I have decided to create a new blog in which I can really say what I want to say. I can be me, "warts and all," as my mom used to say. I'm going to keep my other blog for my creative side and my work in polymer and other crafty goodness. I'm keeping this one just for me, and for you if you're so inclined.
I'm not going to mention my real name. This is in hopes of keeping this blog unseen by potential, current, or past employers. This is in hopes of being able to maintain a private life blog as well as a creative arts blog.
This is the blog where I get to say the bad stuff. This is the place where I can be my broody, selfish, lazy, depressed, anxious, lonely, desperate self.
Here's a snapshot. I'm at work in my temp job, and go into the lunch room to get some water. There is a small group of people sitting at the table, talking. I realize as I'm on my way out that they're talking about something unusual. I say something like, "What the heck are you guys talking about?" One person answers, "The best way to kill yourself." Without a beat, I say, "Oh, that's easy. Get yourself real stoned and drunk, and before you pass out, tie a plastic bag over your head."
Yeah, I got some strange looks. I quickly followed that up by saying, "I read a lot of mysteries and thrillers." Now that is true, but I even questioned myself, because I hadn't even thought of that method for myself. Probably because it involves drugs, and I'm a sober person for 20 years. But stuff like that comes out, and it's indicative of how I really feel.
I am a 61 year old divorced woman. No children. Parents long dead. One sister, very close in age. One brother, 13 years younger. My younger life was taken up with day jobs and singing gigs. A few years after I got married, my last band broke up, and I have only sung in a couple of community choirs since then. At this point, my singing voice is virtually non-existent due to reflux that keeps my throat in a constant state of irritation and makes my voice hoarse, and sometimes only air comes out instead of sound.
But if I can't perform, I still have a tremendous need to create. Since I can no longer act or sing, I've spent the last several years in the crafts world. In the mid 90s I had a small business making window clings. But when my husband decided he no longer wanted to be married, I had to give that up and go back to day jobs. It's been a rocky road ever since, and it just keeps getting rockier. The longest I've had a job last is around three years. I've been working as an Executive Assistant. I worked my way up in salary from the low 30s to the mid 50s. And then in the beginning of 2009, I was laid off. And a brand new life of the greatest uncertainty, desperation and fear began.
Because I haven't been able to get a permanent job ever since.
Life Shock #1. Suddenly finding myself old and fat and alone after being attractive and slim and married.
Life Shock #2. Discovering that people don't want to hire old broads like me.
For the last four years I've been looking for work. I have excellent skills, and I get along with people really well, and I'm a hard worker and very dependable and responsible. I've had numerous short term temp gigs. There have been gaps in between for up to six months (that was this year!) during which I haven't been able to get any kind of work to save my life (figuratively speaking.) And I have had three six-month temp gigs that were meant to be temp-to-hire, and all three of them were changed at the last moment so that I was either ineligible or the job description was radically different from what I'd been doing. And each time I accept a gig, the pay is lower than the last time. I am now making roughly what I earned in 2000. But have my bills and rent decreased proportionately? Hell no. I am now working at yet another place that is not going to hire me, and I will only be here until they do hire someone else. I'm probably their lowest paid worker, and I just found out that I'm paying OVER TWICE the amount for parking that they pay for their permanent employees.
I have been so good, trying to keep a positive attitude, never giving up. 'Cause I have to. But damn, I've been living on the edge, both financially and mentally for so long now, that I'm about to explode.
I have dealt with varying levels of criminal - oops, Freudian penis, as Craig Ferguson would say - I mean clinical depression since I was in my 20s. I started seeing my most recent therapist regularly back in 1994. I saw her continuously up until 2010, when she fired me because I hadn't been able to pay her in over a year. Among her last words to me were these: "You're not broken. You're not depressed." But I had stopped being able to take her advice, so it was probably a good thing that our relationship ended. But that's not to say that I didn't go through a grieving process over it, and it has made it virtually impossible for me to go on to someone else, not only because of the fear, but I still don't have money or any health insurance. And I live in Los Angeles, and most public mental health services have waiting lists for around six months or more. I've managed to find a local walk in clinic for regular health care so that I can maintain my prescriptions, with an anti-depressant being among them. But I haven't had anyone to talk to about all these things for so, so long.
I honestly don't care if I ever have sex or a partner ever again, but MY GOD what I wouldn't do for a real hug. I ache for human closeness like you wouldn't believe. Most times I sleep on the couch because I can put my back up to the back of it, and it comforts me. It can take me hours to get to sleep.
How do I go on living in such pain and fear? I don't know, I guess it's still preferable to the alternative. And I have a horror of becoming homeless.
That's enough for today. It may be that nobody reads this, but I think it's good for me to get all this junk out of my head and onto the virtual page. Thanks for listening. Later, gators.
