Yesterday started off just like any other day. I snoozed my alarms more times than I am proud to admit and begrudgingly rolled out of bed. I took my dog out for a quick walk and then made each of us breakfast before enjoying my coffee on the sofa while I played my New York Times games. Routine, they say, is good for the soul and this one was something I had begun to look forward to as I closed my eyes each night. But then something unfamiliar interrupted my morning bliss. A single text from a coworker changed the rest of my day and the repercussions of which will reverberate for the foreseeable future.
“Omg I got laid off,” the text read.
I scrambled for my phone and nervously opened my Outlook app just to find out that I too was a victim of the day’s reduction in force. “Fuck, so did I,” I responded solemnly. That was at 8:30am, I wouldn’t get officially let go until after 2:00pm that afternoon. In between was filled with calls, texts, goodbyes, check-ins, and the frantic silence of sudden unemployment.
This is my second time being laid off since the COVID pandemic emerged in 2020. The second time I was ousted from an organization where I saw myself continuing to grow. The second time it was someone else’s decision for me to leave my job and not mine.
Losing a corporate job is a tricky thing to wrap your head around. It’s not personal, yet in a culture where we use our job to define us in the way that ours does, it’s impossible not to take it personally. The company that embraced you with positive messaging, swag, benefits, employee appreciation, fantastic coworkers, and office amenities is suddenly treating you no differently than they would a stranger. The formality and finality of being let go is dehumanizing, and though it aims to treat all the same, feels like an attack.
It doesn’t help that I was laid off the day before my three year anniversary with the company. How can I not take that just a little bit personally?
In typical Frankie fashion, my mind starts racing with questions I will likely never know the answer to. “Why me?” “Why, out of all the jobs in the company, was mine eliminated?” “How did they decide this?” “Is it because I wasn’t performing well?” I began to analyze little things I had done over the course of the last few weeks wondering if that exact moment was the reason behind all this. What if I had done it differently? Would I be reaching out to people saying how much we will miss them at work everyday instead of accepting dozens of “I’m sorry” messages that begin to lose their meaning?
It’s a cruel and unusual game that my mind is playing and it all feels a bit too familiar.
This most recent job was the third I have had since graduating college and the second from which I was laid off. The first time was at my very first job out of college. Fresh faced, doe-eyed Frankie had grown from a contractor to a full-time employee. I was making strides in professional development and creating strong relationships with teammates both at and above my level. There felt like a real path to growth for me and it was exactly the place I wanted to flourish.
Then COVID happened and everything changed.
The travel industry took a really big hit during this time and my company was no exception. We didn’t have much of anything going on in any part of our business besides damage control. I got tapped-in to help out with another team and was basically doing that full-time when the announcement of a layoff was made. They let go of 25% of the company that day – my team specifically got cut by more than 50%.
You can hear about getting laid off, even read about it in a piece like this, but nothing prepares you for the real thing. The rejection, lack of control, feeling of failure…it’s overwhelming. I was spending 40 hours of my week with my colleagues in my office working for the success of the company and brand. Even when I wasn’t at work or commuting, I was talking to my coworkers who had become great friends and venting to others about the struggles. Your work life can consume you and when that is suddenly taken away, there is an emptiness left behind. Even if things weren’t perfect – or were far from it – the loss is still devastating. And I was not equipped to handle it.
On top of all this, there was a global pandemic wreaking havoc on the world. Everything, every bit of normalcy in my life, felt like it was being pulled out from underneath me. Nothing was the same and the disorientation was overwhelming. The trauma of losing my job on top of the loss of life as I knew it all at once had a tremendous impact on my mental health. Even though I didn’t know it at the time, I would spend much of the remainder of 2020 spiraling from these shifts.
Anxiety has been a thorn in my side for much of my life. Even though I didn’t know it at the time, many instances where I was out of control or overwhelmed throughout my life were moments when anxiety took the wheel. I didn’t have a name for the feeling back then, but I do now. It never impeded on my life in any consistent or major way until my senior year of college when the idea of being an “adult” in the “real world” was eating away at me. The impending change was crippling. Looking back, I should have gotten a therapist then. But instead, I put it off for a few years.
Somehow, by the grace of a power beyond my comprehension, I finally did the damn thing about a month prior to being let go. I don’t really believe in the notion, but looking back it does feel a bit like divine intervention. If I had waited any longer, I don’t know if I would have had it in me to make the effort – even though it is extremely easy to do – to find a therapist after this all went down. And we have COVID to thank for it all.
While I didn’t catch COVID until well into 2021, I was not immune to it’s psychological impact. The anxiety I was experiencing was much more common and much more intense than it ever had been. It got to the point where both my parents – on separate occasions – suggested I talk to someone. So I finally did.
When I got laid off things got really fun. My anxiety was swirling, preventing me from fully being present even with those I was quarantining with. Then – as if things weren’t crazy enough – came the depression.
There was a lot going on in the world and in my life that led to all this, but sitting still in the back of my mind was my lay off. People were dying, families were being torn apart, lives were being up-ended…and I was just a spoiled little girl who – like millions of others – had lost their job. There was no reason for me to be upset or depressed at all. Who was I to be so effected by all this when I was alive and well?
These thoughts, of course, only made the depression and anxiety worse. It’s a miserable cycle that whipped me around for what felt like forever. Days would either pass in the blink of an eye or dredge on endlessly. Everything built up and weighed me down, leaving me flat and vegetative. The world and my little corner of it were irreparably changing and I couldn’t handle it.
But, thankfully, this forever came to an end. The weight didn’t go away, I just got out from underneath it. By finding the courage to accept the way I was feeling and let those around me know that I was struggling, I opened the door to help. It might be the Virgo in me, but accepting help is one of the hardest things to do. It was a big moment for me. Along with this came medication and a brand new job. Things were changing still, but the direction felt positive for the first time in a long time. There were still bumps in the road ahead, but it was revitalizing to feel like I reached a place where I could blossom.
Maybe all of this was worth it to find my way here.
Three years later, I fear that I am right back where I was in 2020.
So many of the same feelings have begun to rear their ugly heads over the past few days. The embarrassment and shame that people will think I am a bad employee and deserved to lose my job. The lack of control over when my time with this company and in this stage of my life comes to a close. The comparison to my friends and colleagues who are still in the stable jobs they were in back when I experienced my first layoff. The inadequacy and rejection. The loss of a job a loved and coworkers who helped me grow. The end of a journey forward and uncertainty about where things go from here.
Those thoughts and more are all buzzing through my mind. The same fears and pain I felt before. But this time will be different.
This time I won’t shame myself for hurting or shut down the feelings that this isn’t enough of a reason to feel sad. I won’t wallow in the unchangeable reality of a decision that was out of my control. I will move forward, prideful of what I have accomplished and excited to see where I go next.
It won’t be easy, but I know I can do it.
I am far from alone in my experiences with lay offs over the past few years. Many have experienced these professional changes as much or even more than I have. Not everyone’s experience elicits the same reaction as mine; we all respond and cope in our own ways. This is just one person’s journey – one girl’s opinion – on what it has been like to be impacted by a reduction in force.
If you have been recently laid off, know you are not alone and you have the strength to move forward. Even though your mind may be telling you it is, know this isn’t personal.
If you know someone who has been laid off, reach out to them with even just a simple “thinking of you.” They might not want to talk about it, they might want to vent about it, or they might as for your help. Simply be there for them, they are going through something that isn’t easy.
Just One Girl's Opinion 
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