I hate making entries like this. The only reason I'm making it is because I've been so frustrated and felt so shitty for so long, I'm at a loss as to what to do and just want to tell someone about it, I don't care who it is, I just want someone to listen.
But of course, it's not fair to just dive on someone and dump on them, so at least here I can put it all behind a nice LJ cut and anyone that doesn't care can just ignore it.
So for the past few months of my life, I've been struggling with various things. Mostly money related things. At the beginning of the summer, I was struggling trying to find a place to live (went out and viewed a house, landlord was ok with everything and then....they just didn't call me back...so 3 days before I got kicked out of marybone, I had to find somewhere else). I had to find a way to raise nearly £500 just to pay the deposit and rent for it. In the end, an extended overdraft saved my arse there. Next came trouble in the form of a Job, or rather the lack thereof. And by Job, I mean Jobs. You see, I need a placement for my final year.
As I've mentioned before, telco games took their sweet fucking time getting back to me each time. A 3 day wait turned into a 2 month wait just to find out if I got the job or not. Luckily, I did, but unfortunately they told me at the last minute that I wasn't able to start until September. It was meant to be July, which would have meant that I would have just been able to pay the rent.
So I had to hunt for another job, just a temporary one for the summer. Have you any idea how difficult it is finding a job at ALL in Liverpool for the summer? Let alone one that only wants you for 2 months.
I applied to over 30 places in total and only got about 5 or 6 replies. One company actually brought me in for an interview, sent me off for (unpaid) training and then offered me a place, going around door to door selling people gas. I could have done it, all you need is confidence, but that night something else hit me: Nicci dumped me. 2 days after I wrote that post about how good things were between me and her. 2 days.
That's why it's taken me so long to post about it, I felt like such a fool. For once in my life I thought I had really found someone I felt close to, someone that "got" me, someone that I could really spend a lot of time with without wanting to kill them. And she obviously thought differently.
It killed my confidence, it sent me down a spiral of depression that I had not felt in some years. I had to turn down the door to door job offer, I could not do it. I also didn't want to repeat what I had to do on the training day, which was pressure an 85 year old FOR OVER AN HOUR into something she didn't want. All perfectly legally, too. I figured at the time I'd just not pray on old people and get sales elsewhere, but after feeling like such an idiot I just couldn't go through with it.
Nicci and I remained friends for about another month. In this month, I had little to no success in finding another job until I got pulled one day. It was another similar sort of job, but this one was different - it was for charity. Charity? But paid?
It seemed odd to me, but it was for real. All I had to do was get people to sign up to willingly donate to a charity for homeless children, a noble cause if ever there was one. And I got paid for it. 2 birds with one stone, I'd be getting myself out of debt, paying the rent and helping people at the same time. As much as a bastard as I claim to be, I do like helping people, I do my best to help people all around me and my friends know it.
And my god...it's a nightmare. You spend all day talking to complete strangers, which is fine, except that most of these people are absolute dicks. Some people are good and sign up to give £2 a week to a good cause. But who are these people? If I gave you the choice between a struggling single parent mum and a rich, well-off family with 3 cars, 2 caravans and an absolutely fucking HUGE house, who do you think would sign up first?
I'd like to think it was the rich person, the person that could drop a £20 note and not be bothered about it because it's pocket change to them.
But it's not. Rich people just do not give a fuck. As soon as you mention that you're from a charity, before you've even told them what it is, they say "I'm not interested" and shut the door. Now of course that's a generalisation and not EVERYONE is like that, or at least not every rich person, but the vast majority of them are.
It's the single mother, it's the broken families, the counsel housed poor underclass, the "socially deprived" as one rich snobby bitch referred to them as, THEY'RE the ones that listen, they're the ones that give as much as they can because they know how shit some people have it.
But some people aren't even just careless, some are just mean. Today, I knocked a door and someone answered, a man wearing a nice shirt, not exactly well off, but certainly not poor by a long shot. This is how it went:
"Hello, sorry to bother you. My name is Steve and I'm from the child-"
"Sorry, not interested"
"you're not interested? Not interested that there's children on the streets right now, getting raped, molested and even murdered?"
"yeah, I'm just that cold-hearted"
And then he slammed the door in my face.
This is just one typical example of the people I have to deal with on a daily basis, a typical example of what I'd call scum. And when you walk down a street knocking doors and get 2 or 3 of these people, you just want to be able to reach out to them, slap them and show them how shitty some of us have it.
In my pocket I have just over £10. That's all I own in the world, money wise right now. When I get paid I'll be better off, but until then this is all I own. And I had to borrow that from Malachy, too. So imagine me standing at a door to a nice, big house with a BMW outside, asking someone if they could spare just £2 a week and they tell me they can't. They tell me they can't spare 26p a day, yet they're obviously making 2 or 3 times what I'm likely to make in a year, even after I finish uni. Yeah right.
But I have learned something good in this job. On Wednesday morning, I felt so miserable. Probably the most miserable I'd felt in a long, long time. Nicci had come back from her holiday the night before. I only got to speak to her for like half an hour and in that time, she was just cold and mean. Probably not deliberately, she's always like that when she's had a few drinks, but it still put me down. And that afternoon on the train it really got to me. Thoughts ran through my head over and over, how crappy I felt, why I felt that way, why I probably deserved to feel that way and so on. I kept telling myself that I need to cheer up, I need to get into a positive mindset or I'll do badly that day. But I gave up. There, on the train, in the silence of my own mind, I just gave up. I've had to pick myself up again and again all summer long, first with Nicci's help, then without after she dumped me. And then, I'd had enough. Finally, a thought came to my head - "I just wish I was happy...".
And what do you know, that wish came true. Later that day, just a couple of hours after, I got the first sign up of the day. Then I got another. And another. And another. 4 sign ups, my best record ever on this job (I've only been here a week). I wished for happiness and for that ONE day, I really was happy. I achieved something, I stood out and helped a lot of people along the way.
But that's where it ended. Thursday, even though I was really psyched up and pitched my best, I got 0. Today, I also got 0 and dealt with some of the harshest, most callous people I've ever met. It's so frustrating, I'm at a loss as to how so many people could be so spiteful, so mean. And I'm feeling like shit again because of it.
I think I want to make another wish, but I don't know what is more important - wishing that I was happy again, or wishing that these people would change their ways and actually care about someone that wasn't just their immediate family. A bg part of me wants to wake the world up, shake them and say "just once in your life, do something to make a complete stranger, a young child, someone you don't know...happy...just once", but another part of me yearns to be happy myself. Sometimes I feel that these people, these mean, cheap people are happy because they don't care about anyone else, sometimes I feel that maybe I should just care about myself if I want to be happy. And that scares me.
It's like my soul has been chipped away by bad people, that if much more of it is lost then I'll just become one of them and only care about myself. But then again, maybe I deserve it for caring at all?
I want to wish for more happiness, but I don't want to wish for it in case I'm being selfish by not thinking of someone who has got it worse off than me.
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