Hollow

By Oleg Alexandrov [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

I pulled a Tarot card today and it was The Tower.  Not a very good sign, right?  The Tower has actually been coming up again and again in my readings for myself.  I've got this Tarot app on my kindle and it comes up there too.  It seems to be a theme in my life right now.  I'd say it's probably been a theme for a couple of years now, actually.

Generally, The Tower represents sudden, catastrophic, and unwelcome change.  It is a card of destruction, yes?  And a card of warning.  Yet, my life is so horribly the same.  Always.  For years now.  There is no change.  There has been no change.  My efforts to force change have come to naught.  My life is is stagnant, foul and rotting.  What the rot touches, it destroys, and it has touched everything.  Over the last several years, I've watched as everything in my life has been eaten away.  Nothing has been spared: not a hope, not a dream.  Everything withers and falls away.

Today I got the "you're not good enough to hire for this position" call from my workplace.  I was up for a recently opened full time position—one in which I would have been brilliant.  I interviewed and was rejected.  The rejection wasn't a surprise.  After six years of being searching for a full time job, I go into interviews (when I get them) fully expecting to be rejected for the job.  I mean, the hope is there, but I'm no longer surprised by the rejection.  Though this particular rejection was truly unsurprising because yesterday my boss asked me to cover a shift at the of December.  She wouldn't have done that if I'd gotten the job.  Deductive reasoning.

The Tower, representing catastrophe, has been my constant companion for years and years now.  So long now that catastrophe, though still traumatic, is no longer sudden for me.  It's no longer unexpected.  Everything I touch, everything I care about, everything I hope for shrinks from me.  It's like it knows that my touch is toxic and will cause it to rot and wither.  I had hoped–not having a lover, not having a husband or children, nor the prospect of such–that I could have a satisfying career.  I do not have a satisfying career.  It's been six–almost seven–years and I do not have even the beginnings of a satisfying career.  I no longer believe that is going to happen for me.  I don't think it's meant to be.  At least not in the library.

Perhaps I am not meant to have a job.  But then how will I survive?  Right now, with the meager wages I bring in from my part time job, I have to be supported by my parents.  Without them I can't afford food or shelter.  Even with them I can't afford myself. 

I now owe $58000 in student loans.  It keeps going up.  I'm on an income based repayment plan and can only afford the $30/month I pay them now.  If I had to pay the entire amount I wouldn't have money for gas.  I clear maybe $1000/month.  Maybe.  Of that, $300 goes to car payments, $300 goes to paying off my credit card, $100 goes to car insurance, $100 goes to health/dental insurance, $50 to gas so I can get to work, and the remaining goes to miscellaneous expenses such as food, phone, the occasional hang out with one of the few friends I have left, car maintenance, or any one of a thousand incidentals.  No wonder I have panic attacks.

I made a grave error when I went to graduate school.  It's one I can't fix, one I have to live with, but how?  How?

I have to figure that out.  I have to find a way to make money outside of a regular job.  I have some tentative plans for next year.  Plans I sorely need to flesh out and put in action.  It's a gamble, what I have in mind.  A huge gamble.  High risk, and a maybe okay reward—the likelihood of a high reward is so low as to be nonexistent.  I am afraid.  I am so afraid.  I can't afford to fail.  I am literally gambling with my life.  Like, if this doesn't pay out, I don't see myself surviving.  Not for very long, anyway.

Gods!  It sounds dramatic, but I don't mean it as such.  I'm just . . . operating without a safety net, and my plans–tentative as they are–require cutting my last lifeline.  If I don't learn to fly before hitting the ground, well, SPLAT.