How to Make Someone Doubt Their Self-Worth

Unemployment. At the beginning of this year, I was laid-off from my job as a paralegal at a local law firm, which has sent me tumbling down into a hole of despair. Until recently, I never realized the impact that being laid off from a job can have on oneself. Sure, I have read countless articles about the self-destructive path that a person can stumble upon after being laid off, but I never believed that it could happen to me. In my mind, people got laid off because they were being booted for younger, livelier workers with college degrees and a head full of ideas. I was all of those things, and still managed to get my butt kicked.

If my previous employers’ goal had been to ruin my life – well…their timing couldn’t have been better. I had just returned from our week and a half trip back to Kansas for Christmas and was broke from buying Christmas presents (including a gift certificate for my bosses,) and from the general traveling expenses that being on the road for 10 days brings. I had also recently purchased a new vehicle after my little cavalier was flooded by Hurricane Ike two months prior. I had just received notice that I would have to start paying off my student loans starting in April, forking over a staggering $600 per month. Plus, my boyfriend, Dusty, and I had a bit of a roller coaster vacation together, probably stemming from too much traveling and gift-giving stress. Additionally, Dusty and I had just found out one day before coming back to Louisiana, that a very good friend of ours was tragically killed over the weekend in a car accident.

Upon returning to work, I was anxious to get back to business and distract myself with the multitude of projects that were sitting on my desk. When I strolled into work at 8 am, I made an effort to put on a happy face and tell my coworkers that it had been a great break…because frankly, I didn’t think that any of them honestly cared about me in a more than superficial-I’ll-ask-about-your-vacation-because-I-have-to-since-we-work-together-in-confined-quarters kind of way. I had just sat at my desk and was reading my friend’s obituary when both of my bosses knocked on my door and informed me that I was being let go. One of the lawyers had recently left the firm and they had decided that since they were one lawyer short, they didn’t need an extra paralegal running around. (This logic, by the way, did not make sense to me.) And, since I didn’t want to use my college education to be a receptionist for the rest of my life (which apparently they thought they needed more than a paralegal,) my services were no longer needed.

I was dumbstruck, grief-ridden, fatigued, enraged, and hurt. Before leaving for Christmas, I had tried multiple times to talk to my bosses about my job security, with no avail. Up until this moment, I had held my superiors in very high regard. They were kind, intelligent, giving men. I had expressed my concern with them several times prior to leaving for the break, stating my financial and personal situation so that I wouldn’t have my legs cut from out under me, so to speak. I had even had a great talk about my potential in the firm with one of my bosses while driving him back from a deposition right before I had left for the break. Or so I thought.

I left without saying goodbye to anyone. I didn’t even speak to my bosses when they informed me of their decision. I was too hurt, betrayed, shocked. I didn’t want to chance speaking to anyone there, given my shaky emotional state due to the landslide of emotional baggage that had been dumped upon me in the past three days.

These past two and a half months has been one of the hardest times of my twenty-four year old life. I am sure that if I were to go to a psychiatrist, I would be labeled clinically depressed and given a prescription for medication. The economy has gone down the tubes, and salaried jobs with benefits are scarce to any one person, much less a recent college grad with minimal “real world” experience who has a truckload of debt from student loans. And it’s not looking to get any better. Naysayers forecast doomsday reports of an economical depression worse than the crash of 1929. I have been forced to become financially dependent upon my boyfriend, which puts a strain on our relationship. He is very supportive, but I am not okay with the fact that he paying all my bills in addition to his own. He already pays for the house, utilities, groceries, and a down payment on the new car that I had to purchase after the hurricane.

I have never been the type of person who has dreamed of getting married and being a stay-at-home-mom. These past two months of being unemployed and essentially being a “housewife” have sent me into an existential breakdown of sorts. My dreams always involved me being a very successful, career-oriented individual for whom the husband and kids were just an added bonus that I would have to balance with my super-important-make-a-difference-in-people’s-lives-demand-the-respect-of-others kind of job. Not having gainful employment has made me doubt everything about myself. I feel worthless, unworthy, and have the emotional stability of a tortured, overweight, pimple-ridden, pubescent, self-conscious preteen girl. It’s not just about being merely employed. No one wants to take a job after they’ve racked up forty grand in debt on a college education only to work at a remedial job reminiscent of the part-time high school and struggling college student days.

I have recently accepted a position selling insurance through a national company (no, not one of the companies that is in process of going belly up,) and am wading through the sea of red tape in order to become licensed and am on the final leg of the process. I’m not even sure that this is really what I want to do with my life, I know I don’t want to be a lifetime saleswoman, but I do enjoy working with people, and there is opportunity to be promoted into management, so I am crossing my fingers and toes that this will be a positive stepping stone into furthering my career; as well as a way to make a decent amount of money while I am at it.

I try to remind myself that this is merely a phase…that I just have to get through it. We all have to pay our dues at some point. I’m working on it. Sometimes it is just so hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It can be so easy to just let the devil on your shoulder convince you that you are a failure and give up. But this recession and these difficulties are just a part of life. We’ll all get through it. Life will get better. Until then…

“Well, I'm gonna get out of bed every morning... breathe in and out all day long. Then, after a while I won't have to remind myself to get out of bed every morning and breathe in and out....”

-Sleepless in Seattle