It's been a very long time since I last posted here in these old haunts, and more than year since I started a thread.
I am more at peace with myself with each passing day. I appreciate being single and spending time with my children and with friends. But I still do not have a positive relationship with the ex, at all. Not entirely negative, but we only seem to tolerate each other. xW continues to make jabs at me, and I have gotten good at not letting it phase me, at least outwardly. I just shrug off her occasional displays of pettiness and contempt for me and move onward. And she seems to be slowly getting the message I don't care one whit about such games anymore.
I have been struggling, however, with a very difficult employer, a big corporation that seems to work very hard to be the embodiment of every negative stereotype seen in comic strips and other media. For the last three years I have been working on various phases of a project to consolidate business units and collapse operating units into a centrally controlled structure. I've been with the employer for nearly ten years, tolerating the rising and falling tides of insanity that have pervaded this company, under the pretense of stability and a decent benefits package (though the salary itself stinks.) Basically, I put up with this for the sake of my two small boys, whom I share 50-50 legal custody of with their walk-away mother. I have been looking for other employment opportunities for years, but none have surfaced in this geographic area. Leaving my current employer would basically mean having to relocate. And having to reallocate would mean giving up on 50-50 custody -- I'd lose my kids, because xW would use this to get her wish, which is to cut me out entirely from their lives.
Well, if you couldn't guess where this is going, here it is. My employer has determined they are going to restructure my own department. In other words I've gotten my proverbial "two weeks notice". At this point I have one week from today, Nov. 3rd, and after that I am out the door, laid off. They have encouraged me to seek for and apply for new positions being offered internally to the company, but they're moving most of these jobs up north, three states away. Even our managers are being forced, eventually, to reapply for their own positions. The bottom-line is they want us to relocate to where the new regional director is now based.
Despite all the assurances that everyone would still have a seat at the end of this long merger process, the third phase of which we completed just this very Sunday, by-the-way, apparently we've been fed a line all along. I shouldn't be surprised, I guess.
I and another person in our group from another office were the first to be given the ultimatum. The other person, an older lady, has decided its time for her to retire. (I wish I could retire.) Other folks from various other departments are also sweating bullets; who's next they wonder.
So I am praying and thinking and looking hard to see if there's some chance the market here would support me. It's still pretty bleak. I was hoping in this last week to have lined something up before I had to start giving the bad news to folks, like the ex.
I haven't yet breathed a word to the ex or to my kids. Part of me feels I should, but another part of me says not yet. I know xW will likely take some drastic measures once she hears I am losing my job, like taking me back to court to sue for full custody, knowing I would no longer have the resources to defend myself. It be a cinch for her to win, especially if I have to relocate just to have an income. She still harbors so much mindless hatred for me, such that I pity her sometimes. It's so senseless, but it's there -- and I know she will take foolish measures because of it. Even if she knows how it harms our sons.
So, when do I tell her? It is a financial matter, one that will have impact on our children, at least until I can land another job and gain eligibility for insurance and other benefits again.
But on the other hand xW is not my spouse anymore either. And she never said a word to me before she up and changed jobs three years ago during the separation (and she was still legally married to me at the time even). She felt that was none of my business back then. Somehow I doubt she'll think my own business is even remotely private.
Perhaps I should wait until the last day of employment, being next Thursday, before saying anything.
