September 25th, 2020
Someone at my new work asked me tonight if I missed my old work.
I have been avoiding this question since March.
It’s been asked in abundance and in different keys. And my response is usually an acute tweet that confirms I am fine and it was just a job.
But it wasn’t.
In reality, I am mostly fine. But sometimes, the feelings crash down on top of me in massive waves and I drown in it. The job was more akin to a personal relationship, which was actually a hive of hundreds of personal relationships I inhabited for almost thirteen years.
And instead of a break-up (or hundreds of break-ups), it was a sudden death in a world where we’re not allowed to have a proper party or funeral.
It is hard to miss my old work when there wasn’t a definite good-bye or certain sense of closure. And technology begets living ghosts and makes you question the nature of every relationship you have ever had (or didn’t have) at all.
It’s a simple question with a complex no-answer. This month has been exciting, lonely, engaging, scary, hopeful, exhausting and one of the most stressful I’ve had for a number of reasons. Like any break-up, I wonder if all the work I put into my last relationship means anything now, and how terrifying it is to put myself through it all over again as I start a new one.
So do I miss it? Well, yeah. And it would be easier to get over if it would have ended in a way that reflected how much of myself I had put into it over all this time.
The Den 