That Saturday Can Get Stuffed!

Yes, Saturday 9^th March 2013, that means You!   Very interesting and everything, but I have quite enough of you to keep me going for a while, if it’s all the same. 

The thing about being homeless and unemployed is that even when you know your prospects are improving (I had been appointed as a Senior Policy Adviser at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and estate agents were making positive noises about our tenancy application for a house), small things still have a way of destabilising you.  Politicians and policy makers have an awfully smug way of talking about homelessness and unemployment, like it's some sort of wacky lifestyle choice.  In my case that is exactly what it was - a choice - and one for which I had any number of options to reverse.  What of the person who is ill-qualified for the job market?  What of the asylum seeker who cannot work and cannot put down roots though they desperately need some stability?  What of the person who has simply been down on their luck for long enough to have their confidence eroded?  My situation was fairly trivial in comparison.

Saturday 9^th March was a pretty unremarkable day, punctuated – I’ll grant you – by a few minor, irritating, small things, but it should never have been allowed to get as out of hand as it did.  For example, I went to attend a flat inspection in Hawthorn, only to discover that the flat had been leased and the inspection cancelled at the last minute – too late for me to realise, as I’d been on an hour long trip across town.  This trip, which had begun as an interesting excursion, full of possibility, mutated quickly into a monumental waste of time.  Time may be one of the few cheap things available to an unemployed and homeless person but this in itself rankles.  The value of my skills has been in question for some time (due to a sustained period of unemployment), the value of my presence has also been challenged – for homelessness does this to you.  It seeps into your soul and tells you that you belong nowhere and nowhere belongs to you.  You begin to feel effaced, invisible and when seen by anyone, you feel like a burden and an encumbrance to them.  Every experience you have is filtered through a screen of doubt which casts a grey shadow on anything pleasant: this is all very nice, but I should really be job seeking; this is lovely but I’m imposing on others’ kindness – and utterly blackens anything slightly negative: this is a bit of a set-back and therefore a sign that I have taken the wrong path, that I have jeopardised my entire future; that I am purposefully being a burden on my friends, family, the society to which I have applied to be a part; etc.  Now my time too is devalued … by nothing but an administrative oversight.

Ok by now you’ll be familiar with my dramatic turn of mind and I fully admit that this could be increasing the filter effect described above. I generally think of my sense of drama as less of a failing than a way of articulating what is going on around me and with me.  It’s like applying a kind of amplified emotional metaphor, if you will, to situations.  Thus, if a situation involves sacrifice, and I am finding the making of this sacrifice difficult in some way, my mind leaps to a scenario where a hapless Mayan is being dragged to a bloodstained altar atop a pyramid, amid the frantic cheering of hysterical crowds.  Similarly when exhilarated, my imagination will kick in and have me (or rather a lithe and beautiful version of me) galloping across some sundrenched plains on a powerful horse, in perfect balance with its movements and generally dressed in something long and flowing and made of silk.  But sometimes, operating in ‘drama’ mode can become rather tiresome, particularly when there are aspects of your life that are genuinely stressful, like being a little bit homeless and unsettled, for example.

For this reason, despite the fact that I have landed an amazing, interesting and challenging job after just three months of unemployment…

despite the fact that I have wonderful friends and family, who have supported me at great personal cost… and

despite the fact that all the signs point to things getting better in the very near term… I had a meltdown.

It manifested itself while using the car I had borrowed from a friend for the aforementioned fruitless trip.  After ducking into a shop briefly, I returned to the car and found myself unable to open the driver’s side door.  I couldn’t even get the key in the lock.  At first I just thought:  it’s ok, I’ve just got the key the wrong way round, so I calmly turned the key around and tried again.  Still no luck.  I tried shoogling the key into the lock.  Nope.  I then tried turning the key around the way I had it at first again.  Still nothing.

At this point, the car became a symbol of the general sense of rejection I was feeling.  It was as if the car was saying:  No, thank you, you are not welcome.  You don’t fit in with your husband’s family – they all hate you, by the way.  No, you can’t get a home here either, because you do not belong in this amazing city – whatever gave you the idea that you could live here, you miserable cretin?  No, you can’t even get into this borrowed car, because you are defective and ungrateful and on top of all of this have managed to break your friend’s vehicle.  Look at what you’ve done!  Why don’t you just do us all a favour and shrivel up and die? I pictured the car pointing its nose in the air, sticking out a pair of cartoon, white-gloved hands, lifting its back fenders in the manner of a Victorian (historical not geographical) woman lifting her skirts to negotiate a puddle, and stalking off down Auburn Street on the tips of its rear tyres.  Leaving me.  In the middle of the road.  Pointing a key.  At nothing.

Right there, in the middle of a busy intersection, in the suburb of Hawthorn, still desperately jiggling the key in the lock of the driver’s side door of the car, I burst into a flood of tears, great shudders wracking my frame, until, through the deluge, I turned to my right slightly … and spotted a meerkat. 

This meerkat was made of plastic and looked as though it was half submerged in the back window sill of another maroon Mitsubishi Lancer saloon car, almost identical to the one that had just now been refusing me entry, just one parking place up the street.  It began to dawn on me that I had seen this meerkat somewhere before.  I was pretty sure my friend had one in the back of her car.  It was the kind of amusing trinket she would keep. 

Shortly after this a slightly apologetic realisation sidled into my consciousness, telling me, after clearing its throat and waiting patiently for my attention, that I might be stood in front of the wrong car and that, while I had been in the shop, someone else might have come along and parked an almost identical car directly behind that of my friend. 

This realisation was then crowded out by a rampaging thought that rushed into my brain like a mental version of Seinfeld’s Kramer.  This thought made it known to me in frantic tones that I had just been standing in a busy intersection in a major city, looking for all the world as though I were breaking into an automobile for the purpose of theft!

Immediately, I shifted my bleary attentions to the plastic-meerkat-infested car and at once gained entry, upon which I collapsed in a heap (safely inside the car) and sobbed until exhausted.  I then had to wait for a further 15 minutes or so before I was able to handle a vehicle again and drive off.

There followed a series of trivial but irritating events through-out the rest of the day that seemed to mock me.  It was as if the day were saying:  You total drama merchant!  You have not got it bad at all!  You have no idea what bad even means!  See here – you can’t get access to the library wi-fi!  Boo Hoo!  What a Shame!  Are we going to have a Crying Fit now, Mrs ‘I Can’t Get Absolutely Everything My Way’?  What about this – the internet is a bit SLOW!  Alas, Alack!  Does this not call for a Complete Nervous Breakdown, Little Miss ‘Everything’s A Bit Hard’?!  Oh wait, hang on, you want to escape your Difficult First World Life and watch a movie at the local cinema?  Well how about this:  Why don’t you queue for 20 minutes to buy a ticket and then discover that the box office doesn’t take EFTPOS and then have to leave the queue, find an ATM, get money out and then try again … From The Back Of The Queue!?  How Do You Feel Now?  Fancy having a Temper Tantrum Right Here In the Middle Of Fitzroy?

But by this time, I couldn’t even muster a dramatic little finger.  I was spent.  I had really had enough for one day. Whatever, Saturday, I sighed. You win.

And Saturday the Ninth of March then said:  And Have We Learned Our Lesson Yet?!

Well, I ask you!  If a day of the week were to run about speaking to you like that, all in initial capitals and what have you, would you entertain another single moment in its presence? 

I certainly didn’t.

Which is why I deftly gathered my skirts and pointedly moved my existence to the Tenth of March.