What unemployment feels like

You ever get that feeling of defeat deep within the caverns of your body's core?  That sinking feeling, of utter emotional despair that rises up from the depths of your lower abdomen, consumes your chest and drops your neck and head, overtaking all other emotion?  I've felt this before.  I was so competitive as an athlete, I took defeat really hard.  Losing a football game that every ounce of your body gave something to, picking your defeated self up off the track after your dive at the finish line was too late, even sitting with someone you care about knowing you've done something unwittingly detrimental to your relationship.  But these sinking feelings only last for a moment, an afternoon or two.  The pain that I feel right now lasts.  It lasts through the summer, the winter, the days, the nights, the weeks and the months.  It's not just that utter feeling of defeat that you feel deep down though.  Its the anxiety you start to feel in your chest, the adrenal reaction to the despair emanating from your core.  Your soul is touched by it, it moves throughout your body; up into your throat, raw and tight, around towards your back where it pulls your shoulders closer to your spine like a winch being slowly cranked and knotted up.  Your legs tingle, your arms lose luster and feel listless.

The physical manifestation of pain and despair, of hearing back from another job that you didn't get, of putting in another job application only to be told you are overqualified, underqualified, or nothing.  The hopelessness of hope.  This is what it feels like.  Everyday you put in another application or two, and every day you hear nothing back from an ever increasing number of "hopes" - the essence of what every cover letter essentially is.  You read through the want ads, you get email notifications, your friends send you things.  You slowly weed through all these options to the ones that really grab your experience by the jugular, you've done this! you can do this! this could be the one!  You prioritize them all, the "perfect" ones come first  then the good ones, and then the ones that you know full well that you can do without even batting an eye but might be a bit out of your expertise or the experience you can show on paper.  You slave and slave over the letters, free writing, drafting, copy pasting from other letters, proof reading and proof reading.  Every time you reread your resume.  Is there anything that you can change or tweak to help on this application?

You're applying to lots of stuff, none of it is the same.  Just anything you think you can or would do.  Yeah, of course there is always that perfect one that you bump up to the top.  But those are the worst.  Those are the ones that you do extra research on.  Extra hoping!  You read around and Google the specifics of the industry, maybe even talk to people.  Searching for the way in.  You slave and slave, hope and hope.  but end up again in despair and despair.  You are capable of doing all of these things you are asking to do, but incapable of getting the chance to.  This is where the pain comes from.  Each effort is a test of your capacity to hope and your will to succeed.  Interviews make it even worse.  You look someone in the eyes, you shake their hand, develop a moment with them that you hope will turn into many moments.  You feel this immense pressure writhing across your back and scalp, penetrating deep down into the complexities of your heart.  You know that your life hinges on every word you say, every expression of your face, the slightest glimpse into even a singular fear or doubt residing within you.  You slip up, you don't, what does it matter at this point anyway?  You feel so much pressure either way.  You've been trying for so long now, have so much riding on this.

You won't know anytime soon.  At least not for sure.  You walk out of the interview with a hunch though.  It is usually easy to feel the energy in the room, the demeanor of the interviewers.  You know it, they know it.  Either you have it or you don't.  Sadly, for the unemployed, you have less of it each time you stretch out your welcoming palm and make that manufactured smile and piercingly assertive gaze.  Everytime you sit down in that chair and accept that glass of water you are setting yourself up for the pain of hope.

It never ceases to go away.  For every time you stand up and are escorted back to the elevator your chances are less and less.  Thanks for coming in...  (Your over qualified, your underqualified, you won't stay, you don't have this precise experience).  It hits you when you get home and start waiting.  You hope and hope, living within it even.  There is this chance, and that one, maybe even in this case you're right.  But hope fades to despair.  You didn't get it.  You didn't get it.  You didn't get it.  Is that an echo, or just reality?

How long do you hear this before you start hearing this?  I mean hear it in your throat, in your chest, your back, all the way down to the depths of your core, your self worth?  How long is it until you start learning from it?  Reacting to it.  Feeling the despair take control of you, eating you from outside in and back outside?  There is no escaping it.  Your meals get smaller, your appetite wains, your passions become listless pursuits that don't mean as much.  Then comes the roof over your head, when will that go?  How much time do you have?  What else is going to break, to wear out?

And there is no help, no one to work with or stand by you.  They all try.  You reach out more and more, become needier and needier.  Your soul needs help.  Words akin to advice and surefire ways at getting jobs morph into sympathy and solace.  They want to help, they even start feeling your pain.  Which is getting sharper now.  It runs the whole length of the right side of your back.  You wish someone would stick a knife in the knots just to release them.  What else could possibly slice through them?  Your throat is openly closed, your neck seems stiff, like you've already broken it.  Yeah, your support network doesn't feel that though.  Not to that extent.  They feel their pain for you, they care.  But they don't feel the knife.  They don't feel the intensity of the weight you feel.  They have a place to live, something of worth everyday, palatable meals to come home to.  Nothing tastes the same for you.  Its just nutrition at this point.  You know in your mind you have to eat, but you don't feel the urge to.  Not like you used to, at least not enough to go to the store.

In fact, you are wholly depressed in the worst of ways.  You are completely conscious of it.  Watching the train wreck without being able to pull away or react - fully cognizant of its happenings and even solutions.  There is no internal condition, no genetic abnormality manifesting itself somewhere deep within your psyche, not even a long standing personal trauma subtly undermining your esteem.  No this is the pain of overt confidence mixed with surreal destitution.  You know you are capable.  You've done this work so many times before, but there is no outlet now.  The world has no interest in you and your skills, even if you do.

The confidence of despair is the only thing that keeps you going.  But it dissipates ever so slightly, ever so daily.  Ups and downs mix within the cycles of applying and waiting, hearing nothing or hearing something.  You try to get out, to network.  But how do you talk to these people?  Don that fake smile while you know deep down inside you are decaying?  Looking them in the eyes without your soul.  How can they not see your desperation?  How do you not start to beg?   

The pain is transcendent.  Deep hopelessly hopeful pain.  Eventually though, that hope fades into hopelessness.  Eventually though, the despair outweighs the aspiration.  You sink.  You sink further into the depths of your mind and into the internal physical manifestations of economic catastrophe and personal solitude. You want to escape, to run away, but instead you stay at home, confined in pain.  You need people, you need a hug.  The only thing that seems to bring any ounce of life from you now is applying for more work.  It is both the cause of and cure for your pain, the only way out of this destitute cycle of agony.  Will it ever come?  There is always hope.  Which of course brings us right back to where we started...

My posts are starting to suck!

Usually I write a post at some point when an idea pops into my head, then I come back to it and edit it later.  I have been systematically going through these unpublished posts and trying to edit them and get them up dated when they were written.  What I am finding is that a lot of the ones that seem to have been written of late, as in the last couples months or so, are not very good.  I always felt for such a long time that there was a critical insight, an analysis that made sense and had a point in my writing.  Much of what I have just read though in the last couple days has been scattered and fragmented, with the point getting lost somewhere between start and end.

I used to write a great deal about the conflict within us and our society.  But that is not coming out in these posts of late.  I was out there in the world, doing, working, and critiquing.  Now I am mostly holed up in a basement trying desperately to find something to do, someplace to live.  I have to say that this is dispiriting and seems to be effecting me on a subconscious level.  It is amazing to read about the unemployed and about skills being lost, while I sit in a basement without any outlet to really use mine.  I don't think I am losing anything, in fact I feel like I am gaining perspective and a deeper understanding of struggle, nevermind desire and drive (that feels more like desperation, lol).  This additional contextual clarity will aid me some day, but still, the things I am editing right now need rewriting not editing. 

Where was I when I wrote those things?  Both literally and cognitively?  Was I out and about, writing on my phone maybe?  Or more importantly, what was my mindset?  Perhaps I am or was scattered to the point of desperation.  When you have a million things to do, you just do them.  It is the stress of all these things that makes you unable to get them done, not the tasks themselves.  When that stress takes the form of not knowing where you will live, how you will pay for food, and what the future holds, not to mention the stress of the loss of a special someone all at once, things seem easily scattered. 

Basically, I guess what I am saying is there is little coherent social critique in emotions.  My feelings of stress from a lack of employment and the subsequent prospect of homelessness are just that: raw feelings.  They are not analysis.  Granted, if I could turn those feelings into an analysis of themselves, where they come from and why, I would be looking at avenues for alleviating the issues generating that stress.  But I think it takes a clear mind to provide solid analysis, and when you are worrying about food and shelter, that clarity of mind doesn't readily exist.  You become desperate, reaching for things that you think could solve those emotions, rather than the fog that makes them worse.  You want permanence and career jobs rather than the retail or server work that can replace your short term desperation with longer term despair.  But what then when they meld together over years?  Struggle compounds.    

I am seeing this transition of self expressive capacity - the the wavering between analytical writing, and desperation and the discombobulation of a page - and can't help but wonder how we can still talk about doing away with things like school lunch programs, public housing, and other such "entitlement programs" that so directly affect children coming from disadvantaged homes.  How could they not be affected?  How could they be considered to have the same opportunities as others?  When you go home to a nice happy home with a family, food, and human security, you wake up the next morning ready to go back to school - homework done, familially supported, relaxation time had.  But what about those without that?  I can physically see the toll its taken on me - and I'm an adult!  Imagine a 7 or 8 year old kid without food or stability?  Of course it is going to affect their outputs.

Anyway, again, I'm all over the place.  There is a lot of stress on me, as there is on the millions of un/under employed and poor in this country and world.  Those of you with jobs and wealth don't see it, you don't see the struggle, the pain.  You don't see the strength it takes every day.  You just want to tell us how easy it is and what to do to make it all work.  As if I had complete and total control over someone else giving me a job.  Bottom line is, there just aren't enough jobs out there for everyone, many of those that are don't pay living wages or offer career value, and there isn't enough money to get funding to start your own.  Whether I can do the work or not doesn't matter.  My biggest task has become dealing with the pain and stress of not knowing what's going to happen next...

Sympathy accepted, job interviews rewarded!!