Unemployable

At least with a blog I have a little say in how I create my image online, unlike IRL (in real life) where I had very little say as an adoptee. Others defined me with absolute authority, and I didn't even understand that I was being defined.

What I wanted to write about today is what it's like to be Unemployable. That's a loaded adjective. It means different things to different people. I think there must be a spectrum of "employability" out there somewhere, but it's mostly subjective, and mostly applies to how I see myself compared to others. I've always compared myself to others. I look out of the corner of my eye always to see if I'm "doing things right" or if I'm "fitting in" or if what I look like or what I'm doing identifies with those who I want to accept me.

See, that's the thing about being an adoptee. The adoptee default is set to rejection. I don't know how to change that default. If you're an adoptee and you know how, please leave me a comment explaining how you did it. It's like, your situation as a child growing up set that default. The people, the mindwrestles, the situations, the expectations, what was said and what was left unsaid but implicit in the family unit, the residual emotions, the gestures, the rules, the habits, and so on made us who we are, and it takes an extraordinary person to scrape even some of the negativity off.

As an adoptee, I was always looking up to see if I had approval. My true feelings always had to be carefully repressed, or I might hurt my a-parents. If I hurt my a-parents, they might send me back, reject me, or at least judge me and place me in probationary mode. So, I had to be on my best behavior always, even if it was totally the opposite of how I felt.

Now, when it comes to getting a job, I've always seen employers as having all the traits of stand-in parents. I depend on them. They hold power over me. They can control and manipulate my actions and feelings, and thus my self image, by hiring me, refusing to hire me, fitting me into a pre-fab slot, or firing me. "Pre-fab slot" has always been the formula of my life. And it's taken me many years to see how dehumanizing it really is. But since there's no real sense of self within an adoptee to be stripped anyway, this dehumanization process is just another gash on the cipher.

It's not that I've never held a job. I was fired two days into my first job at a florist's shop because my curly (read: messy) hair didn't meet the boss's standards. The second employer I had fired me after three weeks because I'm math dyslexic and failed at cashier-ing. This job was back in the day when cash registers didn't show the amount of change to give, and I came up short every day. I guess they thought I was stealing money. At any rate, I was bad for business.

I tried my hand at insurance sales, even got my license, but I couldn't take the rejection of cold calling. I got my teaching credential, but couldn't pass the math portion of the CBEST (California Board of Education Standardized Test) exam. I scored high on the verbal portion. If you don't make the score on both sections (I was an English teacher who had no intentions of teaching math), you can't teach in public schools in California. I taught English for three years in private schools for pennies until I got pregnant with my second child and quit.

My last job was as a typing clerk with a local newspaper. My editor kindly allowed me to write stories for the business section, but the managing editor told me I'd never make it to be a full-on reporter. I think I left at $11 per hour. Hardly enough to support a family on. I haven't looked for a job since I quit that job. I have this fear of being a homeless alchoholic if it weren't for R, my humanitarian husband.

It might be worth writing more on this subject, integrating my feelings as an adoptee with my feelings as an (un)employee. And, um, that includes the habit of always putting myself down.