Starting Over

Imagine you're comfortable with your life.   Your house is the one you've always dreamed of, you finally have a "toy" of your own, that's reliable.  There is no car payment, and 2 - functioning - vehicles parked in your driveway.  You, your spouse and your off spring are relatively healthy, and happy.  Well adjusted.  Comfortable.

Now.  Imagine losing your job.  The one you've held, and grown in, for the past nearly 12 years.  Gone.  In what seems like an instant, but in reality it has been happening, in slow motion - for approximately one year.  The writing was on the wall, the signs were all there, it was predetermined to happen.

The beginning of March, I was laid off ... permanently.  I was told my parents company of nearly 17 years, was closing.  There was nothing further we could do to save it - we'd tried, and tried, and tried.  And now, we have to stop the bleeding, and begin rebuilding.

It sucks.  It's heartbreaking.  It's demeaning and demoralizing to have to walk into the local Unemployment office, and answer question after question after question - fill out form after form after form - all under the intense scrutiny of the government, because people who have filed before you - have ruined it for the rest.  Everyone is investigated (per say) - everyone is put through the paces.  Everyone has to go through the same demeaning and demoralizing process, just to get a small portion of the pay one was accustomed to receiving.

Now.  Imagine you're my parents.  Watching the business they built from the back bedroom of their old house fail, flounder and finally close.   After 17 years of hard work.  Nearly 35 Employees at the Highest ... Now, down to two ... the first two.  And soon, none.  Just a name will remain.

To say the past month and a half has been tough, would be an understatement.  To say the past year has been hard, would be a lie.   It has been downright impossible to sit here, day after day, and watch & listen to the comings and goings, and not cry.

Now.  Imagine having to start over.

it's not easy.  it's where we are at.