I was reading the poetry book “Chameleon Aura” by Billy Chapata, and two poems hit me like a ton of bricks:
“my heart no longer skips beats when i think of you.
instead, i’m overcome with a beautiful peace and tranquility,
when i realize just how much space your departure
created for beautiful things to enter my life”
and
to whom this may concern;
thank you for giving up on me, thank you for being a teacher.
thank you for giving me fuel to love myself harder
Wowza. Honestly, wowza. That’s all I can initially say about it.
My first thoughts when I read those two poems side by side (besides wowza) were about how true they both are for me and everything I’ve been through this last year. Most things were out of my control, and I really fought against a lot of it for so damn long.
But now look at where I am. I’m probably the happiest and most confident I’ve ever been, and it’s because of everything that’s happened this year. Losing my job might have saved my sanity and who knows what else in my life.
I know that sounds dramatic, but I don’t care. Getting unexpectedly let go from a job was one of the main catalysts for huge change and upheaval in my life this year, and it made me re-evaluate so many things I thought I knew about my life, what I wanted and what I didn’t.
Losing my job has made me so incredibly grateful for where I am now, I can’t even tell you. I’ve gone through a lot of shitty stuff this last year, including getting let go, but now I’m reaching a point where I’m really grateful that it happened.
I wasn’t super happy and content in my life then, even though I didn’t know it. I was going along with the flow, just doing the bare minimum every day basically, and I was miserable. I would complain all the time about how much I didn’t like my job and I had been looking for a new one but not super seriously and then boom.
The job I complained about was gone. A lot of things I was comfortable with and thought I knew were gone. I felt so incredibly lost and alone and confused and negative, etc. for a long time. I was so hurt and sad, but I’m not today. I have fought to get where I am, and I’m so proud of how I’ve handled everything that’s been thrown my way this year.
It took a shit ton of healing and processing to get to where I am today, but none of that would’ve happened if I hadn’t been let go from my job. Or maybe it would’ve eventually, but not in the same way or in the same time frame. It was divine timing, as they say.
Anyway, I am incredibly grateful for the journey I’ve gone on in the last year. I never would’ve predicted everything that happened, let alone in the span of one year, but now I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Because of how down and sad and underappreciated I felt, I stood up. I fought back. I made shit happen. I took some risks. I learned how to find my own voice, not the one that society shoved down my throat. I became confident and sure of myself in my own skin. I became who I am today.
So, thank you to the job that let me go. Thank you for letting me go so I could find who I really am. Thank you for cutting me free from something that wasn’t serving me anymore. Thank you for shaking up my life so I knew that something had to change right fucking then.
My life is far from perfect, but I am by far the happiest and most confident and sure of myself as I’ve probably ever been. I know who I am and who I’m not. I know what I want and don’t want out of my career and my personal life. I know what I will and won’t tolerate. I know what I will and won’t fight for.
I know who I am, plain and simple, and you were one of the main catalysts for that. I can’t say it’s all because of you because it’s really all because of me and the choices I’ve made, but I can say you were the last straw that broke the camel’s back, as it were, and for that I thank you.
I don’t know where I would be today or what my life would look like if I hadn’t been let go in February, but I have a feeling that everything would be vastly different in a lot of ways.
So, thank you for not seeing the value I have so I could find it for myself. Thank you for lighting a fire under my ass so I could change the direction my life was going. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Photo by Pete Pedroza on Unsplash
