A repeat of the previous entry.

Not completely, but after having a great few days, Christmas included, I’m back in this ridiculous funk where I just play Peter Gabriel’s “Don’t Give Up” on repeat and try not to cry.

It sounds really stupid, and it kind of is, but god dammit, once again, something has to give.

I feel like I’m not allowed to have any imperfections at all, ever, or make any mistakes, or be too rude to anyone, and I’m told shit like “Then you better start saving up for an apartment”.

It started last night while watching a movie with the family. Over two hours into the movie, my mother turns to me and says ‘You’re taking a bath tomorrow’.

It has long since been my mother’s deal that if she doesn’t physically see me coming out of the bathroom with wet hair and new clothes on, she doesn’t “believe” that I’ve taken a bath.

Okay, let’s examine this. Back in middle school and such, I didn’t like taking baths.  I don’t know why. I have a habit of reaching life milestones well after everyone else my age, so who knows.

My point is that is in the past, but I got pissed off at her little comment and said she was being a bitch.

Okay, first of all, I’m still on my period, and my mood swings can be pretty awesome. Secondly, I reserve the right to call someone a bitch when they are rude to me. People do it to me, so I’m just giving them a taste of their own medicine.

What kind of an asshole tells their grown children when they’re going to bathe? Do you have it in your head that people should smell like fucking perfume all the time? For years, my mother has complained about smells that nobody else in the house can detect.

It’s made me not even want to sit next to her on the couch, at movies, at restaurants, anywhere, because I’m afraid she’ll think she fucking smells something. I just get tired of her assuming the odd smell must always be me. You know what she’d say to that? ‘Well, it usually IS you so blahblahblahblah’.

But no.

And, okay. You know people get mad and say shit in the moment, when they’re still mad, that might only seem too harsh to them when the mood has passed.  And it’s just an honest mistake.

But no. It’s never that with me, it’s because I’m just a little worthless bitch living off my parents, or something. I don’t know.

All I know is that shit isn’t helping. My moods are generally better, as opposed to the awful depression I had a couple years ago, but when I get into shit like this, it makes the depression all the worse.

And then it doesn’t help if I actually start to cry, because all I am told is that I’m 25 years old and I need to grow up.

What, so I’m not human and I can’t ever want to cry? What kind of bullshit is that?

Speaking of bullshit, after the aforementioned bath incident, my dad had to ask me ‘Why do you cuss so much’. Because I want to.

They’re just words. They’re the words I feel like using. I like swearing. I don’t do it for shock value, I do it because they’re the words I want to use. And he gave me the condescending bullshit response and rolled his eyes at me.

He always assumes that I’m a stupid, little immature shit, and he’s unbelievably rude to me at times, but then he turns around and yells at me to move out if I say anything.

Having a job has made me feel less helpless than I have in the past, but when shit like this goes on, it doesn’t help at all. I almost feel right back down there where I did when I couldn’t find a job. Like nothing I do makes any difference.

And my friends are supportive but they just don’t understand. I can’t have any problems with my job because “Oh well that’s being an adult blahblahblah get used to it”. Yeah, okay, pardon me if I’m a little late to that party. I didn’t have to get a job until I was 19 years old. I am behind on all that shit. Before Thanksgiving this year, I’d never had to work on a holiday, or a black friday, so excuse me if I’m still fucking getting used to that being an adult bullshit. It’s not my fault you’ve been dealing with this adult shit since you were a teenager. I haven’t, okay, and I’m trying the best I can, but it’s fucking difficult.

I’m usually in an all around better mood than I was just a couple years prior, but the truth is, sometimes I feel like this. Where I’m a worthless, ugly, pile of shit that nobody will ever want, nobody will ever want my art, or my photography, and nobody will ever give a shit about me at all, and the only men I attract are dishonest assholes.

There’s always a reason to bitch at me.

Also known as “We, as your parents, always need to find some little thing to bitch about with you, and we’re never satisfied”.

It always begins with something innocuous enough.

In August, I began working as a cashier. I only get part time hours, but it’s a job, and I’m not going to be picky about how much I get scheduled… because part time is better than being unemployed, which I recently was for a couple years.

Because I can actually afford to, I have started helping out with buying groceries. Over the last couple months I’ve bought milk, salad, cheese, taco chips, salsa, cereal, cottage cheese, salad dressing, hot dog buns…at least once, staples like flour and sugar, and tuna (we usually keep it on hand at all times).

Recently, I used a raincheck to pick up a 9 dollar toaster (because our current toaster got dropped on the floor and it doesn’t work so well). I help out where I can.

Today, I was in that sort of rut where you rummage through a fully stocked pantry and fridge, and still can’t find anything to eat. Eventually, I settled on the last can of tuna, making sure to put tuna on the grocery list.

In comes my dad, saying something to the effect of “tuna again?”.

I was already in a frustrated mood, so I brought up how cheap a can of tuna is, and how thoughtful it was of him to completely ignore all the other groceries I’ve bought.

No, he says. The problem isn’t how much it costs, it’s how apparently we can ‘never plan a meal around tuna because you eat it all’. Completely ignoring how much tuna he eats. He hasn’t for a little while, but there would be days I wouldn’t see him eat anything all day except a tuna sandwich.

He went on to bitch about how I could have eaten some of the leftovers in the fridge.

And I lost it. I had one of those silly moments where I close the bathroom door and just bawl.

Honestly? Nothing is ever enough. It’s been going pretty well for a while, so a bump in the road was bound to come up, but I honestly feel like my parents are blind sometimes.

No, let’s not see all the progress I’m making and just how fucking hard it is. Let’s ignore all the back and knee pain I endure on a daily basis because I can’t afford to go in and get medications. I don’t have doctor prescribed narcotic painkillers to help me with my pain like my father does.

I realize working part time would be a welcome vacation for lots of you amazing people that work 10-12 hour days every single day, but for me, it’s  damn difficult, so there’s that.

I’m still treated like I was when I was unemployed, immature, and didn’t give a shit.

There are still many ways in which I am not as mature as a 25 year old should be, but come on, I am trying here. It’s an uphill battle for me but I keep at it.

It’s a light hearted joke that my mother, brother, and I laugh at, but the reason I always overly justify myself is because I have my motives questioned so much. I get bitched at for stupid, trivial, unfair reasons, and I feel like I have to stand up for myself.

And because I can’t yet afford to move out, I’m still a victim of the parental shit where you can’t argue with them because they’re the parent.

It sounds like stupid teenage bullshit, but if I wasn’t allowed to live here, I’d be on the streets.

It’s just that stupid comments like that make me feel like a worthless piece of trash, even though I’m putting forth a great deal of effort to be just the opposite. It brings me down. I’ve said this before, but unintentionally, my parents bully me. And what kind of idiot keeps trying and trying and trying even though the reaction is the same? Isn’t that kind of like the definition of insanity?

I don’t know. I don’t want to waste the rest of my day off lamenting about it, but it just makes me mad and depressed,  and there’s nothing I can do about it right now.

 

Insecurity.

Sometimes I can be quite… odd. I’m sure you know that already, but in regards to the job situation, I am very insecure.

My work schedule is completely random. We’re scheduled by a computer system that, as I understand it, randomly sticks people in on the schedule according to the hours listed on each individual person’s listed availability.

This means I start at random hours. One day I might work 8:15-2:45, then I might work 2pm-7pm, then I might work 6:30-12.

I put the hours into a note document on my phone, so I can put them on our calendar when I get home.

Even though I double and triple check the schedule, I have this fear that I’ll have written it down wrong and I’ll get in trouble for being late or something. When one night I would work 6-11, and the next time it would be 6:30-midnight, one can kind of see where that would be kind of confusing.

And I’m famous for having a less than stellar memory with numbers, so that doesn’t help.

Just the whole job thing in general. I try to do my best and do what is asked of me, but I am just so scared that some day I’ll have made some mistake they won’t tell me about and it will get me in a bunch of trouble and in danger of getting fired.

Which is stupid, right? If you’re making mistakes of that magnitude, work would tell you, wouldn’t they?

We’re allowed up to 5 infractions per each 6 month period before we’re in serious trouble (depending on what the infractions are for), and I haven’t had any infractions. And, I’ve only gone home early once (They let me go home an hour early because I was having extremely bad that time of the month cramps).

So I’m not so sure what I’m afraid of, here.  I was told people had had wrong till amounts, given too much change, and all that, and they didn’t get fired.

I think I’m so wary because I spent so long being unemployed. I worked as a dishwasher in a restaurant from September 2008-about November 2009, but after that… I couldn’t find a job. No matter how hard I looked or how many applications I filled out.

So, when I got an interview for this job, I didn’t think there was a ghost chance in hell I’d get it, but I tried REALLY hard. I searched online for lots of interview tips, I googled the company, I wore the best clothes I own (save for my prom dresses, which don’t fit anyway), wore makeup… I went all out for this interview. I thought I’d done a good job with that stuff before, but there I was, jobless, so apparently not.

I was shocked when, after the interview, she essentially told me that once the background check came back clean (and I knew it would, save for what I’d already told them about) that I’d have a job.

That was back in August. I’ve worked there for almost 4 months, and for the most part, I like the job.

I just spent so long being completely broke and unable to find a job that I guess I’m scared. In this economy, so many people can’t find a job. I’ve just started getting to the point where I have money to do things. I can finally afford to start helping my parents buy groceries. I can finally afford to give people gas money for giving me rides to work. This is really the first year that I’ve had enough money to buy people christmas presents and to even consider exchanging christmas cards with my friends overseas in England.

I’m just so scared that the economy will get even worse and I’ll get fired or lose all my hours or something, and then I’d be back in that giant job searching hamster wheel where I just keep running and running and running, and when I stop to rest, I’m still in the same place. Because that’s what it felt like, needing a job so bad, but not being able to get one no matter how hard I tried.

I probably don’t have anything to worry about, because I’ve seen people at work act worse than me, yet they still have a job.

Still. I think I’m going to try even harder at work, partly because they deserve it of me, and partly because it will be a good way to ensure my continued employment.

I have a habit of worrying way too much about things, and that’s probably what I’m doing here.

I guess it’s because things are going fairly well for once, but I remember all too well how awful and depressed I felt when things were going shitty, and I don’t want to go back to that.

 

 

This doesn’t make any sense.

One of my faults is that I can occasionally be afraid to get into any sort of discussion about politics or the like. Partly for feeling inadequately prepared for such a discussion. I’m not as informed/educated about that sort of thing as I would like, and I’m afraid someone will call me out on it. Another thing is, I don’t like getting into the sort of discussion that gets heated and gets everyone angry at one another for no good reason.

However, I would like to briefly discuss a news story I read online, which can be found here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2011%2F12%2F03%2FBUPA1M7IAH.DTL

If you read the article, it’s discussing the disturbing prospect that many employers are putting out classified ads stating that the ‘unemployed need not apply’.

This makes no sense. With unemployment being what it is today, and with so many people having such trouble finding work, that kind of thing worries me.

I can’t say for certain because nobody can, but it seems like these are the kind of people that believe good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people. In some respects, that’s true, but good people can come upon hard times (i.e. losing their job). How are they going to get their lives back if employers think like that?

Do those kind of people think if something bad happens to you, you whole heartedly deserve it?

Speaking from experience, sometimes it’s true that you do stupid things and you have to put up with the stupid consequences as a result. Some of those people don’t learn their lesson and continue to do stupid shit. However, some people actually learn from it and wish they’d never done whatever it was that they did, and they need help getting their lives back on track.

I think it comes down to people who think if you don’t have a job, you’re a lazy no talent slob who doesn’t ‘want’ to work.

In some cases, that’s true. Before the job I got in August of this year, I hadn’t had an hourly wage job since 2009. More of that time than I’d like to admit was spent not wanting to get a job, but after about a year of that, I was trapped in this “I need money to get my license back to get to a job interview to get a job to get the money I need to get my license back” kind of merry go round situation.

I had this problem where there were hardly any job postings in the newspaper, and the few jobs that were posted were like… truck drivers,  CNAs,  School administrators, and the like. The sort of job that requires some higher education. Education that I couldn’t afford due to being unemployed.

I would apply to a bunch of stores but because most of them weren’t actively hiring, I didn’t find anything.

When I applied to the store that I now cashier at, I had no idea that it was going to come to fruition at all. I thought it was going to be another hopeless drop in the bucket.

If it weren’t for that job, I’d be one of the thousands of unemployed people, having to jump over yet another hurdle to get our lives back on track. It’s asinine shit like “unemployed need not apply” that really pisses me off.

And really, I still have this horrible fear that I’ll lose my job and be right back where I started, with no money feeling like I have no means with which to better myself.

That’s really what it felt like when I didn’t have a job. I was so hopeless because I couldn’t afford to do anything. There was really a point where I felt like I’ve never get a job, and that it would get to the point where my parents would one day just ship me off to the homeless shelter.

It’s a horrible feeling.

And, I don’t know. I’m not saying there should be reverse discrimination for people who are unemployed (because there are people working at jobs they hate who would like to get a better job), but we shouldn’t be seeing that someone is unemployed and throwing out their application.

 

I really wish I had a better talent with writing so I’d get my point across better. That’s another of the things I worry about. My writing isn’t SUPER ELOQUENT AND AWESOME so I worry I won’t be taken seriously because of it.  I’d be better discussing this with someone face to face.

For now I feel like that’s all the eloquence I can manage but I’ll probably tweak this a bit when I have the presence of mind for it.