Gone but not forgotten

Today has been a pretty fraught day today. I awoke feeling gloomy remembering  yesterday's interview and not having gotten the job. I mustered some spirit to switch on the laptop and check for more jobs and to think about filling out the application forms I'd still got to fill in for another job and the interview I have on Tuesday.

I'd just about perked myself up when I got a phone call. It was from one of the school's I'd assumed that the boat had sailed on when it came to interviews. They rang and said that it was really short notice but could I make an interview tomorrow. I paused for a second and said would it be O.k. to phone back only I had to check transportation arrangements. They said yes and said "oh and we'd like you to read a 30 minute story to a group of children you can use your own resources like puppets and things". Flashes of panic went through me and I could feel my blood pressure rising. I should be happy I had another interview right? Well I would be if they'd asked me any other day than today and if they'd given me more time.

I've spent the rest of today stressing over whether or not to say yes to it or not because I felt so under pressure and ill-prepared for it. I ended up saying no because it was hiking my stress levels practically to the same levels that they'd been before I'd had to defer my course. I tried to get myself back on track again by filling out the medical forms so I could get them in the post but that just depressed me further because I have to somehow explain I've been depressed without sounding like I could fall apart at any moment.

As if today couldn't be any more depressing, it marks the date 4 years ago that my granddad passed away.  It's true what some people say about not realising what you've got till it's gone. He's left such a big hole in my life that I just don't know how to fill it. He died the day before I started university. I was packed off on my own to uni where I spent a week trying to cope with grief on my own with no friends. Making friends is hard to do when you're grieving and feel so alone and all you wish is that you could be at home with your family. I don't think I've ever properly had time to grief for him and I never will. Everyone else in my family seems to have moved past where I am and I can't talk to them about it. Especially my Nan. She has a new man now and she seems to be trying to rid her life of all things related to my grandad. What feels worse is that I used to be able to talk to her because she was alone too. We held each other together. But now she seems to have given herself permission not to do that. She told me when I visited her last that I'd told her that she had him now so she didn't need to talk to me as much. I don't ever remember saying that and if I did I never meant it I just wanted her to feel O.k.

I want to know when life is going to be good to me. There were two things that made me feel slightly happier today. My OH because he always makes me smile no matter what and a Post Secret card I found on an archive site that said something along the lines of "every story has a happy ending. If you're not happy yet then it's not the end". I'm keeping my fingers crossed that what they said is true.

Back to black

I'm having a rough weekend this week. Maybe it's the thought of another impending interview and the looming fear that yet again I'll be rejected. I feel like this year has been one big train wreck. My confidence (what little I had) has gone, my dreams are in tatters and I've lost the one thing I thought I was good at ¹. If I can't get a job then what am I going to do. It would be the ultimate rejection. 'Never mind' said everyone when I had my meltdown and ruined my chances at getting my PGCE. 'You have a degree and a 2:1 is an excellent mark'. What good is a degree if I can't do anything with it though. It's a degree in education and even the education establishments don't seem to want me. Especially the ones I was training to teach in (primary schools).

I've been feeling lately like my life is so empty and like I'm running on auto-pilot. I do the same thing every day, I go the same places every weekend and soon I'll not even be able to afford to do that I'll just have to sit at home because that's free. The only thing good in my life and that's keeping me clinging on is my OH and I'm worried that I'm going to loose him because I can't tell him what's going on in my head. I want to but the words just won't form themselves and I just can't answer. I don't know myself what's happening. All I do know is I feel like I'm drifting back into the black abyss that I was in 6 months ago when my life fell apart and I have no way out because this was my way out. Getting a job and having something to distract me was meant to help but it isn't and I don't know what to do.

I'm frightened. I don't like where I'm heading but I feel powerless to stop it. I can't just smile and everything will feel better. I can't tell people what's wrong because they just don't understand. 'Everything' it seems is not a suitable answer. It's like witnessing an all-out massacre in front of you and someone asking 'what's wrong' and you just see so much that you just don't know where to start. Worst still there is no where to escape. You just think you've conquered it and then Wham there goes another wave and you don't know why or where it came from. You were happy to minutes ago why now.

When that wave does it, so unexpectedly you're left dazed and confused and with people asking all sorts expecting you to have the answer and you can't look them in the eye and tell them because you have no answer and the look of fear that you see in their eyes is so gut wrenching that you just can't bring yourself to look at them. No matter how bad you feel inside you dread to make them feel the way you do and though you try and you want to tell them what's going on inside. You know that if you do speak it out loud and let those words go there's no going back, no way to undo them. You're scared that once let loose that things will never be the same and that you'll make them just as unhappy as you.

What crushes me most is the doubts it creates in others. Most of all my OH because I love him so much and I want to spend the rest of my life with him. He understands me like no other person, he has the patience of a saint and puts up with all the crap I throw at him and still he's by my side. Yet every time I'm down there's that little niggle. 'Do you still want to be with me?' and it puts doubts in my mind too not about whether I do want to be with him but because I wonder if he still wants to be with me. Am I still what he wants? How much more of this can he stand because I couldn't stand to loose him.

1. Which everyone says is temporary and once I believed them but I'm not so sure any more.

Filling the voids

I finally got the details through for a job interview that was supposed to be happening next week. I was beginning to think that I had dreamed getting the phone call asking if I was still available.

I emailed the other day to check the progress on the information I was supposed to be getting and it was apparently been typed as I read and that I would get the letter, job description and application form in the post shortly.... but hang on a minute. I thought I'd already applied? Oh well I thought, they've left it an awfully long time to reply to my initial application (I applied way back in July) they might have been re-offering the job and were sending out application forms to new applicants as well as informing me of when my interview was.

Sadly today I discovered that was not the case. After all that work I put in writing a letter of application and sending it in with my CV I now have to go through the whole process again only I have to write the details in boxes! Not only that but I discovered that I'm going to be interviewed twice by these people (as if once wasn't torture enough). It's also got me worried because I apparently get told the results of my interview on the day as part of the interview process. I've only ever had one job offer and it was from someone I knew so it was more informal. I have no idea how to go about accepting a job. I'm shy and retiring and don't like being put on the spot.

I phoned my mum up for support and just ended up coming back feeling worse than when I'd rang. She had another moan at me about getting income support. I'm feeling a little isolated at the moment. It feels that everything I want to do boils down to having money. I want my own space where I can flit from room to room without feeling like I'm intruding and where I can sulk, laugh or cry if I want to and have a key so I can come and go as I please; I want to have something to do in the day other than looking for work (i.e. a job); I want to learn to drive and buy a car. Sadly it feels like none of this is going to happen soon if at all.

I tried to cheer myself up by blogging but I don't think it's working. I have this new gadget for windows live writer (the program I use to write this blog). It puts up handy pictures and articles as I type my blog so that you can add them in if they fit what you're talking about.

I found this cartoon in blog article on there and it's the only thing that's made me crack even the faintest of smiles today.

Pretty S**ty day

Today I've just felt so utterly depressed. I put it down to having had a really rough week with all my worries. I spoke to my parents last night about my current job hunting and they said how well I was doing and although I know they were probably right I just feel like I'm getting nowhere. I'm good enough to get an interview but no one wants to hire me. What is it about my physical appearance that puts them of me? What do I say or do that stops them wanting to hire me? I wish I knew.

I told them about not having much money and they told me I should sign on but not in a suggestive way more an aggressive way and my dad went on about how I owed it to the people who were supporting me. I've been feeling really guilty about that recently it set me back on rock bottom. Now all I can think about is what if I don't get a job? What if I'm always left depending on people. Talking in last night's blog about a baby feeling like a way out, it really does. I know it wouldn't be as I really wouldn't have any money as I'd probably have to give up the job hunt but at least there would be a purpose to my life. At the moment I feel like I'm living to find work.

I really wasn't feeling too good emotionally today I'm slowly recovering from the bubble I built around myself fantasizing about being a mum. I really wanted to talk to my mum about it but the way she and dad had a go at me about job seeker's I just didn't have the strength to broach the subject I just wanted a hug. Today I've tried in vain to distract myself from it with application forms but  it's just not working and the thoughts of more forms tomorrow isn't helping. I just want a job so I can stop worrying about money and I have some variety in my day (I'll probably not be saying that if I get one though!)

Loosing something you never had

I've felt quite down today. It's probably the hormones. Aunty Flo has arrived today. She's caused a lot of angst this month to the point of forcing me to take a test last night to check if she'd gone on a 9 month vacation. The test said no she hadn't but I was anxious why she'd not shown any signs of arrival. Both my OH and myself sat anxiously in the bathroom for what felt like the longest 2 minutes of my life.

I'd spent all of the weekend umming and arring about taking the test and what on earth we were going to do if it came out positive. I have no money and no home to call my own, me and my OH aren't even engaged and I'd hoped that I'd be married if such an event occurred. I was so afraid of what might be. But secretly I was also fantasising, imaging what I'd look like with a bump, the clothes I'd buy for them, bathing them, feeding them, playing games and being a family. So whilst I breathed a sigh of relief when it turned negative I also felt quite disappointed and like I'd missed out on something very special.

It feels lately like I haven't had many special things happen to me (except my OH who is my rock). I've had one really rough year. I left my PGCE course in April after suffering  from what I think was a major bought of depression and stress. I've got the opportunity to go back in January and finish it off but I'm just not sure that I'm ready to. Instead I'm looking for jobs as a teaching assistant because I like working in schools and with children and it'll hopefully help me to decide if I want to carry on trying to be a teacher, do something else, or maybe just carry on being a TA. So far I've had interviews but no job offers, I've got less money than when I was a student which seems a bit of an oxymoron really. I like to know where I'm going and what I'm doing so not knowing what I'll be doing in 6 months time let alone 9 or 12 is killing me. I'm going to go an get job seekers soon. I've resisted till now out  of cowardice. I hate form filling and I hate asking for things especially if I feel I don't deserve them.

In a way I feel a little gutted that the test did come back negative. In those few days I had my next 9 months planned. They would have been hard but I'd have had something to show for them and something to do. I'd have a purpose. I think ever since I was old enough to contemplate having children I've wanted them (not as in being a teen mum or anything... always when I felt ready) and I've sort of had this mental map of how my life would look and it looks nothing like how my life is now and I wonder if it ever will. I know it probably won't ever and it's probably completely unrealistic but I'd love it if some part of it were true at least.

Tell me why I don't like Mondays?

Yup it's the start of the week again. Back to the endless trawl of the job adverts. Rang one up today to ask for an application and looked the other up on the Internet. I love the Internet. It's made applying for jobs so much easier. For a start you can trawl endlessly on sites looking for anything or nothing in particular. If you find something you like the look of you can pretty much apply straight away at the click of a button or at least find out more.

Of course being online can often lead to distraction; MSN pinging you to tell you have a message from facebook is of course a matter which must be looked into straight away;suddenly even spam email becomes interesting and rearranging all of your favourites into categories in alphabetical order is a necessity. It's amazing what you can find to do on your computer when you have something that needs doing.

I've had to distract myself a lot today from things that seem way bigger than I can cope thinking about. Why is life so complicated? I wonder if there's some kind of cheat magazine I can buy that'll give me a code to hack into my brain with so I can play my live on easy mode?

Easy like Sunday...yawning

Today has been pretty leisurely and laid back again. We've been continuing our Star Wars fest with a sprinkling of Juno (one of the best films ever in my opinion) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind for a little variety.

I don't know whether it's just me or whether other people feel it too but for me Sunday's have this unnerving feeling about them. I think it's because they mark the end of the weekend and the return to the work day grind (well it would if I had a job. At the moment it represents going back to the newspaper to trawl the ads, watching re-runs of danger mouse and developing a slightly scary obsession with talk shows (Nothing beats a bit of Jeremy Kyle to set you up for the rest of the day). Have you ever noticed how the hands on the clock seem to turn quicker on a Sunday? I think that they must know that the weekend's nearly over and decide to trickle away faster like the last few grains of sand in an hour glass.

Maybe I don't like Sundays because it means I've got to wait another 6 days to spend the whole day with my OH. It's nice staying with him and seeing more of him but it can get a little lonely when he's at work. I know I have jobs to look for and a million things to entertain me but somehow they're not as good as being able to snuggle up to him with my head on his chest listening to both our hearts beating as one (yes I know very mushy but I'm allowed to be it's my blog and I'm in love!).

This weekend seems to have gone alarmingly quickly and has been accompanied by a lot of frowns and worried thoughts and discussions. I'm not up to telling anything just yet. I need to get my head around what I want to do about the situation first and how I feel.