Two of my good friends are newly unemployed — I know, not exactly headline news in today’s climate. Still, breaking up is hard to do, and when it’s your employer, it has a special cold and stony feeling to it. It makes you feel like they are telling you that all this time you were really a 6 dating a 10. Even though, with time and distance, you realize it may very well have been the other way around.

The screwdriver is twisted further into the wound by the language corporations use to describe these dispassionate yet very personally disruptive decisions.

• “Let go” – You know, because they really love you and they just want to set you free to see if your love is strong enough to endure.
• “Fired” – Like Frankenstein, you were chased out of town by an angry torch-bearing mob.
  
• “Laid off” – Don’t worry, they’re just placing you off to the side for a while, like a winter coat stowed away in a closet for the summer.
  
• “Terminated” – Heads will roll. Very apropos for this Halloween-y time.
  
• “Lost your job” — Maybe you were driving to work and suddenly forgot where to go, or you inadvertently left your job behind that time you, Ali and Shaheed visited El Segundo.
  

I suppose no single term could come close to describing what you go through when your job is eliminated. The feeling of rejection, even though it’s “strictly business.” The panic of not knowing how you’re going to pay next month’s rent. And of course, for most of us, losing health care coverage as well. Because being depressed, having no money AND no prescriptions is really a great idea.