Hopes & Dreams

One of my favorite movies is “The Shawshank Redemption.” It’s a bit corny, old-fashioned, sentimental and formulaic, but, boy, I dare you not to fall for its emotional wallop in the end. One scene in particular hovers in my mind, especially now.

It’s a conversion between Andy, the Tim Robbins character, and Red, the Morgan Freeman character, both inmates at prison in Maine in the 1950s. To summarize, Andy says that a person must have hope. Red is having none of that, essentially saying that hope is a dangerous thing.

I’m with Red on this one. I’ve pretty much given up any hope of getting a full-time job ever again. You see, I’ve passed that damning signpost of being out of work for six months. Once again, I’ve become of a member of the “LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYED” club. (Cue the horror-movie scream here.)

That means, to HR drones and potential employers, I have regressed to an infantile state in which I have lost all ability to function, reason, play well with others, or master new tasks. I have lost any capacity to learn new technology (okay, they may have me on that one). Despite more than 25 years in my profession, I’m viewed as a drooling moron because I’m now a LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYED WORKER. (Cue the horror-movie scream here.) Add to this scenario my advanced age and I’ve got two massive debits against me in my futile quest to find gainful employment.

I’ve been here before. In fact, since 2009, I’ve been out of a job for nearly two years. It’s amazing I have any savings left at all.

Oh, and did I mention my unemployment benefits have run out? (Cue the horror-movie scream here.)

So perhaps you can understand why I feel hopeless. I really don’t know what to do. It’s obvious that in the minds of potential employers, I’m well past employable age and it’s obvious they believe that because I’m A LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYED WORKER I’ve lost any intellectual competence.

I’ve picked up some freelance assignments with middling success. (I fear I’m going to get fired from one pretty soon. Serves me right for taking on a job for which I really didn’t have the proper background.) In my current state of mind, I believe I’ll fail at any job I try to do.

But the payments (when they come in) are not going to support me. I’ve gone to a cheaper car insurance and switched over to Obamacare (fingers crossed it works for me) to cut my health-care premiums.

I have to pay rent and utilities. I need cable to do or find work via the Internet. I can cancel my newspaper subscriptions. I don’t shop for clothes anymore, just food and gas. I live rather modestly so I don’t think there’s much else I can cut. I’ve already accepted handouts from my cousins (they’re rich and can afford it), but still, it’s a blow to my self-esteem to be seen as a charity case. I don't want charity, I want a job!

I may not have gotten married and had kids, I may not have been amazingly successful in my career, but I could always take pride in the fact that I put myself through school and supported myself. Now even that has been taken away from me by some corporate bean counter.

I can’t begin to describe how disgusted, angry, anxious and dejected I feel at this point. But who would care? Certainly not any potential employers. It’s not that I expect to get a job out of pity (no employer does "pity" hires anyhow), but could they at least understand I haven’t lost my skills, that I can still be a good worker, and that my jobless status was not of my own making?

And it irks me to no end when I hear people say, “You know, at your age it would be hard to get a job.” I always feel like they are leaving off the next sentence. You know, something like, “Glad I’m not you, Loser. I got a job.” What does that mean exactly? Do I stop looking for work and live in poverty? Apparently that may be the only option.

Though my best friend tells me I shouldn’t blame myself for my unemployed status, that it was the economy and the companies’ fault, I can’t help thinking in some way it was my fault. I also think some people (like my own sister and all HR drones) believe that as well.

It’s hard not to think that way. I cannot ignore the fact that in the past four years, when the company I worked for had to slash its budget, I was let go, that I wasn’t good enough to keep on staff while others were.

And when you are taken into a room and told the company is having financial problems and it has to cut your position, it’s hard not to internalize (sorry to use a hackneyed psychobabble phrase) that devastating blow. To feel somehow I was to blame for the company’s shortfall. I actually feel guilty for dragging the company downward. I mean, the implication is gut-wrenchingly clear: Your ginormous salary is dragging down the company (HA!) and you are worthless to us now.

Yeah, I know. That’s silly. But that’s how I feel. Friends tell me to fight it, but with what? I have no self-confidence left. It’s been destroyed by two layoffs in four years. By once again becoming a LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYED WORKER. (Cue the horror-movie scream here.)

Except for this blog and some conversations with my best friend, I really don’t express these feelings. People only care about themselves anyway, certainly not some unemployed loser. U.S. companies certainly don’t care; they can always smugly justify their massive layoffs as just another business decision.

I really don’t go out much or socialize a lot. I’m too embarrassed and ashamed. It’s hard to go out and see people enjoying themselves, eating at a restaurant. I don’t begrudge them, but it’s just another reminder of something else I can’t afford, like pedicures and hair cuts.

Just as hard is hearing people talk about vacations or seeing beach photos posted by friends on Facebook. Can’t say I’m a world traveler, but I wonder if I’ll ever go on vacation again. Heck, I can't even afford a tank of gas to drive to the mall!

So, what now? Sure, I could apply for a retail job, but would I get hired? That’s how low my self-confidence had sunk. Training? With what money? I’ll be lucky if I don’t end up homeless in six months. There is no help for unemployed workers like me. Corporate America has cast us out, and our nation’s social safety net has no provision for us.

I wish I could stop having these unsettling dreams, dreams in which I’m lost within labyrinth-like city streets darkened by towering skyscrapers, trying frantically to find the door I have to go through. I never find that door. Or the dreams where I’m running after a bus and it keeps going and going and going, ever faster beyond me, never stopping to let me board.

Already I’ve begun to clear my apartment of unwanted papers and items, to get rid of stuff I no longer need or want. (Better to have less stuff when I move to the homeless shelter, right?) Every time I do it, though, I also feel like I’m receding from the world bit by bit, a world that apparently no longer has a place for me.

Whenever I think I could be hired for a job, I quickly stop myself. Like Red, I can’t allow myself to believe in the ethereal myth of hope. It hurts too much when I’m rejected or I fail.

I’m sorry for the downcast tone of this post. But unlike “The Shawshank Redemption,” I don’t see a happy ending.