Looking back over my life, I consider myself pretty much of a failure. I'm pretty intelligent, I have a good education -- I wasn't raised to think women could be nothing but homemakers. -- and yet here I am nearing 50, entry-level in a couple of different careers, but with no one from either wanting to hire me on for a permanent job, and making a hand-to-mouth income as a substitute teacher. I don't like telling people how much education I have. It's embarrassing enough to think about it myself: With all the time I was in school, I could be anything. But here I am, not sure I'll be able to afford to live past 65.
And you know, I'd like to blame my parents. I know I grew up without a very clear sense of what, if anything, my abilities were good for. My dad was mostly in favor of jobs where you did something, such as teaching, or library work ...or plumbing for that matter, and against jobs where you were paid more, depending on your brainpower. And my mom was mostly more angered than pleased by what I was best at, which was questioning authority and figuring out my own way to do things. But I can't really blame them, even though they did raise me to think that someone like me wasn't really worth as much as someone with practical skills and a traditional mind. I'm smart enough that I should have been able to see past their training. And I got enough therapy that I should have been able to trust my judgment and do what was best for me.
Only instead, I didn't. I was going along really well doing coursework for an advanced History degree, when I -- I don't know -- ...when I got cold feet I guess, or I was hit with fear of success or something. Anyway, I left that course of study to go off and enter seminary. And when I was there, I made the mistake of supporting a man to his success, instead of actively pursuing my own.
Well, he succeeded. And then he left the ministry. And as for me, I raised our two kids, and looked around vaguely and guiltily, trying to find some kind of a job that I would be decent at, that also wouldn't cost any more than was absolutely necessary to prepare for. And I didn't succeed. Trying to write sermons as a preacher, left me with more questions than answers. And legal secretarying wasn't a bad fit, except that people looked at me with disrespect for settling for a job like that, when I had so much education. And besides, it didn't give benefits. So when my ex lost hir permanent job (and, with it, the kids' benefits), I tried to get into teaching so I could get insurance for my sons.
And I'm really never going to be a success as a teacher. I know that from my time in the classroom. It's not that I don't know the material, because I do know it, passably well, although the part that I know best, which is Social Studies, is also the part that doesn't get any attention these days, until the last month before school lets out. The problem is that I get really uncomfortable in atmospheres of chaos. They hurt my thinking. And in the classroom, you need to be able to regard chaos calmly, and quickly come up with ways of restoring order. This I cannot do. I can learn strategies that usually work, and I can get to where I apply them most of the time, when the chaos is not too chaotic. But I am never going to be really good at it. I'm never going to be one of the really great teachers out there, and these days there's no market for teachers who are merely passable.
But I've been working for schools for so long now, that I can't seem to get anyone to take me seriously for anything but school jobs. And I'm too old to be looked at as credible any more, in entry-level positions. ...And at my age, really, shouldn't I be past the entry level? Which brings me back to my original point: I'm a failure. And someday, not as long as I'd like from now, I will probably run out of the money I need to live on. And when I do, I will have to either mooch off a family member, or find a non-painful, non-stressing for my family, way of ending my life. It is not a happy prospect to think about.
HyperSmash
*superhugs* Oh my dear, such a sad, sad entry. I wish I was next to you to hug you in person and take you out for some Starbucks! I know from experience how you feel yes, the 'failure' feelings are strong with me especially when I get back from job interviews in which people tell me "How can you NOT get a job with this resume?" Yeah, well, rub it in. I wasn't very ambitious when I grew up, and I still don't want a hardcore stressing management position, I just want an effin' office job which will pay my bills and leave me enough money to do something fun in a while. But apparently, even office jobs are too perfect for me.
ReplyDeleteHold on, dear. And your second-to-last sentence scares me. I don't want to hear that. We'll find something. There has to be hope for the both of us.