Out of Work
I think that the reason I've been having trouble writing this month's article (I'm THREE weeks late for a MONTHLY article!), is because I always try to both write the truth and to find the light in the darkest of truths. Well, three weeks ago, I got an email from the people for whom I had been working for the past two years saying "we are not renewing your contract which, by the way, ends tomorrow. Bye" That was all the notice I got from them and since it was only a part time job and was barely keeping me going, it is a big deal to lose it.
Just as I deal with my terror of life by hiding inside the house, I tend to deal with my inner terrors by stuffing them off in some secret corner of my psyche, by trying to be and feel positive, by zoning out. I am disconnected from myself and having trouble focusing on anything meaningful. I am wasting a lot of time playing computer games. I'm also sending out resumes and taking positive steps, but the reality is that there are not a lot of at-home jobs out there and I'm still not able, particularly given the area in which I live, to go out and find work outside my home. I'm almost completely out of money. This year for the first time in my life, I started running up credit card debt that I can't pay off. I think I have enough money to make it through July and I can probably use my credit card to keep going a bit after that - but at the cost of building up debt, which to me is simply like burning money. I'm oddly calm about all of this. I didn't much like my job, so not having to do it isn't all bad, but not having any income IS all bad. So much of our self esteem is about earning our way, not to mention the basic reality of wanting to survive. While my mind is shut down to some extent avoiding my fear, another part of it keeps going over how much money I have and trying to figure out ways to stretch it. Another part of me thinks, "What will happen to Abigail if we become homeless?" How does an agoraphobic cope with being homeless? Of course we aren't homeless yet. Hopefully we never will be, but huge as that fear is for anyone, for an agoraphobic, to be homeless is to be thrown into the firey pit with no way out.
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