I am going to talk in vagaries today, and so I apologise for that. I think part of the reason is out of respect for my friends and colleagues, and partly because I am unsure of how I am feeling.

Yesterday, a big change happened at my place of work. A change which has had a massive impact on a lot of my colleagues. A lot of people who I would call friends. As the presentation went on, I realised that actually my team would not be as affected as others. With that realisation came a strange mixture of relief and guilt.

Relief that I had a mortgage to pay, and I could pay it, but guilt that I wasn’t as affected as them. I wanted to be able to empathise with them, but I couldn’t, how could I? Any platitudes I said would be just that, meaningless words. And so now I feel there is some sort of invisible wedge between us that I can’t circumnavigate. Not until the fallout of these decisions have been finalised, and people have plans for their futures. So until then, I just have to walk some sort of tightrope.  

It reminded me of something I had read about Survivor Guilt. At first I thought I was over reacting, but then I read up on it. The below was a definition I came across, and the final sentence gave me some sort of relief that I wasn’t being a drama queen.

Survivor, survivor's, or survivors guilt or syndrome is a mental condition that occurs when a person perceives himself to have done wrong by surviving a traumatic event when others did not. It may be found among survivors of combat, natural disasters, epidemics, among the friends and family of those who have committed suicide, and in non-mortal situations among those whose colleagues are laid off.

I feel the next few months are going to be difficult. Not so much for me, but for these colleagues, and it feels like there is nothing I can do except cross my fingers which seems a bit pointless and futile, but I’ll do it anyway.

- Anand