Tomorrow my husband is losing his job.
The past 2 years have been horrendous. He had an accident at work that has left him unable to do his job any longer, a manual job that he has done for approx 20 years. He has no experience in anything else. His work have been worse than awful. They have tried to manage him out over the past year as well as put him through a few (unfounded) disciplinary hearings. I would be here all day if I wrote down everything they have put him, and subsequently us, through.
It has now come to the stage where they have offered him (a paltry amount of) money to leave via voluntary redundancy. It didn't take much for us to accept, his mental health is in tatters. As is mine. I have had 3 long periods off work for stress and anxiety over the past 2 years and am on thin ice over my attendance.
The terms of the redundancy have been going backwards and forwards between his work and our solicitor and today he phoned me to say it had been finalised and that tomorrow is his last day.
I thought I would feel relief but I'm worried about how we will manage financially. My anxiety magnifies everything. My husband can't go back to the same type of job he did before. He really needs to retrain in something else.
I have no one to talk to. My husband has been drinking far too much over the past few months and cannot seem to stop himself from drinking in the evenings. I have been tentatively broaching the subject with him and at the weekend we had an argument about it and he told me he knew he was drinking too much and would try and reign it in. He has drank every night since then. I've had to hide the alcohol I've bought for Christmas as I had to buy it again as he drank it all.
He's on various medication as a result of the accident. He's not the same person. Everything is so difficult just now. We have had an awful couple of years and now he's going to be unemployed. I work part time and my wages don't cover anywhere near our bills. We have 3 children 7, 5 and 2 years old.
I try to put a brave face on everything but I feel at the end of my rope. My husband was so relieved on the phone to me but I couldn't muster up any excitement. It's good for us and the children for him to be off work as he works a ridiculous amount of hours per a week, this is shift work where he would work into the early mornings and also more weekends than not. He was only getting boxing day off this year and the 3rd Jan so having him with us for Christmas is going to be great for the kids as he's always worked over the Christmas period.
He is getting enough money to cover us for the next few weeks which is something and then I guess we'll need to apply for benefits.
I just feel so hopeless about it all. I have been here for several years but have name changed for this.