I Wouldn't Hire Me

Someone handed me an ad for a Graphic Designer yesterday, and I had a spark of excitement followed by despair. I've spent most of the last decade unemployed, and at this point, I no longer know what's excuses, what's genuinely holding me back, if there's any hope, or who to listen to.

In 2009, I was living off a government grant and two loans, but I was in college full-time, a first-generation college student, I was a single parent raising a child, and I also worked part-time at the school. My GPA wasn't great, but my major-specific classes I generally got A's and B's in, my daughter and I were close, and I had friends.

Things happened, and shortly after graduation my daughter and I were left living with whoever would let us live with them and I couldn't get hired anywhere. I didn't know anyone in the field, I didn't know how to network, and I even applying for everything from fast food to banks didn't get me hired. I was years into unemployment when I started harassing the local Wal-Mart my sister had worked at for probably fifteen years, and they finally hired me.

I managed to stay there two years. Only two years, and during that time, I couldn't afford to pay my bills and hardly saw my daughter. My friends had all moved on to careers, and we didn't talk anymore. One told me I'd never amount to anything, so I cut her off, and there went my last professional reference.

So I have this fresh help-wanted ad for a Graphic Designer. Today I was going to rework my resume specifically for this job, and everything caught up with me. If I couldn't do it with a fresh degree, how can I do it now? I've been applying for jobs online for a decade and I've gotten a handful of interviews that didn't go anywhere.

I stopped physically walking into places to ask for applications/beg them to take my resume when I started getting referred to the internet by whoever happened to be behind the counter. I could not get paper applications, and people wouldn't take my resume. My last remaining friend told me two days ago that I'm supposed to physically walk in anyway and ask to talk to a manager, then say I heard they were hiring and refer them to the online application I filled out. It seems like I should have known that, or that someone over the last decade might have told me, but I did not know that.

A large part of me is using this as fuel for the people who've called me a sponge and a leech and just given up on me. I put myself through college! While raising a child! I graduated! I've accomplished nothing since then aside from keeping us alive and off the streets, but I don't feel worth anything anymore. Assuming I borrow my roommate's car and drive around walking into places, who is going to hire a hollow shell of a person that hasn't held a job since 2015?

Still Alive

I am still alive.

Since the last time I posted, a lot has changed. My father had several strokes over the course of a year and died in his fifties. I got full custody of my daughter and moved in with a friend on the west coast. I decided to wean myself off 2/3 of the antidepressants I was on.

Some things are about to change. My daughter is turning eighteen. She'll be a legal adult, and she can't remain here after high school. It's not what either of us wants, but this is not my house, I do not pay the bills, and I cannot afford to send her to college, I can't even pay my own student loans, so she's being sent to my mother.

Some things remain the same. I am unemployed. I am constantly fighting depression.

But I'm still alive.

Fighting depression and I'm still alive.
No one to talk to and I'm still alive.
Fearing the future and I'm still alive.
So sick with stress and yet I'm still alive.
Still alive.

Still alive.

My Favorite Nephew

I have one sibling, my younger sister. My sibling has had three children, all of whom are dogs. These are the nieces and nephews I get, and so I love them. Or I have loved them.

Let's back things up. For most of my life I was terrified of dogs. My dad got bitten by one when he was a kid and therefore any time a dog neared me, he started yelling, hiding me, and otherwise protecting me from potential teeth. I didn't even realize that until I was an adult and he did the same for my daughter.

My sister knows this, and so when she and her husband adopted a rottweiler puppy, I was kept in the loop. I got to see pictures of the litter as soon as it was born, got to see a tiny thing turn into something big enough to romp, and they took the puppy to visit me and my then-toddler daughter. I was called over to visit regularly and any time the dog started a growth spurt. My sister and my first niece got me over my fear of dogs.

Then my sister adopted a boy, also a rottweiler. Whereas my niece was from a line of working dogs, my nephew was from a line of show dogs. I was kept in the loop just the same with him, from his birth through his growth into a dog who would have been show-perfect if not for a very slight underbite.

Both dogs were well-behaved. They were trained in agility to stay healthy and they were cuddled and loved. They were most definitely family.

My sister's small family was growing with the adoption of another high-energy niece when their first died of cancer. They'd heard about a link between spaying/neutering and cancer, so they left their boy intact as long as possible before neutering him.

He completed what his older sister started. She got me over my fear of dogs of any size or breed, and he was so mellow and so cuddly that I actually grew to like dogs. I'm considering having a dog some day, when I can afford to raise one well.

Then he began having occasional seizures. He was such an easygoing dog that he got to expect the attention he got afterward. He'd be shaky, but he'd get up and head for the bathroom for a warm, relaxing bath and a nice rubdown, then he'd cuddle into a nap.

This is more than just my sister's dog died, for all of the above and more. My five-and-a-half year old nephew died today. He was allowed free reign in the house while my sister and her husband were at work because he was trustworthy. His little sister stayed in her kennel during work hours, except for a lunch break at home. He was found dead lying outside her kennel.

I know you're not supposed to have favorites, but he was mine.

I QUIT.

I actually quit my job. Sort of.

It was more like I stopped going, a la Office Space. I really didn't like it and uh, I just didn't go. For the first four or five days, I called in. I went through the time and effort of dialing their 1-800 number, went through all the prompts, connected to my store, and told management I wouldn't be in. They never ask why because there's no such thing as an excused absence; even if you bring in a doctor's note, you still weren't there.

So I didn't go. And a week later when I finally got to see my doctor, she told me I've probably got mild carpal tunnel. She said that if I take care of myself, I won't need surgery and it can heal on its own.

I was so happy to have an answer to something that I drove to Smile Central and hunted down the store manager.

"I need to talk about my employment status. If I haven't been fired, I need to quit."

Imagine all that said by someone radiating energy and joy. I was told I'd been removed from the system and the worst part is that you didn't even call in!

Yeah yeah, whatever. "I'm going to do my graphic design, so no hard feelings?" Still grinning, of course. "I'll just clean out my locker. Bye!"

YES.

At this point in winter I'm usually reminding myself why I should stay alive. Instead, I feel free. That job was sucking out my soul. I worked between 12 and 36 hours per week (depending on their whim) running back and forth pushing, lifting, twisting, and getting lectured for whatever anyone in the department had forgotten to do. I was paid minimum wage, got no benefits, and worked until eight or nine at night, random days of the week and every weekend. I'd get two, maybe three days off per week, but not consecutively, and it was exhausting. I only saw my daughter when sending her to school and putting her to bed, and I was in so much pain that most of that time was spent arguing.

During my week of not going to work, I decided that I could be poor, uninsured and miserable or I could be poor, uninsured and doing something I love. I realize that I will be more poor now, as getting things going won't be quick or easy, but this time I'm ready for it.

This time I'm going to get myself settled as a freelancer instead of caving to pressure to have a real job. Parenthood is a real job too, and it's the most rewarding one I've had. I will work while my daughter's at school or asleep and be home for her all day, rest when I need to rest, sprint when I can, and enjoy the hell out of life.

I'm tired of hoping in silence. I'm going to try hoping out loud for a change.

Just Keep Going

Sometimes it feels like life is a game of chicken. Who'll pull me out of it first, me or God? If all I can do is force myself to stay alive out of bitterness to a deity I'm not sure I believe in, at least I keep going.

If all I've got is a fear that, worse than hell, there's absolutely nothing, no existence at all if I died, then I use that fear to keep going. The thought that I could blink out of existence entirely is terrifying. It's what got me through last winter. Any time I started feeling like ending things would solve my problems, or at least take the need to make decisions out of my hands, I thought of that.

I've passed out due to my mind simply moving too quickly and too chaotically before, but I wake up. I've gotten to the point where I was afraid to sleep for the nightmares before. I hate it because it's just every hellish thing from being awake exaggerated into more hell. No escape.

I've had so many dreams ripped away from me. So here I am, playing chicken with God. I just have to live long enough for him to give up and kill me, then I win. Every day I don't kill myself, I win.

Just keep going is my best advice, for me, and for everyone else who feels trapped in a personal hell.

Just keep going.

A Hard Day's Night

I realized I was standing in the store I work at in the middle of the night. I'd obviously come to get something, but I couldn't remember what, nor could I remember how I'd gotten there. There were other customers around, considering the store is open 24/7, so no one was looking at me weird, but I felt weird. Intensely so.

Had I been asleep? It's scary realizing you've just woken up somewhere. I had to have gotten in my car and driven from home, and the biggest relief I had besides the fact that I'd obviously made it alive was that my daughter is with her other parent this weekend. I could have just left my daughter alone in the middle of the night. I could have caused a car accident, could have killed someone, could have died.

I puttered, reeling, around the store. Since I was there, maybe I'd buy something. Maybe I'd remember what I had come for. I was certainly in no condition to drive. I ran into a few people I've worked with and gave watery smiles, all the while trying to hold onto sanity.

At the checkout, I noticed the registers had all been changed during my day off. I hadn't heard anything about a remodel and didn't like it. It looked a lot more complicated than it needed to be. A couple managers showed up, offered me some snacks they'd had in the back for whatever employees wanted them, and I took one, all the while still trying to figure out what I was doing.

This is the kind of dream I regularly have. It's hard to separate from reality for the most part, and I'm left feeling off-kilter for the rest of the day. I'll be going to work soon and I'll see all these people and feel like I'm insane and if they just thought about it they'd know because they saw something bizarre and didn't recognize it.

My job has eaten my life. I dream about it, think about it, worry about it, and get one day off twice a week instead of an actual weekend. Some people like getting two breaks, but one day isn't enough for me to shake things off and relax because there's something fundamentally wrong with my brain. At least, that's the way it feels.

I haven't contemplated suicide this winter, which is good, but that's less because I like my life and more because I found a question to ask myself that scares me too much to want to find out: What if there's no heaven or hell and death just erases us from existence? The idea of disappearing entirely scares me more than eternal hellfire, and I'll take that.

I'll take it and my feelings of insanity to work, and I'll be quiet all day. I'll work, I'll jump every time someone walks up behind me, and every time I try to smile politely, people will give me a look that says I'm not fooling anyone.

I'll Clean it for You

I'm looking at the mess on my daughter's bedroom floor, and I can hear my mother's voice in my head: Clean this up now, or I'll go in with a trash bag and clean it for you. I generally kept my room clean, partly because I liked it that way and partly because I wasn't sure whether or not it was an empty threat. My mom, after all, would make a spur-of-the-moment threat reality on occasion, no matter how overboard a punishment it might be, so that we knew she was serious. She never changed her mind, and never apologized. I was grounded for two weeks for 'refusing' to eat stew one night, even though I changed my mind as soon as I saw the look on her face.

I was never entirely sure if the threat to clean our bedrooms with a trash bag was true or not, but I didn't worry about it. I was terribly jealous of my younger sister, however, because when her room got to be too bad—for example when the floor pile reached knee height and she needed to jump from the door onto her bed—my mother would clean it. My sister would get home from a slumber party and her floor would be visible. My sister would be wide-eyed for a brief time and then cocky about her special treatment, and I would sulk enviously.

One day my sister was gone and I was passing her bedroom to go somewhere. Our mother was crouched on the bedroom floor with a huge black trash bag and a stretched-to-the-point-of-breaking look on her face. She looked up at me with wide, angry eyes and held up some random toy.

"Does your sister play with this?"

My eyes widened as far as they'd go. My mother was not someone to be trifled with, especially when she was angry, and I didn't want any backlash, no sirree. I looked at the toy, shook my head, pointed out a couple others, and scrammed.

My sister remembers getting home that day. I must have been hiding somewhere, because I don't. Apparently the second she walked into the house she knew something was up. There were both our parents waiting for her with that look on their faces.

"I cleaned your room," our mother said, and my sister's heart skipped. "It will never happen again."

No further explanation was needed. My sister's room was spotless, she didn't know what was missing, and all I'd say was that yes, there was a trash bag involved. I didn't want to get on her bad side for my moment of cooperation, and I didn't want her getting upset about things I hoped she wouldn't miss.

It was months before she went looking for some random thing and couldn't find it. I would neither verify nor negate that it had gone into the trash bag. I'm not even sure how much our mother threw away, because my instincts said hide until they drag you out for dinner.

Back to the present. We've recently moved and my daughter hasn't unpacked anything that I didn't unpack for her. She spent two weeks playing Barbies in her room, and then when the third box of toys arrived from storage, her room got too full to enjoy and she stopped going in except to go to change clothes and sleep. I have two hours before I need to pick her up from school, and a box of black trash bags. Some of the stuff in her boxes has been in storage nearly four years, and chances are she wouldn't miss it.

I guess I'll find out.