A Year Unemployed

Two slats in the blinds that cover my bedroom window have broken in half and now hang

down limply, leaving an unsightly gash in the otherwise orderly stampede of white plastic rulers.

I should replace it, along with the blinds in the bathroom that are now old and dusty. But I can’t. The $37 I forked over for two living room lamps busted my home improvement budget, which was set at $0.00.

So I put those blinds on a depressingly long list of home goods that need to be replaced, like new sheets and a comforter, but cannot be purchased. (Note to self: Stay out of Bed, Bath & Beyond.)

I would love to move, find a sleek, modern condo. I peruse home ads, but the prices are too high — even if I were employed.

I obsessively watch HGTV, even if it seems to be an endless loop of White People Problems: “I must have hardwood floors!” “The closets are too small!” (Note to those silly homebuyers, if a house is merely $5,000 out of your $500,000 budget, you’re doing okay.)

So I continue to live my “Rear Window” existence, peeping into a life I can only vicariously live at the moment.

Right now, the savings I would have used for a down payment are siphoned to pay for a rent I may not be able to afford much longer.

A year unemployed: My future is on hold. Do I even have a future?

I see the carefully modulated social media posturing of friends and family. Even accounting for some embellishment, those people have pretty good lives. Better than mine, that’s for sure. They have jobs, families, homes; they get to take expensive trips to sunny climes. Where did they get the money?

I know it’s folly to compare oneself to others. All it does is rouse feelings of inferiority. But it’s hard not to — hard not to measure yourself against others you’ve worked with, grew up with, to see where you both now stand.

I don’t begrudge them their success, I honestly don’t. And I’m not jealous. Some of these people were once my friends and co-workers. I wish nothing but the best for them. How horrible would it be if some terrible tragedy befell them or their family? I would never want to see anything bad happen to them. I'm a bad person, but I'm not that horrible.

Yet, I believe I always knew even from a very young age that the life they have with spouses, children, nice homes and good jobs, would never be mine. While they did their May Day dance under sunny, ribbony skies and on dewy grass, I stood apart, on arid land, alone and in black and white, mocked if I ever tried to venture onto their exalted and exclusive territory.

So, yes, I knew I was never going to have that life. But that doesn’t mean I’m envious. Quite the opposite, I want them to be happy.

I know others have it worse than me. But my situation is getting direr every minute.

Now, for those who hurt me and wounded me deeply, well, the worse angels of my nature sometimes triumph. Oh, wouldn’t it be devilishly simple and satisfying to trash them anonymously on the Internet?

But I don’t, for several reasons. First, anybody with better digital skills than me (i.e., anybody over the age of eight) could probably trace the nasty comment back to me and that would start a battle I’d lose.

Do they even remember me? Or care that they hurt me? Probably not. I was nothing to them. Their nasty (and in most cases, unprovoked) behavior toward me proved that much.

Lastly, it wouldn’t change anything. It would not erase the pain they inflicted on me.

Nevertheless, I wish them well. What else can I do? (Though if they were to say, break a limb, I guess I wouldn’t feel too bad.)

A year unemployed: How did I get to this point?

The streaks of gray hair around my forehead peer back at me when I look in the mirror. My hair is too long; it dangles loosely well past my shoulders in a dry tangle of waves.

A friend told me if I want to get a job, I must look younger, and therefore, I must get a shorter haircut and cover the gray. When I tried to explain that right now I don’t have the money to spare for a salon, she said to go a cheaper place, perhaps a chain salon. She was really rather insistent about it.

I know that she meant well, and she’s right: My follicles badly need an updated ‘do. But on that very same day, I received a $200 doctor bill. What is more important? Paying that bill, or a salon visit? I cannot pay for both.

Even if I did get a new hairstyle, would it land me a job? Heck, even if I looked like J.Lo on the red carpet, I still wouldn’t get hired at my age.

I almost snapped at her, but I didn’t. She’s a tenured teacher. It would take a Supreme Court case to get her removed from her job. She’s safe. She doesn’t understand what I’m going through. She has a husband, a beautiful home, and steady, guaranteed employment.

Her comment was a kick in the teeth. It was almost like she was saying, “You look old and ugly.” Now, I know that wasn’t what she meant (at least I hope so), but when you’ve been beaten down by two layoffs in four years, constant job rejection and unending financial worry, you are easily wounded even by so-called well-meaning advice. How much can one person take?

A year unemployed: Should I go to Super Cuts? Any recommendations?

I have to cut my spending. I’m going to stop delivery of my local newspaper.

I began my career as a part-time reporter at that same paper, covering local meetings at night. Many of the full-time reporters were Ivy League graduates. They treated me with either showy indifference or barely concealed disdain (even though I was doing the job they should have been doing).

One woman was particularly contemptuous of me. Why, I’ll never know. I barely spoke 15 sentences to her and I was no threat to her job. We were rarely in the office at the same time. Yet she treated me like I smelled bad.

I was told I was never going to be prompted to full-time reporter. I was burnt out, and the nastiness of that particular “co-worker” finally got to me and I left. I was quickly replaced by a woman who is still there. She writes an article every six months. No lie. On average, I wrote four stories a week.

A year unemployed: Why should I subsidize the lattes of those Ivy League toffs?

The darkness hits me like a wave. It grabs me like the hands from a specter in a bad dream and spins me in its undertow. I can’t escape. I'm running in water. I just fall further.

I’ll never find a job. No one will even hire me again.

How much longer will my savings last? Will I end up homeless? Where will I go?

I’m fat. I eat too many carbs. (When did carbs become the villain anyway?)

I’m old and ugly. I have no talent. Everyone is better than me. I’m a failure. Life is passing me by.

I don’t talk about these feelings to anyone. They don’t care, and far be it from me to bring them down with my “negativity.” I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: People don’t care about your problems. They only care about themselves.

Doesn’t anybody understand what it’s like to be a long-term unemployed worker? To be tossed aside by society? More than a job we need sympathy.

Hey, why don’t you get a job? Um, what do you think I’ve been doing lo these many months? You think it’s that easy, try it yourself.

Why don’t you take a little job (whatever that means)? Maybe you should take a cut in pay? Would you?

Something must be wrong with her to be laid off twice in four years. What a loser! Yeah, right.

Sometimes I long for my old life and a steady job. I picture myself holding a Starbucks coffee, striding confidently to the office...and then, what? 

A year unemployed: Do I even want to go back to that life? A life so easily taken away?

The interview went well. You had all the qualifications for the job. How often does that happen?

So even though you know hope is a dangerous thing, you hope anyway. You picture yourself at a good (or any) paying job, moving to a new loft apartment, driving a new car, paying off your debts. YOU GET TO BUY THINGS AGAIN!

Then you get the email, a wrecking ball to your hopes: “We have decided to go with another candidate.” Why did you let yourself get your hopes up? Stupid.

Most of the time you simply delete the digital missive. No need to have that negativity lurking in your inbox. Other times, the rejection stings, and disappointment, hurt and yes, anger flair through your veins like a brush fire scorching dry timber. Should I send an email asking why I was rejected?

But you don’t. You’ve sent too many emails in haste and anger in the past that exploded like an IED in your face. You know better now. Besides, you will never get the honest answer.

Still, after countless dismissals, you wonder: “There wasn’t one of those jobs I was qualified for?”

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome.

A year unemployed: “Should I give up?”

How many times have I listened to a friend complain about his or her job. “The boss is a jerk and my co-workers are annoying.” Is there any other kind? “Aren’t you glad to be away from the rat race?”

Yes, I thoroughly enjoy having no steady income, living off my savings (which won’t last much longer), and being barraged with near daily rejection. It’s what I dreamed of when I was a little girl — future homelessness!

Look, I understand how difficult the workplace can be. I’ve been there. Yet whenever I hear someone complain about their job, I always want to ask: “Please show me the gun that was put to head to make you take that job.”

Presumably when you applied, were interviewed and subsequently hired, you knew what the job would entail and had an inkling of the workplace culture. If the job wasn’t to your liking, you needn’t have taken it. You have free will. Use it.

If you can’t leave for financial reasons, why not frame your job in more positive terms. Are there aspects of the job you like to do better than other duties? Concentrate on those tasks you enjoy and competently master those you don’t.

Or perhaps the job is giving you the opportunity and financial wherewithal to pursue other interests that could lead to another, more satisfying career.

You have a job when many don’t. You are able to support yourself and your family, provide a roof over their heads. You have money to travel, dine out, and BUY THINGS!

Be grateful! Look around you: How many empty cubicles do you see? How many co-workers were marched to the door, told the company could no longer support their paychecks...while you and your direct deposit were kept on staff?  I'm still flummoxed by the two former co-workers who de-friended me on Facebook. What did I do to offend them? I lost my job to save theirs! GAH! 

If the job is that horrid and detrimental to your sensibilities, leave. Find another job. It’s easier to find a job when you have a job (versus a two-time laid-off loser). You are not doing yourself, your employer or your co-workers any favors by staying at a job that makes you miserable.

Sorry, I cannot sympathize with people who complain about their jobs. And isn't there just a tinge of narcissism in those whines? What you are really saying is, "I'm too good for this job."

A year unemployed: Do people with jobs know how lucky they are?

The bills mount. How can I pay them?

Unemployment payments ended in August. Since then, dwindling savings and puny-paying freelance jobs support my "lavish" lifestyle. The subsidy for my Obamacare health plan (which has a deductible only reachable by getting hit by a bus) remains as the only government help received. Without it, I'd have no medical care.

If I overestimated my income for last year, I'll pay back those subsidies. That's the way the law works.

I did not chose to become unemployed. I don't want government help. I want a job!

A year unemployed: Should I declare bankruptcy?

Bare tree branches pierce gray, rainy skies. When I went to jog this morning, I couldn’t because black ice made it too slippery and dangerous to even walk.

My morning jog is sometimes the only time I get out of the house these days. Don’t travel much. I can’t. It’s even too much of a financial strain to buy a $30 tank of gas.

Even when I did have a steady income, I can’t say I was a big traveler. My sensitive stomach makes traveling difficult.

Yet I took some trips, and I would love to go to Italy. Take a month to visit the north, stroll Lake Como, Florence and Milan. Then, I’d like to go south, perhaps visit the town where my maternal grandparents were born, and Sicily. That’s not going to happen. Not now. Not ever.

Honestly, I don’t want to go out much. I don’t want to see people going about their daily routines — jobs, making purchases. It’s just a reminder of all I can no longer do; of a life that was stolen from me during some gruesome board meeting.

I don’t want to talk to people. I’m too embarrassed and ashamed to tell them I’m still looking for a job. Better not to say anything.

Seeing the change of seasons only reminds me of how long I have been out of work.

A year unemployed: How much longer?