Life is a blur of resumes and applications right now. Three a week to maintain unemployment and several others sent into the community to various, potential employers. Taking shots in the dark when I am used to only shooting what I can see. I am careful with my ammunition, generally, but as desperation grows the shooting becomes more complex, less discerning, and far out of range. It is not easy to be unemployed, ever. But with children, married, in a circle of friends who are employed, generally doing well, busy, and employed there comes this sense of isolation. As they hear me talk about looking for work and the nature of the job market I get the sense that they don't really know what I'm feeling or going through. The feelings of dread and fear, the empty pit in my stomach that will not go away, the beating that my confidence is taking after so many rejections and non-committal generalizations about the future.
It isn't my nature to be pessimistic, I am, believe it or not, an eternal optimist but my great paradox is the dark cynicist that stands opposite my optimism. In ordinary life they are in harmony and balance. Now, slowly cynicism and darkness are taking hold. It isn't just me, my wife and sons feel the heat of the situation. The depression eeks into my relationship with my family like a fatal epidemic. My wife, who has been so brave and supportive is privy to my mood-swings and destructive depression. My five year old, a dreamer and creator and artist (so much of his personality and nature are in me as well) feels the wrath of my uncertain moods and displaced anger. I hate this time in life. The uncertainty and growing desperation, the darkness...
Self-confidence has never been a strong point in my life, perhaps I have covered my insecurities with brash humour and boisterous acts of egotism but it has all been a mask, a mask that no longer fits. There is the move from youthful insecurity to the early adult years of self-discovery into adult hood in earnest (post college, married, children) when it is supposed to fade away but now in the heat of the action I am almost paralyzed as spectres of my weakness rise up and fog my vision.
It is hard for me to vocalize how I feel, my friends don't really understand. The nagging comments my wife and I have begun to make, the pit in my stomach, the clouds of fear that hang on the horizon. I can't express it any more than to say I feel sick with no clinical symptoms of virus or disease. I feel paralyzed yet maintain movement. I feel hopeless but try to drive forward, forward into a brick wall. I am in East Germany and freedom is a yard or two away and nearly in-obtainable.
I am sorry for this darkness and depression. But that is where I'm at.
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