I've had one hell of a year. In January I got laid off a job running ambulance calls. For the purposes of context I was making approximately $47,000 a year (which was certainly unsustainable given the call volume in the service area, hence the lay-off, and also well north of the 90th percentile of wages for EMTs. Shrug). I "lived at home" during this time, but realistically I was working such long shifts that I lived at the station and made it home about one night a week. I was in a long term relationship at this time, and while I was making good money, things were good. Well, as I've already stated, I got laid off when this small town couldn't afford me anymore. What happened was a town that had a volunteer ambulance service had serious issues with their existing volunteers, dissolved the service, and hired myself and the rest of the crew I worked with. I did my best to serve the community, and got chewed up and spit out for my troubles.

After the lay-off, do you know what I did? I decided two things: One, I refused to let the world make me mean. Two, I decided jobs are for the most part bullshit, and I lived for eight months or so off of the savings I had built up. Well, I got an unending deluge of shit for not having a job from Mom, Dad, and my girlfriend at the time. Don't get me wrong, I looked for work, but for the most part I was content to do my own thing. Well, I didn't realize that my ex-girlfriend was only treating me nice because of my job. I was raised very conservatively and paid for damn near everything while I had the money. After getting laid off, I noticed a distinct change in my relationship where it suddenly felt like every single conversation revolved around my job status. Whether it was Mom, Dad, or the ex-girlfriend, all anyone wanted to talk to me about was my job situation and my lack thereof. Well fuck you very much, maybe I'd rather talk about racecars or something for a damn minute.

Everyone made me feel like shit for choosing to take my time to live off my savings. Do you know something? I saw things in the line of duty that no person should have to see. I literally had a coworker tell me that they single-handedly would have made the difference between life and death for a patient who died, had they been on the call in question. They weren't there that day, but I was and I'm telling you that this patient was dead no matter what anyone thinks they could have done. So having it implied that I let them die didn't sit right with me, but I wasn't allowed to talk about it. Every time I tried to get it off my chest, my ex told me I was living in the past and refused to let me talk about things I needed to talk about. She seemed to feel that I needed to talk to a counselor instead of her.

This ex-girlfriend has her own career. She was an elementary education major, and managed to get a teaching job at a very rural school. She made all the decisions of where we were moving etc without once consulting me, and despite it being a town of two hundred people more than forty-five minutes by interstate away from a town with more than a thousand people, I still heard all this bullshit about my joblessness. There was no jobs for me to do in this town of two hundred, so I figured I could keep the house nice for her while she was at work. Then one day, after cleaning all day she comes home from work, and I cook dinner. Then she goes to bed immediately after dinner. I'm an extremely extroverted person, three hours away from anyone else that I know, and I told her in plain English that "I spent all day at the house by myself, I don't want to spend all evening by myself too," and suddenly I'm the bad guy for not being understanding of how hard it is to be a teacher.

So after downing a sixer to myself that night, I realized that I was deeply unhappy, and she was unhappy too. I expressed to her that I felt I should leave. Well, of course she didn't like that idea.

The next day I left, went home to Mom and Dad's house, only to be told that I had a week to find a job or get kicked out. It's been about a month since the breakup and honestly, I don't think they believe that I was being mistreated. My ex made me feel like my earning power was the only thing that made me a man, but what do you know, the day after leaving her, she called to tell me that my parents were bad for me and that I should move back to the town she was in, and that a job wasn't that big of deal. Typical. Before I left, my job situation was all we ever talked about. And I have you know that when I had a job and she didn't, I did not treat her anything like the way she treated me when I didn't have a job and she did.

My mom seems to think that I just cold shouldered my ex for no reason, and I know my ex has been contacting her. Life back at home has been real shitty, but I'll tell you gentlemen this much: I still refuse to let the world make me mean. I have a job as a delivery driver for a sub sandwich chain, and I'm really enjoying it. It's not running ambulance calls, sure, but it has a few things in common with my old job, and for the record, I'm enjoying it a lot more as a single man than I would be with my ex still in my life. I have a job now, and I don't want my ex back. I'm seeing a counselor now, and I don't want my ex back. Do you know what I want? I want a dog. I'm saving my money so I can get a dog and care for it. It'll be me, my ole dog, and the sandwich wagon, and I'm just fine with that.

TL;DR--My ex-girlfriend was a jerk to me about temporary joblessness so I left and my parents took her side. I'm going to get a dog.