I don’t know how to even express how I am feeling: so bad, so low, so distressed, so defeated, so lost, done.

Briefly(-ish),

1. The SC job didn’t work out (why did I hope?). Apparently if they had known about me 6 weeks ago they would have hired me on the spot. But, since they didn’t and the people they had interviewed at that point were not impressing them, the owners decided to spread the work around internally and split the lawyering up between themselves and wait until the economy turns “some day” to try again.

I understand. And I bawled when I found out. We had so dared to hope and believe THIS time, Chick looking up houses to rent and what life would be like there, and nursing homes for Snowy and…

Stupid. Stupid. Me.

2.   The big expensive effort I have been working with a company on — wherein they rewrite my resume, create my cover letter, and then put together the contact list for people in a specific geographic area that meet my demographics; then they print it all up and send to me to sign, collate, fold, stuff, lick envelopes, apply stamps, and mail out. The cost is based on the number of contacts. When I say you don’t get to give input on what/who etc., you’ll see where I’m going.

Inexplicably it took SO LONG. The box arrived finally without the notice promised. It took FOREVER to sign my name 505 times (yep, 505). That’s a tall stack of paper. Even taller is the resume stack, a 2-pager – not stapled. Pulling that together and then matching the letter w/ attachment to the matching envelope, well, that takes a good bit of time, too.

Then there’s the sealing of the envelope because they weren’t self-adhesive. So glad Chick knew to cut up some sponge squares and took on a large armful of the pile to seal. Then it was apply-stamps-time. Fortunately I’d ordered a large number of stamps ahead of time.

But more significant was that the whole time I was collating, folding, creasing the letter/resumes, and putting them in the envelopes, I was growing more and more and more upset as I looked at the addresses. I had several concerns – I caught a goodly number of duplicates, different by just an initial or an extra piece of a title or the like. I don’t know if I caught them all. THEN I was also noticing the very large number of company names that included initials (e.g. RCA or GE or NASA or BB&T, etc.) and only the 1st of the initials were capitalized and the rest were lower case (e.g. Rca, Ge, Nasa, Bb&t, etc.). I think there were very, very few, maybe 1 or 2?, where the addressing was done correctly.

THEN, I got absolutely distressed when I saw company after company being such that I am not qualified to work for, having nothing to do with my qualifications and experience (e.g. banks, credit unions, health care, nursing homes, the Senate). Almost the most illustrative of the WTF!!!! was a letter/envelope addressed to “Navy-Marine Corporations” bank or credit union or something. I even googled “Navy-Marine Corporations” to see if I just didn’t know something, but no– it really is “Navy-Marine Corps”.

I did not want to waste the stamps on the “I’m not qualifieds” or the duplicates. I HATED to send out anything that showed such a lack of professionalism or care as getting the company name not capitalized correctly, but time is starting to rush to an end for me and I will soon be without any safety net or help. So I sent the ones I couldn’t otherwise count out. I know that some of them are probably also to “not qualifieds” but since I have no information on the companies, I can’t figure it out, so just jumping blindly off the cliff.

I’ve emailed (or will, once the storm that’s passing over stops messing with the internet) the company who put this lovely experience together for me. Of 505 contacts paid for, I’m sending out only 229. I honestly have faint hope that anything good will come of it. And it pisses me off because I was so excited and looking forward to THIS being the answer, and now, seeing one more slip shod, sloppy fake promise to BE THE ANSWER to helping me find a job, I am just gutted.

Today I’m feeling like it is never going to happen; no one is ever going to give me a chance; I’m circling the drain. WHAT DO I DO?

3. And all the pressure, tension, fear, nerves, panic… these are eating both Chick and me, and we have started freaking out at each other, fussing and sniping and taking things the wrong way and ending in tears.

I can’t bear that this is happening with my darling girl who is trying so hard to prop me up through this. We apologize and do better and then something else awful or max-stressing will happen and the tightrope begins to shake and our feet slip/slide in different directions and we shriek in terror, and it’s so hard to feel like I’m going to shred into a million jagged pieces.

And the worst for today was the aggravation of trying to locate random, unlocatable paperwork (car titles, leases — and my fault that they are ‘put away’ somewhere they can’t be found) that has to be faxed for us to get food stamps, etc.

The humiliation doesn’t end.

But I’m glad Chick is so sweet and forgiving, for all we have different ways of fighting with the stress — she’s more external, I’m more internal, and that leads to star-crossed misunderstandings far too much.

I need to know what to do to pull our lives back into safety, and I’m currently out of answers.

And, yes, a couple of tornadoes apparently blew through town, up the river, as I was writing this. Apropos.