So over the last two years I’ve come to discover something about myself. A fatal flaw, if you will.
I don’t process financial instability at all. I mean at all. It didn’t help that my unemployment was chaotic and non-standard. My payments turned off thanks to a glitch in their system, and on 3 separate occasions I had to make phone calls to get my unemployment turned back on and get back pay for the missing time. It was literal hell. I couldn’t rely on anything or anyone.
I remember seeing people on social media talking about getting laid off and planning on taking a week to themselves to just relax on unemployment and I was furious! How could you rely on the system?! It’s broken! You have to monitor it closely, watch it for hiccups, and be ready to contact them about their errors.
See I came to find out I was part of 11,000 other Oklahomans who were involved in a glitch in the unemployment database. So my account would just stop working. For no reason.
Then I had to justify to the system why I should still be on unemployment.
It was delightful.
But the key takeaway was my depression. I crashed harder than I’ve ever crashed before. My therapist says it’s PTSD from financial trauma from the system fucking with me. I was never able to rely on anything or anyone, I was constantly on guard, on watch, waiting for something to fuck up, and that did damage to me. It altered the core of who I am.
There were days I was unable to do anything but sit on the couch and job search, apply for those I fit, and sit and disassociate. I couldn’t function, no matter how hard I tried. It was like being detached from who I was. I learned that nothing was stable in life, money was something that could just disappear and my family was literally days and dollars away from being homeless.
It was the hardest lesson of my life. That I was this human who was that fragile. I always pictured myself a little more hardy. Not many things really rattle my cage. But now I know that money hits me directly in the face.
I’m working now. Dream job actually, doing what I love. I still feel rattled to my core tho. Trying to pick up the pieces and resume normalcy, draw, write, blog, and work this dream job are harder than they should be. Being the old me is harder than I feel it should be. It’s coming back in pieces, slowly, but I really want it to come back faster. I want to feel stable, feel normal, feel like I used to and it’s just not happening.
I’m working. I drew for the first time in two years the other night and that felt great. I’m blogging right now, but I really don’t want to write about negative stuff except I don’t know what else to write about. So here I am. Sharing the downs since I also share the ups.
I want to blog regularly. Read and write more often. Draw like I used to.
I guess I just have to wait.
That’s the hardest part… is the waiting. It’s like I’ve waited already for two years. Suffering through some serious financial trauma only to come through it and have what I’ve wanted for years and now I’m struggling to enjoy it. But I keep being told to just wait… it’ll all work out.
So wait I shall.