Dear Kat:

Dear Kat:

Having read your previous threads, you are 29, living at home with your parents who dominate your decisions, a home that you refer to as a “toxic household”. In June you had a dead end job and now you are unemployed.  You wrote that you never had a healthy relationship, and that you have a few health issues.

My advice to you in June was to attend to your health issues, heal as much as it is possible for you and to move out of your parents’ home, that toxic household.

Maybe, just maybe you can do two things at the same time- move elsewhere as an au pair, or a nanny or a house-sitter. It will make it possible for you to live in a place that is not toxic for you and make some money, just enough to take a breather, living in a place where you can be calm and figure your next step.

What do you think?

anita

Dear Kat,

You’re drowning.

You’re drowning in your own thoughts as you face this hopeless situation of little work prospect and a family that demeans more than encourage. And every time you try to swim and break the surface of the water, your leg seems to be caught by the powerful seaweeds. And that cycle has continued to this day. How miserable that is. But you haven’t given up on trying to change your situation and that’s courageous. It’s courageous that regardless of how hopeless you feel your situation is, you still seek for change for yourself.

Now, have you’ve heard of the myth of “Pandora”? It is a Greek mythology of a woman who was given a box by Zeus who told her that it was filled with a special gift, but she was not to open the box. Of course, being human, Pandora could not contain her curiosity and opened the box. And out came the world’s maladies and sickness. Once she realized what she had done, Pandora too lost herself in grief, but then a voice spoke. The voice belonged to ‘hope’. ‘Hope’ that was in the box full of maladies and sickness.

So I need you to do something difficult. I need you to look at your own Pandora’s box and find your hope. It doesn’t have to be anything big or difficult. It doesn’t have to be concrete either, it can just be an inkling. But it does have to be something that fills you with the urge to hold and cherish. So look for the spider’s thread that will lead you along the web of your Pandora’s box. What is your hope? Hold onto that.

After that, you need to assess your situation then plan. Since you have employment gaps, it might be necessary to take on entry-level work while taking some online classes to buff up your resume. Or you can volunteer to gain experience. Go to an employment center and asked for help with your resume. Ask them if any job fair is coming up or any classes you can take to help you with job searching. There also might be non-profit that offers classes too. If it all seems like too much, list all the things that you think you should do, give them a rating of important to non-important. Once you’ve decided on what you should be doing first, write it down on a blank sheet as the heading then under that, write down all the steps you need to take to complete it. Make it a list that you need to do. Then follow that list.

But the most important thing is that you need to commit to it. You need to commit to doing the first step on that first list. Then commit to doing the second step then the third and the fourth and so on. You’ve already made a list so the next step would be taking actions. After taking actions, it’ll be easier to get the momentum going.

As for your family, you need to find a way to ignore them. Right now, you don’t have the resources to help guide you with dealing with them at a distance so you need a way to see that they are talking, but letting the words go through one ear and out the next. You cannot take those words seriously. And it is difficult, not to take on those words as if they are the final judgement on your character as a person. But it’s something that many people have to learn to do through their lifetime and it is also one of your lessons. So put on hold dealing with family on the back burner until you have enough finance to move out and make an appointment with a psychologist to talk about it. Though be warn, the first psychologist might not be able to help you so you might have to keep searching until you find someone compatible with you.

You have a lot of things to do and it will feel helpless at times since your situation makes you feel helpless. That’s okay. You can feel helpless. But you can also do the hard stuff of getting yourself up the surface of the water. You can slowly learn to swim in your own way. You can even reach the land somewhere. It’ll take time and you will have to choose to stand up again after failing. You will have to be careful of getting burnt out too. You also need to learn to take care of yourself.

So yes, living is already so much of a difficult job that people should really be getting medal of honors for not being jerks and what not. But no one does and life goes on. The good and bad things will pass because life goes on. No one will remember anyone that has passed in a few hundred years unless they touched a point in man-made history. But you’re here now and life will pass for you. So you have to decide what to do now. You have to decide for yourself that however hopeless, you don’t stop hoping.

Good luck.