Dear friends, I do not speak of this title lightly. I myself have had a cancer scare – anal cancer. And more biopsies are yet to be taken. I am OK, I hope, in this regard.
I am NOT OK with being unemployed. The only metaphor I could come up with at this point, seven months into the disease, is cancer.
Cancer = Unemployment
Unemployment “pay” = Chemo (cure)
The pay keeps you alive; but you are so tired that you can hardly live.
And the cure WILL run out...
Suddenly perspectives change. The disease not only takes over one’s own body but it begins to quietly invade the lives of others. Suddenly, the disease affects all those who do not have the disease and then – there are no caregivers, nobody can really help because everybody has the disease.
They are tired too.
And very sad.
It is a vicious cycle.
I am happy to have my unemployment benefits extended. Though, I do feel like it is a death row sentence, that I am an outcast and might as well request my last meal.
OK then, I have not worked to build security, I have worked to WORK. To build change. Call me stupid.
The only REAL thing I can grasp is that I am not alone. Those of us in this situation – whether you like us or not, WILL be impeding your life.
Do not stick your head in the sand.
Knock, knock -- will you be there?
It’s all I have to bring today—
This, and my heart beside—
This, and my heart, and all the fields—
And all the meadows wide—
Be sure you count—should I forget
Some one the sum could tell—
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.
-- Emily Dickinson
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