to the god of Limbo:
May I learn to stretch my mind
wide like the universe
To make room for paradox.
In the throes of flux
May I remember to live life
And not wait
to live.

At the two-month anniversary of Marco’s layoff, I’m far from embracing uncertainty. But I honestly think that our current situation is bringing out the dormant Buddhist in me. While I long for a more stable financial existence, I am not waiting for anything these days.

Except, okay, maybe paid-for health insurance. And someone to put an offer on our apartment this week. And a fairy godmother.  But I digress.  We’ve got our love to keep us warm. 

Deborah Siegel is the author of Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild and creator of the group blog Girl w/Pen. Read more of her Love in the Time of Layoff columns here.

Tags: home, Love in the Time of Layoff, relationships, The Working World, working at home