How I Survived Getting Laid Off and Dumped in The Same Week
I got fired and dumped all in one week — and lived to tell it…
I’ve never dealt with rejection well. Do you know that kid who would cry over spilled milk? Well, it was a bottle of water in my case, and it was only because my 3rd-grade teacher scolded me when I accidentally knocked it over. Still, I continued on this tearful trail, well past the point in which it was deemed cute.
So I guess you could say I reacted stronger than most when I was dealt with two major blows exactly one week apart from one another: Losing my coveted job as an editor of a magazine and losing the boyfriend who I thought was “the one.”
As an overachieving, recent Ivy League grad, it felt like the end of the world to get laid off at the ripe old age of twenty-five. Though some of my friends would eventually join my ranks in the months to come, at the time, I was the only person I knew who had experienced a layoff.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Throughout my life, I had always been labeled as one of the “smart ones.” Maybe I didn’t have mile-long legs or a 24-inch waist, but I had come to accept that my brains would take me further.
Raised in the era of Project Self Esteem, I had assumed that my career would be an endless ladder, ripe with fulfillment and…
