Truths

A truth: I am not doing well.

Job hunting has been brutal. I feel like my degrees are useless, and all I did was waste my time and money despite my passion for literacy, libraries, and archives. I’m almost 30. With no job, I have no money and no health insurance. I’m scared. I can’t do anything about it. I feel helpless. I feel angry, that I worked so hard for so long, since I was a child earning straight As, putting myself through undergraduate and graduate school both, and have nothing to show for it. I am almost 30. I have nothing.

I dread night because I know I’ll toss and turn, and I dread morning because I know I can’t pull myself out of bed. I was never like this before. I would wake myself up early and get work done through the most difficult times. Now, most days I can’t manage to get up before noon, and then I feel guilty for wasting my day. I think drinking a lot of water and doing yoga and journaling will fix my life; it doesn’t, and then I get angry at myself for being in the same place for so long. I keep working hard and doing what I was told I should do and I keep going nowhere and I keep having nothing. I’m angry. I’m so, so angry.

I’m angry at everyone who told me to work hard and go to college and I would “be set.” I’m angry at myself for believing them. I’m angry at myself for believing the world would be fair. I’m angry that I really believed I would be rewarded for working hard and doing right. I feel stupid, because I should have known I wouldn’t. How could I think such naive things?

A truth: I am doing okay. My girlfriend and I moved to a city last summer. We’ve been here for a year. Despite having no job and no money, I love it. I’m almost 30. I have a library card for the first time in my life. The library is within walking distance, so I don’t have to pay bus or train fare. I can still read a lot despite being broke. We also live within a 15-minute walk of a public park. I get library books and go to the park to read them and it’s free, and there are lots of dogs and well-dressed people who I want to be like when I grow up.

I’m already grown, but I feel like a child most days. I feel younger now than I did when I was in my early 20s. I felt so grown then.

Most days, gathering the courage to leave the house is hard. I try to do it about twice a week. During the height of COVID, I became a hermit. I was afraid to leave the house by myself. I frighten from strangers like a scared animal. I suppose I am a scared animal. I try to leave the house anyway, because the sun and exercise are good for me. I think it will fix my life. It doesn’t, but it helps.

My girlfriend works from home, and she recently got a promotion. She works almost 50 hours a week and I miss her, but I’m grateful that I have someone who is willing to shoulder the financial burden while I get my shit together. She no longer has the time to navigate the unfamiliar streets or talk to cashiers for me, so I have to do it myself. I hope I get my shit together soon, so she doesn’t have to carry all the weight.

I don’t know why I wrote this all out, or why I’m posting it on the internet. Probably I shouldn’t. I keep telling myself I’m going to quit social media because it’s bad for me. It makes me think of all of the things I don’t have and all of the things I can’t do. It makes me feel like I should be further in life than I am. It makes me jealous. It makes me angry. But how else would I know when my book-to-movie adaptations were releasing? So I try to use it less, but I can’t quit. Probably I should.

Instead, here is a picture of my library book in my park, with cookies I made this weekend. They were delicious. And then sun felt good on my face and I was happy despite the heat. It’s hard to gather the courage to leave the house, but sometimes I don’t feel alive, or real, until I see other people and feel sunshine. I like living in the city because even though it’s noisy outside of my window almost all the time, the noise reminds me that there’s a world out there that is in constant motion, and I’m part of it, and I’m alive. Sometimes it’s easy to forget.

A truth: I’m not doing well; I’m doing okay. I hope I’ll be doing better soon.