Unemployment

CVS did not pay me, so money was tight. But I did not want to look for another job in case they decided to hire me back. I felt paralyzed. I would stay up late and drink, wake up and take a walk as far as I could go. I live in Ukrainian Village/Humboldt park neighborhood, and I would take long walks up Lake Michigan to Evanston or Wilmette, or North West until I was past Logan Square and Chicago.

I do not recommend heavily drinking and reading Kierkegaard by the way.

Then the tigers lost the world series and I really got drunk. Left the bar long enough to go to a pharmacy and by a thank you card. Wrote it out to our waitress: the original inscription was only to say thank you for being so hot, but I ended up scratching out some page long message it my terrible handwriting, which my students describe as the handwriting of a serial killer. The card ended up on the floor, and I doubt she ever saw it.
Threw up and lay there, the world spinning. Gained weight. Read a novel called The Monk about insanity and crime. Felt like Owen Wilson in his dark moments of wedding crashers.

One good thing was going home and working with my brother on a house for habitat for humanity. It was in the middle of nowhere, open fields and plowed earth as far as the eye could see. So very far away from the city. Working on a simple thing for a person who needed it. Working with a very eclectic group: a retired accounting professor turned contractor, a 75 year old Korea veteran who did all the heavy work and gave me advice, and a transvestite contractor who owned her/his own window business.

I had to borrow 2,000 dollars from my little brother.

The whole time I tried to realize that this was not that bad, and that if I expected my students to be positive about their lives despite their circumstances, than I must do the same. But I felt so low, without feeling tough. There is nothing redemptive about unemployment. It emasculates you in a way that makes it very difficult to talk about, and to a certain extent makes it hard to get out of unemployment because of depression.

I learned that it is hard to be proud. I learned how hard it is for my students to be proud.