Free?

After the initial shock of being told that I will be 'let go' next year, I have felt weirdly liberated. I have to accept that this job has not been my 'dream job' in the sense that I have felt ill at ease for a long time. I have felt like I could not be 'myself' and that I was being observed. And I was kind of right.
Now, with the news that the backstabbers had been working overtime to find faults on the least occurrence and had found them, I feel like a big weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I somehow feel like they had done me a favor, by choosing for me and offering me the chance to leave that job without looking ungrateful or looking like a quitter. A comfortable position, you'd say. Or a very passive-aggressive one. Maybe. But my leaving that job (by need or by force) has been in my mind for awhile. And now they had paved the way for me to leave with some stains in my resume, but with a clean conscience that I did the best I could and yet did not please them.
I know I have to send a letter to the higher-ups eventually slamming many of their comments and cleaning my name a little bit but I have been trying to postpone it. I feel good. I can see in their eyes that they feel a great deal of cognitive dissonance (they smile to me and treat me like nothing has happened, while we both know they stuck a knife in my back and voted me off the island) and I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying it because I feel I don't need to prove myself above and beyond who I am and can do. I feel I don't need to appear to go along with their bullshit when I don't think it's right. I feel I can plan my life from now on and just use this experience as a stepping stone. Move on and move away. At least for awhile.
I will still have links to this city and will eventually come back here. Maybe in six months, maybe in a year. But meanwhile I'll work to settle all the other shit going on in my life and when I'm free, completely free, I'll come back and will laugh in their faces. Because he who laughs last laughs best.
And I may be that person.