I knew the redundancy was coming. Restructuring, budget cuts, the whole performance. I told myself I was prepared. I thought the hard part would be the financial uncertainty, so I had savings, I had my CV ready, I had a plan. What I was not prepared for was waking up on day three of unemployment and feeling like I didn\'t know who I was anymore.
I had been at that company for six years. When people asked what I did, I had a clear answer. I had colleagues who called me for advice. I had a purpose — or at least something that looked like one when I squinted. When the job went, so did the structure, the routine, the identity. I became "someone between jobs" — and I hadn\'t realised how much of my self-worth had been quietly outsourced to my career.
The depression that came wasn\'t dramatic. It was just grey. Low motivation, poor sleep, conversations with family that I cut short because I couldn\'t explain what was wrong without it sounding like I was being ungrateful (I still had savings, after all). The hardest part was admitting to myself that the grief was real even though the thing I\'d lost was "just a job".
If you\'ve been through this — the identity piece specifically — I would love to hear how you rebuilt your sense of self outside of work. Because right now I genuinely don\'t know who I am when I\'m not someone\'s employee.