Feliz Ano Nuevo, Mi Amor

October started with silence.

I woke up realizing that for the first time in years, I didn’t have anything that defined me. No job. No TikTok. No plan I could point to and say, “That’s what I’m doing next.” It was the kind of freedom I thought I wanted, but the reality of it sat heavy. It didn’t feel like liberation. It felt like being untethered.

The irony was, I had already decided to leave Epic. I’d spent all of September knowing it wasn’t my forever place. I was going to wait until early 2024, after performance reviews, after a few loose ends were tied up. But the decision had been made in my head. I’d learned what I came for. Finance and IT were the last missing puzzle pieces in understanding how organizations worked. And I hated every minute of them.

Getting laid off wasn’t a surprise. It was the outcome I would’ve chosen if I’d been given the timing. But even when you know it’s coming, there’s still that sting. The human part of you that whispers, “They talked about you. They decided you weren’t good enough.” You can rationalize it all day, but the sting doesn’t listen to reason.

Around that same time, I was trying to figure out what it meant to be someone’s boyfriend again. Enrique and I had been in this rhythm for months — light, playful, easy — and now it was becoming something else. He was charming, creative, and brilliant at what he did. I liked talking to him, but I wasn’t in love and he was - but with his new life. 

Still, we built something that felt fun. We called ourselves The Magician and The Artist. I was the one who always saw the system and the structure, who could anticipate the next move. He was the one who saw light and color and flow. Together, we were supposed to make something beautiful.

After I lost my job, I threw myself into building something new. I started another TikTok account just in case I couldn’t recover the old one. Enrique helped me tweak my lighting setup. His small notes — “tilt the camera this way,” “pull the ring light back a few feet” — made everything look better. We talked about going into business together. He’d handle visuals and branding; I’d handle structure and storytelling. We even started mapping it out. While I took his advice on lighting, angle and flow - he took mine on how to make short-form video content and began demonstrating his expertise in a wide variety of interior design concepts. 

But then something small cracked. I realized one day that Enrique didn’t even know where I’d worked. He didn’t know the name “Epic.” He thought I owned my own company. He had no idea I’d been part of a layoff. I wasn’t offended — it was just strange. It told me that while we were connected, we weren’t actually in the same conversation and I began to wonder just what my benefit was in this, aside from being excited for him and his next step. 

He was busy. Happy. Buzzing with life in Mexico City. And I was home, sitting in silence, trying to figure out who I was again.

By then, my focus had drifted to a new obsession: a video game called Fear and Hunger. I couldn’t even get the full version to work on my laptop, so I just watched long summaries online. One day, while I was deep in a video breakdown of Fear and Hunger 2: Termina, my phone lit up. It was Enrique, telling me he was going out with friends that night and would text me tomorrow.

I stared at the message and thought, He’s going to hook up with them. And I wasn’t even mad. He was in a new city, living fully, doing what I would’ve done too. But it reminded me that I wasn’t really in a relationship. I was just in a correspondence and I didn't know what my purpose was to him or to "us". 

I tried not to dwell on it. I poured my energy into something useful. I joined a Slack group of people from Epic who had been laid off. I offered to critique resumes for free. I even wrote a public post about how terrible the career services they provided were, explaining exactly why the advice they gave us didn’t work. It felt good to help people. It reminded me who I was.

I decided this was the moment to finally relaunch DanfromHR for real — to build an actual site, a real business that didn’t depend on algorithms or luck. I used part of my severance to hire a web designer and a small creative team. They turned my books on resumes, LinkedIn, and compensation into sleek visual guides. For a while, it felt like momentum was coming back.

But then came December.

Enrique and I were speaking less. When we did, there was a new friction in our tone. It wasn’t a fight — just a quiet thinning of connection. He’d tell me about parties or people or new places he was exploring, and I’d listen, proud of him, but also bored and detached. I realized that my bad moods had become contagious. One morning, after I’d made a snarky comment, he sighed and said, “You’re in a bad mood. I really don’t want to deal with that energy. Text me when you feel better.”

There were other moments too, the ones that made me pause. Like the time I slept through an entire day, drained and numb, and woke up to a stream of messages from him saying he was worried. Or when he told me he was struggling with his feelings for me and didn’t know what to do with them. I wanted to care. I just didn’t feel what I was supposed to.

We started talking about New Year’s plans. The idea was to spend it together in Mexico City — a fresh start for both of us. But the closer it got, the worse the feeling in my gut. I couldn’t explain it, but everything in me said not to go. I wasn't sure if it had to do with me or him, I just knew that was no longer my path. And I realized it was timing. And it was my fault. 

I had missed the deadlines. all of this was supposed to be ready by the end of November and nothing was. The website wasn’t ready. The business wasn’t live. The window had closed, and I knew it. This wasn’t the time to run away. It was the time to sit in the consequences of my distraction.

So I didn’t go. I didn’t even tell him. I just canceled the flight and waited.

Thanksgiving came and went quietly. Christmas too. We exchanged polite, kind messages. I could tell he was happy. He had found his rhythm there — the friends, the gyms, the topless mirror photos he now posted on social media that were the exact opposite of what I wanted in someone who wanted to build a life with me. He was thriving. I was static.

Then New Year’s Eve passed, and I realized how checked out I was. I was on my way to New York to accept an award, and it didn’t even occur to me to tell him. I knew he wouldn’t care. We sent each other new years eve videos wishing success and happiness for the other, and then resumes our silence. I saw him post a picture on new years day in a handsome black jacket and I knew the money I had sent him for Christmas had paid for it - and I knew for some reason he had posted it for someone else. 

On January 5th, I woke up to a long message from him. It started with “Parce.” Then it ended everything - I should've felt sad or angry - I just felt relief that I didn't have to actually say it either. 

He said it wasn’t working, that he didn’t want to drag things out, that he was grateful for what we shared. It was polite and beyond cold. 

I read it twice, waiting for some kind of ache, but all I felt was relief.

I turned my focus back to the only thing that mattered - launching my new site. It was time to stop chasing the next version of my life and finally build the one that had been waiting for me the whole time.