Let me preface this by saying that I am incredibly grateful for a lot of things in my life right now - I have the luxury of free time, I have a nice house & it’s the closest I’ve felt in many years to being ‘home’, I have all my possessions around me and plenty of material comforts, and most importantly, I have a kind and intelligent woman who loves me and wants to spend her life with me and she means the world to me. In all of this uncertainty, she is the one thing I’m sure of, I love her and being around her helps me to see the good in life, she makes me laugh and she is there for me when I cry, she understands me better than anyone else ever will. So in many ways, I’m extremely lucky and I appreciate that, not a second goes by where I take it for granted.
But, here’s the half empty: I feel incredibly frustrated and trapped by my current employment situation. I’m currently on jobseekers allowance, which is (as anyone who has ever been on it will know) absolutely soul destroying. Trying to co-ordinate jobseekers and housing benefit is tedious and confusing, anyone who argues that it’s easy living on benefits has clearly never been through it. This week, my ‘personal advisor’ told me, as gently as he could, that I should pretty much leave my degree off of my CV, as well as my A Levels and GSCE results. Because they ‘scare away’ employers. On one hand, I can see what he’s saying, I’m in a position where the only jobs I can apply for are admin and retail based, so my qualifications are useless. I accept that. But to be told to pretend they’re not there and that they actually work against me finding a job, well, it stings a bit.
I worked so fucking hard at school, at college, at uni. When I was 14 someone important told me that the only way I would escape the miserable dead-end life that my parents have would be to get an education, and hell, I believed it. I had no encouragement from my parents and very little from my school but I tried hard, I did well, I got into a good college and then a good university. I felt like this fucking miracle, ‘how-can-someone-from-your-background-achieve-academically’ kinda oddity. I’ve often felt consumed by bitterness that it was so much harder for me than a lot of people to get to where I needed to be (and I’m not under the illusion I’m unique or special, I know there are people worse off than me who achieve more than I do, but I feel angry for them too, furious that certain people have it so much easier and waste those opportunities they are handed at birth.) Especially at university, where I felt like I’d stepped into another world where people like me were studied and pitied and treated like a novelty. Everyone around me seemed to consider university just something everybody did, it was paid for by their parents and they had no idea how privileged they were. I crippled myself financially getting that degree, that useless fucking degree that nearly killed me and has actually made me less employable. But hell, I’m still proud of it. I had to try so much harder and I did better than the people who looked down on me for where I came from, that still makes me smile.
And I’m not going to lie and pretend that I enjoyed every minute of my education, I struggled and doubted my abilities and there were times when I wanted to give up. But I worked damn hard. I got good grades. Fuck, I got excellent grades. Best in my school. Best in my university year. I won awards, I was told that I could go so far. My personal tutor at uni (who I have endless admiration and respect for) told me that I could be an academic. And that scared me, that’s a lot of pressure. But it also let me think a little about the things I might be able to do in the future. I knew I couldn’t do a masters straight away because I don’t have the money, and besides I wanted to get married first and sort out my mental health, I wanted to make sure I was ready and healthy and able to enjoy it. So I decided to work for a while and then figure out how to get myself back to university, how to get the qualifications and go on to do what I want to do. I’m not always sure of what that is, but I know that it involves using my brain, talking about things that matter and that old cliche of attempting to make a difference to the world.
I do not want to spend the rest of my life behind a desk in an office hearing about ‘targets’, nor do I want to spend it stacking shelves. The thought of it is suffocating. But I already feel doomed to that future, I feel that real life is going to swallow me up and I’ll never make it, I’ll never get to where I want to be. I’ve always had this determination burning inside of me, I was always sure that whatever happened I would succeed, but now I don’t know where to go from here. I don’t know how to keep trying. I’m 23 in a couple of months and I already feel crushed under the weight of my own failure, my wasted potential. It’s my fault, I should have thought this through more, I should have found a way earlier, had a plan. I’m terrified of waking up and realising that it’s too late, I’ve wasted my chance and I’m living my parent’s life, just with a change of scenery. I feel pulled into three parts between wanting to be here, where I went to uni and where I grew up. Which I know is ridiculous. I was not happy in either of those places, I felt trapped by them as well. I can’t blame the location, it is me that is the problem. It is me who, at some point, opted for the easy route. And now I’m trapped and I don’t know how to get out. I know that the only person who can get me out of this situation is myself. I just can’t see how right now.
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