Redundancy Diary - Week 1

Two weeks ago I would never have dreamt that I would be one of the people that I have been reading about in my local newspaper. But here I am, coping with the news I received that I have been made redundant and, for the first time ever, after 19 years of work, will be unemployed.

Although I suspected I could be made redundant, I still wasn’t prepared for the formal letter that was read out to me by my boss, and the brown envelope they passed to me across the desk. I remember thinking that I had to keep calm, and I just concentrated on looking into the HR Manager’s eyes without showing what I really felt inside. As I walked out of the room, I felt like I wanted to collapse. I think the only thing that stopped me was also a strange feeling of relief that I finally knew that I was going after weeks of dreading it.

When I got home, the shock turned into panic. My brain then went into overdrive. There suddenly seemed so many things to think about but I didn’t know where to start. Should I sit down and draw up a list of my weekly spend? How do I start to budget and how will I know what I can afford and what I can’t afford? Or should I sit down and write a new CV, buy all the newspapers I can and look on the internet to find a job as quickly as possible? In my case I am going to lose my car, my internet connection, and my mobile phone, so I’ve got to think about how I can get the best deals to be able to stay connected. A hundred and one questions keep running round my head: “What is happening to me?”, “ Why is this happening now?”, “How will I ever get another job?”, “Can I afford my son’s birthday party?”, “Will we be able to go on holiday this year?”

Everything that I have taken for granted is now at risk – being able to choose what I want off the supermarket shelves, buying clothes for my children, going out in the evening, turning the heating on during the day when it gets cold.

After the shock and panic, a dull depression has settled in, combined with feelings of insecurity and anxiety. There were days last week when I couldn’t even get out of bed to face the day and my head just felt numb. In the first 2 days I couldn’t see how I was going to get myself out of it – when I was walking down the pavement I kept my eyes down to avoid meeting anyone else’s gaze. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, I just wanted to hide away and hope that either a black hole would swallow me up or that it was all a bad dream that I would eventually wake up out of. At night I would fall into an exhausted sleep, only to wake up a couple of hours later with my brain full of questions that had no answers, and it would take me another 2 hours to get back to sleep again.

I am clinging on to the hope that I will be able to find another job and that I am not alone – my neighbour has been made redundant after 40 years with the same local engineering company. The first thing I need to do is to sort out my money, to come up with a ‘breadline’ budget, and then work out how to get another job as quickly as possible. I know I need help from my friends and family; it’s at times like this when you really know who your true friends are.

Next week: Getting out of the depression, accepting my situation, and moving on.

Does this relate to your experiences of redundancy? Please share your experiences here.