That Sounds Perfectly Awful

     I went to the bank this morning and saw someone I went to high school with. She said I hadn't changed at all. I'm sure she probably meant it as a compliment but it was actually the worst thing I've heard all week. This is a week that includes my husband and I both being unemployed. This is a week where my favorite football team lost painfully (as my son so eloquently put it, they “blew chunks”). Still, this comment that I haven't changed since high school was worse than anything.

“She probably just meant you look young,” my husband insisted.

She probably did. You should just assume that it was a nice, throw away sentiment from someone I barely know. Instead, I'm in a snit.

It's no secret that high school wasn't my favorite time of life. I don't think I actually was a loser but I often felt like one. At graduation girls were crying. All I could think was, “I am so outta' here. I'm going to go live my life.” And I did.

I've done all kinds of things – written a book, had children, gone back to school, loved and lost and yadda, yadda, yadda. Don't get me wrong. They were good things. I'm proud of my accomplishments. Sometimes those accomplishments were just surviving and that's okay too. I like my life (for the most part) and I know I work hard. I don't think it would trade even the awful things that have happened to me because they made me who I am.

I knew that unemployment was looming for a long time before I became unemployed. I thought a lot about what my dream job might look like. I did research. I knew (more or less) what I did and didn't want to do. I had a plan.

Yet despite my preparations, unemployment is more exhausting and demoralizing than I'd anticipated. I'm trying to transition. I don't want to do what I did for the last ten years. Somehow, what I know I'm capable of doesn't seem to translate to what employers seem to be looking for. I'm working on launching my own business but I need some money coming in. I didn't count on my husband losing his job on the same day I lost mine. Now it feels like there's no money and no time. I worry that I'm doomed to take the first job I can find, whether it crushes my soul or not.

I've always been the person in my family who is a perpetual optimist.  I say things like "it will be okay" and "I know you're stressed but here are your strengths" and "don't worry, it's going to work out".  Apparently, I've been saying these things for so long, that no one else in my family knows how. I find I need to hear them but it isn't the same listening to myself.

The worst thing about high school was feeling like I didn't fit in. In the years since, I've grown much more confident and comfortable in my own skin. I'm stronger and braver and smarter than I ever gave myself credit for. Yet unemployment makes you feel vulnerable. I wasn't fired or let go or laid off (although I certainly have been in the past). No, my boss, the owner of my company passed away. I'm unemployed through no fault of my own but I am still bereft.

This is why being told that I haven't changed since high school in uncomfortable. I wasn't brave or strong or very wise then. It's only the love and the loss and the experiences I've had which made me better. If I haven't changed since high school, then I'm still that person who thought she was a loser. I know that I'm not that person but unemployment can put you in a funny space. The bank teller couldn't have possibly known it, but I wish she'd said “Wow, you are so totally different from high school, I can't even believe it!” I think I'll pretend that she did.