by Regulus » January 3rd, 2020, 2:58 am
I've barely existed at all these past few months. I almost don't even know what's happened.
I spent so much time unemployed and looking for work, once I actually found something I put my whole life into that. For all of 2019 I was working my ass off--I finally had what I wanted, and I gave it everything. It looked like I was finally on the right track. My advisor really likes me and he wants me to stick around to do a PhD. The people I interned with last summer all seemed rather impressed with my work. I was happy to have something challenging and something rewarding to do, and I was getting experience and getting paid for it too. For the first time ever, I was able to be completely financially independent in 2019.
Buuuuuut then I got kicked out of my cousin's house, and needed to find a new place to live. It turns out, I actually don't make enough money to be financially independent. Rent is expensive, so I need to live with roommates. Great. Who do I know who I could live with? Let's see... uhh...
It turns out, when all I do is sleep and work, I don't really talk to anyone anymore. Aside from family or the other students in my lab, the only person I actually talk to is my girlfriend--and even then, it's not enough to keep me happy. So now I'm stuck living with my sister and her boyfriend, I'm ruining their relationship just by being here, and I'm being charged way more than I can afford just to exist here. It's driving me crazy.
I hate it here. My sister and her boyfriend are party people; they're up all hours of the night and so is their puppy that just never shuts up. I go "home," but it's not home to me. I'm not wanted here, and even though I'm paying all I can afford and a few pennies more, no one cares. My commute is now almost an hour long, it's too loud for me to sleep comfortably at night, and despite working 10-hour workdays and working on the weekends, I can't even afford to be here. My sister's boyfriend doesn't even care about the money, so it's not like I have any kind of negotiating power here. I'm supposed to be "lucky" and "grateful" to have a "home" at all.
It's just a few more months, and then I'll have my master's degree and I'll have completed my thesis. Yeah. Great. But you can only guess what's happening now: I'm trying to look for a full time job once again... and that is as bad as ever, once again.
All of this was with a very specific goal in mind. All I cared about was getting experience in any way that I could, so I could get the job I wanted a few years down the line. If I could go to New England and live with my girlfriend, that would be great. If I could just get my own place without roommates and be able to have her visit, that would be great too. But honestly, I'm not sure any of that is going to happen. I need to be able to find a different job--one in industry, rather than academia--and that is as difficult as juggling icicles in hell.
It's so weird. I see other people having pretty much normal lives, and I don't understand how. I don't have offline friends anymore, and I've lost contact with the internet friends I've had--even the ones from this site. If ever I do talk to anyone about anything personal, it's always just me complaining about how bad everything is. I'm just a machine--I sleep, I go to work, and I try to relax at the end of the day, but I just can't. I didn't enjoy the holidays. I haven't enjoyed anything in so long. I'm just a machine now.
And you would think, well, maybe it'll get better. Maybe this is all just temporary, and in five months I'll be over the moon. But I don't know. All I know is that I'm completely, absolutely miserable with the state of my life right now, and if it doesn't get better, it will all have been for nothing.
2020. It's a new year, and a new decade. "New year, new me," as people often say. But sadly, I don't even know who I am anymore.