My nerves were on fire, a pit opening between my stomach and throat. In retrospect, it was this moment, as I shoved 8x11 sheets into the frozen maw of the serpentine machine, that I knew I was going to be fired. It was a beautiful day in March, the type of winter sun that radiated nostalgia through the window. I was there, in the paper-scented office, stuffing a stack of someone’s personal information into the clattering copier-scanner-printer hydra. It was quiet today, the phones only occasionally chirping to beg for attention. The cackling of the machine, along with the soft clicking of keyboards and the shuffling of bodies in faux-leather chairs, created an office-chic ambience that enveloped me in a cocoon of tactile unease.
After I graduated from my undergrad program, I had spent around six months at my parents’ house, lurking between the man-cave basement and upstairs bedroom, occasionally firing up my car to go to half-hearted job interviews across the churning concrete-metal maelstrom of Michigan highways. Eventually, after months of online and real-space searching, I had acquired a job offer: a Human Resources Generalist/Recruiter position, located within the western pits of the Kalamazoo valleys. A close friend of mine, along with his girlfriend, were already settled in the area, so I, with the assistance of my proud parents, settled within the western hill-scape at the median between Chicago and Detroit.
This was an Adult Job, complete with a $45,000 salary, health insurance, 401k; the type of work hankered by the sterile zombies populating LinkedIn. Before acquiring this job, my anxiety/depression complex had reached intense levels; the months of haunting my childhood home had fed the beast clawing my ribcage, impressing gashes within the pits of my stomach which read You are a Failure, You are Wasting your Potential, Wouldn’t it be Better for everyone if you were Just Dead. Here was a sedative for that beast; a professional Big-Boy job within which I could melt, proving to the depression-constructed tribunal in my mind that I wasn’t a failure; actually, I’m going to become the straightedge business associate I knew I could pretend to be.
The verbal abuse started not long after my first week at the position. In the beginning, the first week at the job was calm, my nascent managers and coworkers welcoming me with basic pleasantries and the infamous Midwestern faux-politeness. It felt perfect; the exact type of environment within which I was born, raised, and molded. They showed me the ropes; the binding sacraments of answering phones, making calls, contributing to databases, sending emails. I was to become complicit in these rituals, reciting the ancient proverbs of Hello, this is Dan, I’m calling from **** to discuss a position that you applied for on Indeed and Good morning, I have someone I’d like to set up an interview for; what’s your calendar like? Would Tuesday afternoon work? Thank you very much!
What had started as gentle corrections became glares and violent cadences. When I would be on the phone with potential candidates, I was yelled at, their dissatisfaction with my phone-speak slashed a deep chasm in my chest, reawakening my depression-anxiety complex with a renewed, hateful vigor. I wasn’t talking correctly, I wasn’t remembering policies that I was never informed of, I wasn’t doing things fast enough, I wasn’t communicating well enough, I wasn’t the hardened industry professional that they expected out of a baby-faced undergraduate. These comments poisoned the core of my being, envenomating the little self-love I still possessed.
It was later, when the winter sun had begun to drearily sag in the evening sky, that I was called into the HR VP’s office, finally invited to one of those closed-door whispered meetings that my managers loved to partake in both behind the offices’ backs and in front of our faces. They announced to me that I was being let go; they couldn’t afford to train me during my previously-defined training months, the other managers complained I was too lethargic, and they even concocted a possible fiction in which I had blown off the CEO trying to greet me. In this firing, my downfall was complete, my self-hatred was justified, I had finally become the failure my depression knew that I was.
This event had been the crux upon which much of my depression/anxiety was based. My subsequent inability to find a new job after this firing had further encouraged my descent into a wallowing pit of self-torment; it wasn’t until later in the same year I had started attending therapy and began the long climb out.
My tenure in Kalamazoo, with this traumatic overture, was a crucible, a boiling purgatory in which I would either perish or ascend; succumb to my depression or domesticate that clawing beast. Now, I am free of that hellish cistern, thanks to my own efforts along with the support from therapy and my social network. I can face the ruins of my self-torture chamber, pick through the ashes, run my fingers over my burns, and excavate meaning or value within these remnants. I can stand amongst these painful ghosts, and allow myself to feel the sun again, no matter the season.
thanks for sharing this, specially the last part.
So painful to read, but I am grateful that you had the strength to survive and write so beautifully about your experience.