Life is........ Difficult

Writing down things, makes it seem so much more real. I mean it has been real to me for the last two and a half, almost three, months, but putting it down on paper (or the internet) just makes it seem much more real.

I am 22 years old, and unemployed.

That's right. You read correctly.

I feel as if right now that is the biggest word that describes me.

Unemployed

It seems like a dirty word in my mind. Like when I was a young child, and said a curse word and my mother, darling woman that she is, smacked my bottom and washed my mouth out with either Dove soap (nasty!) or Dawn dish soap (nasty as well!) for saying such a word. Thus any bad word said around my mother was very instantly a "banned word".

If you ask my father, as I aged, that became a very long list of words too.

But I have been without a job for almost three months, and it has been the most nerve-wracking, worrisome, anxiety-ridden three months of my life.

It has also been some of the most peaceful.

See I hadn't realized just how stressed out my job had made me. I had devoted so much of my time to it, that I had lost sight of the things I loved to do. Things such as reading books, crafting, playing with my dog, cooking actual food and trying new recipes at the same time, and above all seeing my family.

I hadn't spent a lot of time with my mother doing anything together with her (my mother is my best friend! Right up there with my BFFSFAM who is in Oregon!) and we absolutely love to do things together, but I worked every weekend, and was only getting one day off.

Let me just say, I was stressed enough that I was losing hair, and when I finally was home I maybe read a few pages, and then passed out until I had to get up and get ready for the next shift. I went to work tired, I went to bed tired, and I was becoming soul tired.

Which for anybody who has ever done any kind of customer service job, knows is not a good thing at all.

I began to fall into a pool of depression, and I was drowning in it with no sign of a life preserver. I felt alone, and as if I couldn't reach out to anyone, because I was so far under. I reached rock bottom when at one point I thought how much better it would be if I wasn't here.

I didn't mean here as in my job, but here as in alive on this planet anymore.

I scared myself with that thought. I haven't thought about suicide since I was in middle school, and my life became entirely rearranged due to a fire. Shortly around that time though I lost a friend to suicide, and realized upon seeing all of her family, and knowing how I felt about it, that suicide was not something I could put any of my loved ones through.

This time, once again, I had recently lost a dear friend to death. He had been so full of life, laughter, and wisdom, and then he was just gone. It was a blow to my heart.

I still know that suicide is not something I can ever do to my family and my loved ones, so to have that thought, brought home to me the knowledge that I needed to change something.

Being the stubborn Taurus woman that I am though, I hung on for a few more months, when I should have changed things right then.

Yes, yes, yes mother. I know I should have listened to you the first time you told me. For those who haven't yet realized, my mother is super wise on a lot of things, but I quite often, being myself, listen but sometimes do not comprehend and even if I do I don't follow her advice.

How does that Alice in Wonderland song go? I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it.

Yup. That's me in a nutshell. I have some great instincts, but I don't often listen to them. I listen to them even less than I listen to my mother's advice.

That is to say, I listen to my mother, more than I listen to my gut feelings.

Which is not good at all. Not good at all indeed. Or to paraphrase/quote the amazing John Watson "A bit not good."

I still have that gut-wrenching anxiety because of bills that are piling up with my unemployment, and even though I am trying to find a job, even I can tell I am not putting my 110% effort into it.  I've put in so many applications and only gotten one call for an interview that I'm starting to think, didn't really go as well as I thought it did.

I do have a great network of support, but even with that network I'm beginning to think I'm failing at this adult thing.

I guess I can only hope that I'm not the first to feel that way, and I definitely don't think I'll be the last.

Have a wonderful day/night/evening/morning/week.
-Jacq