FINALLY! I can breathe again!

You guys can't possibly know how relieved I am right now! This will be long, but I'm gonna try to nutshell it for you.

In 2004, I lost a job I'd been at for seven years. I had been planning to leave anyway because the company was in bad shape. But I wasn't planning on losing the job I had before I started the new one.

For me, the feeling of being unemployed was shocking. I had no idea it would impact me quite the way it did. I was scared. I felt worthless. I actually cried constantly. And I never cry! It is a feeling I never want to experience again. It is nauseating and horrific…and I'm sure it shaved years off my life.

Eventually, I did get the job I'd applied for. But it was way out in West Chester, PA which is nowhere near my home. Not even close. The job was terrible but I fnally was making a salary I deserved. I ended up segueing into a position that was perfect for me—at the same salary. The only thing was that it was still in West Chester.

When I decided I couldn't keep living that way, I started applying for internal jobs near where I live. I took the first one I was offered—which, in retrospect, may have been a huge mistake.

I got an apartment ten minutes from my work location but the job was absolutely atrocious. There was no way I could stay in it. It was way over my head and I had no interest in it so there was no chance I'd get any better at it.

That's when this awful dude I used to work with decided to steal me away from my boss. He hates my then-boss so he actually created a position for me in his one-man department.

The job was fine: It was important but mostly consisted of menial numbers-crunching. At any rate, I could have done it forever and ever. But the department function will dissolve into irrelevance in a matter of just a few years. It was worse than a dead-end job. It was, like, an "impending doom" job. The kind where you keep working, knowing that the bottom's gonna drop out eventually.

Well, my new boss turned out to be quite a piece of work. All the time, I hear people complaining about their bosses and I always think it's funny. Because there's no way these bosses-from-hell can be as rotten as everyone says. I realize now that I'd simply been lucky up to that point. I'd never had a real boss-from-hell. But this dude is a monster.

In all the years I'd known him, I was benevolent about his sad little "life" (for want of a better term). I believe that, to a large extent, people create their own situations. Sure, things happen that are out of our control. But if you're living a completely miserable existence, completely devoid of happiness or friendship, that is all you. You created that. And you can change that. He just doesn't seem to have the relatively tiny amount of get-up-and-go required to improve his life. And I don't need to have that in my life.

I was desperate to get out of the job I had and he was waving this new position under my nose, making everything sound like wine & roses. So I jumped at it. I thought I could separate my life from his dark clouds. After all, we're talking about two separate things here: My work life and my real life. Never the twain should meet. But he made that impossible.

It was immediately clear that he wanted two things from me: First, he wanted me to do all the day-to-day functions of his department. (I honestly have no idea what he was doing from August through October.) And second, he wanted a friend. But he didn't want a friend to improve his bleak non-existence. He wanted someone he could suck into his black hole.

While I was more than happy to do all the work, I was not letting him suck me into his hole. And being the unprofessional freak he is, he decided to throw everything away because he wasn't getting his way.

One morning, he asked me exactly what it is I do there all week. That's the sign of a good boss, isn't it? He told me what to do—and I was doing it, otherwise it wouldn't be getting done—but he didn't really know what any of it was. So I spent an entire week writing down every single thing I did so I could present it to him in the form of a report. (As if I had time for this bullshit. I was busy running his fucking department.)

A week or two later, after months of telling me what a great job I'd been doing, he sat me down and said, "I don't think this is the job for you." He'd obviously realized there wasn't enough work to justify two people. And since my salary is about half of his, he was in a bad position. I was doing all the work, after all. When it came time to get rid of one of us, it wasn't gonna be me.

He couldn't fire me outright because he'd been terribly unprofessional throughout the entire experience. I also suspect he knew I'd begun documenting every infraction he'd perpetrated. So he took all the work away from me. He had to start doing everything himself again because his boss could ask for an accounting at any moment.

That was at the end of October and since then, he's had me going into work and collecting paychecks for doing nothing more than showing up. I've done no work. None. There is nothing work-related on my desk.

The cunt was pretending to be kind enough to give me the time to find another position in the company. And I found one. In fact, I found two. But as the offers were being finalized, my entire division was placed under a hiring freeze. So months went by during which he tortured me however he could and acted as though the ax could fall at any moment. I hate to admit that he was effective to any extent…but he was.

Every year, I wait for November and December. I love that time of year. I live for it. And he was ruining it. The only stress I should be experiencing during that time of year is shopping!

Fortunately, things kept popping up to make the important dates (my birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's) better. I kept getting little bits of good news at all the right times. Inevitably however, I'd receive more bad news. But I had some breathing room during the most important days of the season. I don't know how it happened, but I'm so glad it did.

Anyway, my point—and I do have one—is that everything finally got unfrozen. All the approvals went through and I'm getting my offer letter tomorrow. I start my new job on Monday! I think when I get that letter in my hands, I'll be able to really start breathing again—the full, deep breaths I've been robbed of since early fall!

And things are starting to look up in other areas of my life too. My friends who were living abroad have moved back to Philly. And I may actually end up moving to within a few blocks of them. And you have no idea how much I would love to live in South Philly!

My mom's worries about losing her job and being able to afford the costs of her healthcare are working out even though she actually did lose her job. Believe it or not, it couldn't have come at a better time: She's eligible for Medicare and my father will be eligible in a few months!

And I have a date with a real cute guy this weekend. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to concentrate on him (or anyone) with all this drama going on…but now the drama is over!

So here we go, on to the next chapter of my life! I really can't wait!