Frozen

This isn’t about the latest hit musical from Disney. It’s about a life. A life on hold. A life, well, frozen.

U-Haul calls them rooms. I call them storage units. In them sits the difference between life before and life after the Great Recession of 2008. They’re three-dimensional barometers of the downsizing the long-term unemployed have absorbed.

Ours is filled with furniture, appliances, clothing and kitchen ware; the list goes on and on and on. These are the things my mate and I hold onto. The things we have invested with the hope that one day we will have use for again.

Call them objects of faith.

Putting them on e-Bay or giving them away or throwing them out would be to acknowledge that things aren’t going to change. And we can’t do that. Not yet.

So we pay a monthly storage fee equivalent to two tanks of gasoline (and this is with a discount from a friend who’s an employee at the facility) to indulge our fantasy. Or deny the future. I can’t figure out which.

I touch the sofa that used to be the centerpiece of our living room. Thumb the designer shirts which no longer fit because of my stress-fueled consumption of junk food. I gaze at the washing machine and drier we picked out, and wonder if they would even work after being inactive for so long.

I realize, ironically-enough, that I would actually enjoy putting a load of wash in them, if only to enjoy the significance of such an act. I also realize how unlikely this is to happen.  
Perhaps this is a tomb.

I retrieve the book I came for, pull down the metal door, secure the padlock and head to the front office where I pay the rent. 

Hope, for better or worse, springs eternal.

Waiting on a Friend

Sometimes, everything is difficult. Even your friends.

It should have been a good thing when Lucky called Sunday night. It should have been an opportunity to catch up on each other’s lives. Share a laugh. Commiserate about work and aging parents. A pause in the rat race.

But Lucky is feeling the sting of late middle-age. And with it, the realization that whatever he hasn’t done will, at this point, likely remain that way. It has its talons deep into his flesh, especially in this, the age of diminished opportunities.

While marveling at his quarter-century with a single employer, I realize it was hiding more than anything. A college degree should have been a fresh start. But there was a fear in Lucky, a fear of leaving his comfort zone and trying something new.

Despite what we say on Facebook and on Twitter, change provokes anxiety in all of us. But in Lucky’s case, it was something more. It was paralyzing. And now his sense of life having passed him by has curdled into something ugly. Anger. Rage. Jealousy.

Sunday night, it careened into finger-pointing and accusations. He brought up a long-ago dinner he paid for, a dinner I had in no way, shape or form solicited. "It's on me" he said with a casual wave of his hand.

Now I know better. It was on me—for accepting it. It made me a parasite in Lucky's eyes.

It was a shot so cheap it deserved shelf-space at Wal-Mart.

Thankfully, there's another side to the story.

Understanding is an awesome responsibility. Sometimes, it asks us to tolerate the intolerable. In this case, knowing the depths of my friend’s discontent made it difficult to respond as I normally would.

But you can only do so much. You can only listen and try to empathize and offer the hoped-for solace of shared feelings and experiences.

It's not always enough.

Like my friend, I am in many ways embittered and sour. I struggle to subvert my anger and cynicism and jealousy at those around me who I perceive to have better, more-fulfilling lives. At those who, through no fault of their own, haven’t suffered the ravages of the Great Recession to the extent I have.

But Lucky left me something. Unintentional as it was, Lucky gave me a refresher course in what we become when the worst elements of our personality get the best of us. How we sound when the howling beast of regret takes center stage.

And how we so often (and so unwittingly) can subject those who care about us most to the worst we have to offer.

It was a cold, hard look in the mirror.

And that may be the greatest gift friendship has to offer.

Please Dispose of Responsibly

Unemployment really fucks with your head.

You hear 'no' long enough and you begin to believe you’re the piece of shit corporate America says you are. Things like self-confidence and self-esteem erode imperceptibly, like paper yellowing or paint fading.

You haven’t won the lottery, but still manage to defy the odds. You’re told the unemployment rate for those with bachelor’s degrees is just four-percent. Yet you have come to the inescapable and bitter conclusion after two years of searching that not looking for work is the same as looking.

You learn what it’s like at the very bottom of America’s social strata. It doesn’t matter what you did, how long you did it or for whom you did it. What matters is that you are long-term unemployed, and for this single reason must not be employed.

The effects on American business could be catastrophic.

You listen to Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) say “The unemployed just don’t want to work” while you perform two highly undesirable part-time jobs only the desperate would even consider, much less take.

You attempt to forget she is the daughter of a millionaire former senator and has roughly the same relationship with struggle that you do with menstruation.

You witness the let’s-heap-dirt-on-the-victims antics of Orrin Hatch (R-UT) as he freely questions the continued existence of unemployment benefits since “They’d just use the money for drugs.”

Or watch as newspapers publish cartoons in which a tree labeled ‘unemployment benefits’ bears fruit labeled ‘unemployment’.

You fail in your effort to not take this staggering misinterpretation of cause and effect personally, even though you yourself don’t qualify for any type of assistance. You search job listings for a position which requires falling through the cracks and to your utter lack of surprise, find none.

Yes, you are employment-proof.

As you prepare for a second downsizing (this time into your parent’s home), you wonder if there will be a third. And if so, if it will involve cement and the outdoors. You ponder your options, which sadly fall into two categories: slim and none.

Of course, you could always go back to school, take out a fifteen-thousand dollar loan and hope that in a year or two someone will want to hire a fifty-something pharmacy tech. By the time you are sixty, the loan might even be paid off. Which leaves you free to begin saving for retirement.

You could also continue looking for work.

After all, in the past decade you have witnessed the New Orleans Saints win a Super Bowl. The Arizona Cardinals compete in one. Seen the New Jersey Nets visit the NBA Finals—twice. And the Tampa Bay Rays make it to the World Series.

So it could happen.

And let’s not forget it was just last week that you picked up two-bucks in the MegaMillions game.

Yes, things are looking up.