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This is a very personal article. It started off as a blog on Wealthy Affiliate, but I figured it was worth sharing with a larger audience.
So let's have a chat.
The past couple of days, I've been very, very tired. I haven't done a lick of article writing or even any work on my serial story on JukePop.
I know this feeling all too well. It means I'm getting frustrated with something, and falling back into depression.
So, in an attempt to keep a hold of my sanity, I'm loosening a few screws right now.
In January of 2012, I was hospitalized for major depressive disorder. I spent 10 days in there staring at a scar on my left wrist, the only thing I could think of being how I'd move on from the situation and avoid coming back to it. Honestly, I still have no idea. You don't just become spry the day after you leave a hospital--not if you're sent back to the same situation that drove you there in the first place.
The months leading up to my hospitalization, I'd been struggling to get a book published, get back in school (I'm still a freshman), keep my energy levels up at work, and ignore the constant bickering of my family all around me, every day.
When I returned home and called my employer about my next scheduled day to work, they said very plainly that I was no longer working there.
Apparently, no one at the pharmacy had known I was hospitalized (despite my mother calling and telling the manager directly), so my absences went unexcused for the full ten days. The system automatically kicks out employees when they haven't clocked in for a certain amount of time. According to the manager, I hadn't been fired; I had quit voluntarily.
No one had told me about this beforehand, and no one had tried to contact me to warn me about it.
I was so tired from my other ordeal that I didn't make any attempt to appeal the decision. When you're depressed, you kind of don't want to do anything. My main goal became signing up for Medicaid and getting SSI so I can take some time off to recover.
Around the same time, escalating family perils led to my stepfather and mother breaking up. He was the one who was supposed to be paying the rent, but somehow, he managed to leave my mother with $5000 of back-rent to pay off, plus $2000 from a loan she had taken out to pay another two months he'd missed. This was while their daughter (my sister) was still in pre-school ($160 a month), my mom still had her credit cards to deal with, and I was still slowly, painfully dishing out my savings to pay off interest on a $30k student loan.
My mom found another apartment at the last minute before our eviction, and it's where we live now. We went from a respectable two bedroom to a cramped one bedroom. I now sleep on the couch. There's no elevator so I have to help mom carry the groceries and laundry up and down the stairs. Moving in, as you can imagine, was a real piece of punishment.
No one rushed me to go back to work, but I couldn't bear watching my mother struggle, so I started hunting down a new job. My job at the pharmacy was my first; I'd spent two and a half years ringing on the register there, and had no other work experience besides. Since I had no intention of going back to that environment whatsoever, and hadn't finished college, my options were pretty limited. The main thing I wanted was to work at home, where there were no emotional risks and I was allowed to develop a self-study regiment to hole up my college inexperience. "I Want Work Home" was my only request to Google for a long time.
I found a publisher for my story, but they're a new publisher who won't be paying anything near what I need for a long time. Every other story I submitted to every other publisher got rejected.
I was denied for medicaid. Then I was denied for SSI.Denied for SSD. And last week I was denied for unemployment.
It was determined that I had lied on my application and had, in fact, quit my job voluntarily.
I would love to know the government's definition of "quit" and "voluntarily".
Meanwhile, I discovered Wealthy Affiliate and started charting a course to success. But that's not bringing in the bread anytime soon.
As of right now, I'm in debt, unemployed, uneducated, and mentally ill (though not ill enough for financial assistance, of course). There is no light at the end of the tunnel. If I died tomorrow, I would leave no legacy behind for my little sister, or any of the generations that may come after her. I have to keep looking, keep writing, keep studying, until something, somewhere, finally gives.
Tired. So very, very tired.
This situation may not seem like the most tragic story ever to some people. I've met folks who would gladly point out the countless things I did wrong; who would find some clever way to justify my mother getting kicked out onto the street with a four-year-old girl in her arms, or the fact that I can't file for bankruptcy to get this student loan off my back. They've already done so.
Of course, this is the most tragic story ever, not for the content, but because everyone reading this can relate.
Why is that? Why do most suffer, while few reap the benefits? Why is this cruel and unusual form of punishment called modern society allowed to continue? Does this human experiment have no control group? Who saves us? When does empathy go on sale?
This is tough. I've got too much work on my plate already. No time to go hitting textbooks.
So let's ask the Internet.
Like Mac said, it's the school of hard knox. This is the hand that you've been dealt. How you deal with it is the real test. For what it's worth, when I was 26 I started by first company. It bombed and I was forced to find a new job. Yes I flipped burgers... and took out trash, and swept parking lots, and unclogged toilets, and shoveled snow, and busted my you know what at that job, for five full years before I was able to move on. All without a car. But I had a kid to take care of. The moral? I know it's easier said than done, but don't get depressed. Get hungry.
Sounds like the school of hard knox, my brother! These times are the test of our strength and when we get through them, we will look back and see the reason for the struggles. I know that it looks dismal now, but keep it up. You have a skill in writing that will serve you well. If you need any help at all, you let me know and we can hook up and get some things rolling. Glad you had the juevos to write such a personal article! Mac
hheeyy relax... trust me... there are people even in worse places than you can ever imagine.. just pray to god, someday you are gonna get up there... trust me, ALL each and everyone goes through a terrible time, and it seems almost like the end, but don't give... struggle and one day you'll suddenly see its all gone... do u know I had struggled for four and a half year's for getting into the Indian Civil Service, and that too while working for a super irritating Boss... but trust it goes away... one day it does... you have no choice but to slog till then....!!!!
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