Your Company is Not Your Family

I was fired the first Friday of the first week of 2017.  It wasn't unexpected, insomuch as I know what it feels like to be ghosted and I've been through plenty of breakups and unrequited relationships.  What was unexpected?  The complete and utter mind fuck I'd willingly jumped into. 

For the purposes of this story, I'll call the company Charles.  I'd joined mid-2015 after a seven-year stint in Big Corporate America.  Charles was unexpected.  I'd been looking for a few months, playing the field, flying in and out of New York to meet and greet and wine and dine. Then I happened upon an article about Charles...and my first meeting was the closest I'd ever felt to love at first sight.  The energy.  The empathy.  The witty repartee.  The mutual admiration, and belief that I belonged, and safety in feeling wanted.  

The honeymoon period was lovely.  I heard everything I wanted to hear...all the talk about family and love and #blessed and forever.  I bought it.  I'd never been in a relationship like this; I received as much love as I gave, I had a spring in my step, and I told anyone who would listen how wonderful Charles was.

Then things changed...or  more likely, the way I saw them changed.  While Charles demanded my undying loyalty and devotion, urged me to be patient, and continued plying me with forevers, the reality wasn't living up to the words.  Others joined and captured Charles's attention.  I began to doubt myself, wonder what I could do better or differently to stay in Charles's favor...a fool's errand as more people joined the family each day.  

The doubts turned to fear.  I worried -- constantly and obsessively -- that Charles would break my heart.  That the love I'd felt at the beginning would stop, that I'd be turned away.  And it was so unbelievably easy to believe in that ending...if Charles was family, I knew what happened to families.  They break.  Love ends.  Divorces move forward and homes and record collections and toys are divided and put into boxes and new and different lives are formed.  If Charles's intent of the family rhetoric was to foster a sense of belonging and security, the impact on me was the exact opposite.  I spun more and more, until I questioned my own capabilities, intelligence, and worth.

And then it happened.  Charles dumped me.  Without a real reason, without trying to work it out, without much discussion. Deals were reached and papers signed and social media adjusted to limit Charles's presence in my daily life.

Here's the thing about all of this.  Charles isn't a person.  It's a goddamn company.  And COMPANIES ARE NOT PEOPLE.  They can't love you back.  They have bottom lines and quarterly objectives and stakeholders -- things I appreciate as a holder of an Ivy League MBA.  I loved Charles more than I've loved any boy...at the time, certainly more than I loved myself.  I made Charles my boyfriend and husband and confidant and center of my world, and when our relationship ended I felt stripped of my identity.  That's on me.

I don't regret my time with Charles. I gained a ton of new skills and the name on my resume didn't hurt in finding my next job.  But more importantly I had my heart broken and picked myself up and realized that I spent so much time worrying about what would happen.  Then it happened.  And I'm fine -- perhaps even better -- for it.  I'm loving my new job and new company, and for as great as the company and my colleagues are I have no illusion or expectation for this organization to be my friends and family and identity.  I have all of those things, separately and regardless of my career, and they're pretty fucking awesome.