I don't want anyone to come out and call me a sore loser, so before I tell you what I'm bummed over, I'm going to explain what led me to this point.
A year and 4 months ago, I was hired by a company as a call center representative answering incoming phone calls and assisting people in making their annual enrollment elections as part of an outsourced human resources division. I loved my job, I was competitive in my job, yet I was pushed aside for a permanent position because the person I was competing with was bilingual. Two weeks after getting laid off, they brought me back for another two months while one of the permanent people was out on maternity leave. I was excited to be given a second chance to show them what I could do. Two months after being brought back, I was laid off again. At this point, I was told that another position (possibly permanent) would open up in the next few weeks. The following week, I interviewed with a pizza place as a delivery driver while waiting for the position to open back up. The pizza place I worked for forced sick employees to come to work and I started to lose my voice. After getting sick on one of my delivery runs, I went back in to the store to tell the on-duty manager. I was fussed at and told to leave but not to come back without a note from a doctor. I went straight to urgent care and get this (IT WAS VALENTINE'S DAY) was diagnosed with flu and strep AT THE SAME TIME. I was given a note to stay out of work for three weeks since I worked in the food industry. I recovered, but then my kids brought home a stomach virus. I was forced to quit my job. In the mean time, while I was weak, puking everywhere, and bedridden, the position I was waiting for passed me by. When I tried to file for unemployment, I was denied for lack of work experience.
A month after I recover, I go to visit with my family in North Carolina, only for my only mode of transportation (a van) to quit on us 200 miles from home... ON MY 26TH BIRTHDAY. Having to borrow money because we don't have it to rent a car and given the runaround by several rental companies that they don't have a car available when my daughter has to be to school on Monday morning. I have the car a week, pay family back with my pell grant refund from school, and have to turn the rental back in. I go another month and a half depending on others for a vehicle because I don't have one.
In the mean time, my fiance and I talk about having someone move in to help watch the kids while I search for work and we decide to buy a used car. I suggested that an ex of mine (12 years ago we dated for a few months but have since been nothing but friends because things didn't work out) move in with us and live in the spare room. He's an ex-Army veteran and was currently homeless. It would give him a place to sleep and we would have someone to help out while he was in the process of starting over and establishing himself. He moved in the same day we bought my car.
Fast forward 6 months after getting laid off (one month after buying the car) and open enrollment hiring starts again. I interview, get offered a position on the spot, and start in August of 2015. Two and a half months in, I was promised a position on another team (A PERMANENT POSITION!) Imagine how excited I was to find out. Two weeks later, the other two people offered positions beside me get laid off and I'm the only one left. The team that was supposed to hire us rescinds the offer. The project ends and I get laid off again after three more months of working there.
I keep being told by people that it means something that I was one of the last people left for both projects I worked at that company, but it doesn't really mean anything to me because I currently have nothing to show for it. I love what I did there because I felt like I was helping people every single day just by taking their phone calls and assisting them with their employment/retirement benefits. I even started contributing to a 401(k) while I was there in hopes that I would reach my service hours to be considered for 1 full service year (1,000 hours worked). I never made it to 1,000 hours.
I filed for unemployment, they used my information from my first round at the company and the pizza place in between. Four weeks after filing, my fiance's grandmother passes away six days after seeing her at Christmas (on New Year's Eve). We were all devastated because it happened so fast. I had only applied for one work contact out of a required two contacts that week due to the stress and my work search slipping my mind. Because of that, the Virginia Employment Commission placed my unemployment completely on hold for FIVE WEEKS while they "investigate" the situation. I literally called them over 2,000 times in that time period trying to get someone to light a fire under someone's ass to pay my benefits. In the mean time, I was once again forced to borrow money to pay my bills... SIMPLY because we had a death in the family and I missed one work search contact for one week (the week she passed away.)
Some people in my family were nice enough to buy us groceries that month and put gas in my car to pick my daughter up from school because our roommate (my ex) had a nervous breakdown and threatened to kill himself the day after Christmas and got kicked out a few days before my fiance's grandmother passed. I had no money, no babysitter, no help, nothing.
In the mean time, my best friend of almost 17 years accuses me of being toxic and negative. Hang on a second, HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT THE HELL I'VE BEEN THROUGH OVER THE PAST YEAR AND A HALF?????!!!?!?!?!??!!!!! On top of everything that is already going on, I have plenty of medical conditions. Let's just put it this way, my list of medical conditions is enough for a primary care physician to walk away and refuse to see me. The only thing I'm missing to apply for disability is a walker, cane, or wheelchair. The problem is, no PCP wants to see me to at least get me to that point. When I do reach out for help from a PCP, I get told I'm being sent for a psych eval just because I'm having an asthma attack and can't breathe and I'm begging for help which noone is giving me. I wasn't being given a breathing treatment, instead, the PCP sat there in the office and yelled at me, saying that I was faking it for attention. I only got a breathing treatment because I threatened her with a lawsuit if she didn't treat me.
So, needless to say, I've been through a lot of shit over the past year and a half. In the past month alone, I've lost two good friends: one friend of 17 years and another friend of 12 years because he's ignored my messages since I had to kick him out. I couldn't have him threaten his life in front of my kids and he wouldn't do anything to help himself while he was here. These friends were the only REALLY GOOD friends that I had outside of the relationship with my fiance.
Imagine my surprise when I found out my home team (the Carolina Panthers) was heading to Super Bowl 50. I was excited, because they've had such a great season so far and was hoping that things would look up, that I could get a smile from them winning. Instead, the game tonight was filled with crappy calls from refs, unflagged OBVIOUS fuckups, point shaving, and a completely rigged game so that Peyton Manning could get his #200 before retiring. For Christ's sake, Newton stepped away from a ball he could have jumped on and reclaimed for the team. Instead, he steps away like it's some albatross or something. It was the worst game I had EVER seen played in my entire 26 year existence.
You're thinking, "yeah, she's only saying that because of how frustrated she is right now." NO, that game really did S-U-C-K. I think a rabbit that had just gotten plastered by an 18-wheeler could have ran a better game than that.
You know, I'm realizing the only difference between those depressed and suicidal and regular people is the fact that regular people still have hope for the world and depressed people realize that we're all just f***ed in the long run, so it doesn't really matter. That's the only thing that defines the line between normal and suicidal people. For some reason, I've been accused of being suicidal in the past few months. Believe me, I wouldn't still be here if I was suicidal. That's completely stupid. I'm willing to admit that the world sucks, my luck with finding work sucks, and people generally suck, but it doesn't mean I'm going to off myself because of it. That's just plain dumb. Sending someone for a psych eval just because you haven't experienced these crappy circumstances isn't going to do anything but waste that person's money and put them in a worse situation than they're already in. You might as well be responsible for putting that person over the edge. If someone isn't threatening the lives of themselves or others, they are perfectly fine to dwell in their own shitty luck.
PS - Don't tell me my inability to find a job is because of my attitude. I have a pretty dang good attitude. You try competing for a job when there are 300-600 other applicants applying for the same position you are. There's less than 1% chance of being hired. Even worse when everyone else is more qualified than you. You might as well just drop out of the competition altogether. Nowhere is hiring right now. It isn't being overly dramatic, it's the truth. If you're looking for anything better than minimum wage flipping burgers, they aren't hiring. I can't do food service again because of my medical conditions but I can't get a doctor to see me to prove that to the Social Security Office or to the Virginia Employment Commission.
Guess on that note, I'm just going to lay down and try to sleep through my physical pain because no doctor wants to prescribe anything to me or take me seriously. When you have a rare genetic disorder like Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, life tends to suck like that.... but you know, whatever, I'm just SOOOOO NEGATIVE about things when I'm speaking the truth. :)
