Revised: 'The Princess of the Gutter'
Back when I was revising my latest full novel (first in English), I rearranged all my poetry into three books, because I intended to upload them to online retailers as ebooks eventually.
I have been going through each of the poems contained in the first of those books, to revise them, update their punctuation and expand them if seemingly necessary. This time I had to handle my poem 'The Princess of the Gutter', about my experiences failing to keep jobs and ending up hanging out at a center for adults with disabilities.
I had uploaded this poem in a worse state than I expected, so it has required a significant revision. However, I only expanded it by a couple of sentences.
Link to the updated poem: The Princess of the Gutter
I have been going through each of the poems contained in the first of those books, to revise them, update their punctuation and expand them if seemingly necessary. This time I had to handle my poem 'The Princess of the Gutter', about my experiences failing to keep jobs and ending up hanging out at a center for adults with disabilities.
I had uploaded this poem in a worse state than I expected, so it has required a significant revision. However, I only expanded it by a couple of sentences.
Link to the updated poem: The Princess of the Gutter
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Shelby
(new)
Nov 09, 2021 04:05PM
As someone with ASD and a myriad of other mental health problems, this resonated with me. I have yet to integrate into society myself, nearing the age of 30. Wishing you well.
reply
|
flag
Shelby wrote: "As someone with ASD and a myriad of other mental health problems, this resonated with me. I have yet to integrate into society myself, nearing the age of 30. Wishing you well."I was in a far worse situation back then, during the time to which this text refers. These days I should feel grateful that I work about seven to eight months out of the year, except that I don't feel grateful because working full-time exhausts me, and the work isn't interesting nor fulfilling. They also do stuff like extending my contract a couple of hours before it ends, or telling me on a Friday, sometimes even as I'm about to leave, that I have to come the following day. You already know how nerve-wracking and infuriating that is for people like us for who sudden changes are very hard to integrate.
However, at this age and according to my previous experiences, I would almost exclusively be offered to work for free (with the fraudulent suggestion that they would likely hire me afterwards), and that's assuming that anyone would give me the "opportunity" to work for free.
I recall when I attended a support group for other adults with Asperger's. Everyone was unemployed except for two people who worked at their family's business. In these modern societies, if you are weird and make some superior uncomfortable, you are screwed. Back then I even tried to pass for normal, but I think it just creeped out others (not that being myself would have fared better). I ended up passing an exam that lets me work in the public sector. Still, I won't get hired permanently because I can't (and never will) speak Basque well enough.
When I went for my disability assessment in my early twenties (I'm 52% disabled according to the Spanish government), the guy there suggested that autism shouldn't affect me as an adult, because it's a developmental disorder. Most people either get their impression of those like us from Hollywood or from such idiotic notions.
So far, trying to get anywhere with the stuff I've been burdened with has felt like a constant, unfair struggle, and I lost the motivation years ago.
According to Forbes in 2021, autism unemployment rate is approximately 85%. I have two friends on the spectrum. One receives disability payments (located in the USA), and the other went on to become a programmer. For a while I envied my second friend, because she became quite successful, but the opposite was true. The mental and emotional strain of masking deteriorated her already fragile mental health.Like you, I had aspirations once. I was in medical school for a time. Intelligent in academia yet lacked the social skills and emotional resilience to follow through. I have worked about 7 jobs in my lifetime, each varying in length, but never more than a year. Right now, I am working on certifications within IT. I hope that I can meet people who chose IT for the same reason I did. It seems to be a pretty popular field among the unpopular, so to speak. An ideal job for me would be minimal-to-no face-to-face interactions with other people. I can "talk the talk, walk the walk" but it leaves me feeling debased and hollow. Well, we all need money to survive, so I guess in choosing IT I am hoping I've picked the lesser of the evils. If I had my way, I'd live in a secluded cabin in the woods with my poetry and philosophy books.
Thanks for the talk.
You may find this quote relatable. I've held close to me for a long time."Life is impossible at high temperatures. That's why I have reached the conclusion that anguished people, whose inner dynamism is so intense that it reaches paroxysm, and who cannot accept normal temperatures, are doomed to fall. The destruction of those who live unusual lives is an aspect of life's demonism, but it is also an aspect of its insufficiency, which explains why life is the privilege of mediocre people. Only mediocrities live at life's normal temperature; the others are consumed at temperatures at which life cannot endure, at which they can barely breathe, already one foot beyond life. I cannot contribute anything to this world because I only have one method: agony." -Emil Cioran, On the Heights of Despair
As I have mentioned in the linked free verse poem, and I guess in other stuff I've written, I was a programmer as well. A very good one, I'd say, but the only thing that ended up mattering for the companies that employed me was the human aspect. At my last attempt, back in 2015, I was literally just working with my boss, who handled technical matters, and he argued that they should hire me, but a higher-up refused concluding that I simply wouldn't fit in.I doubt I would be able to work full-time without taking breaks longer than a vacation. I feel myself losing it week after week. I never rest nor recover enough. At least these days it isn't as bad as in my twenties, when I would fall asleep in the train back, or pass out shortly after I got home and sat in a chair. I think I ended up that exhausted because I made a far bigger effort to pass for normal back then.
These days I work in IT, coincidentally at a hospital. I don't want to discourage you or anything, but it still requires quite a bit of human interaction; I had to pester my coworkers for months to teach me the ropes, because there simply wasn't any training program (and that's more common than not); I would find myself having to fix some weird medical machine and how it connected to the network, but I wouldn't have a clue about how to start or if it even was our responsibility (whenever something with a chip stops working, they often call us directly).
Some weeks I'm also tasked with taking the phone calls, which means dealing with nurses and doctors who want us to fix something immediately. Most of them speak about the issue and their environments as if we were omniscient. On any average workday I'm just hoping that they don't assign me any task; you never know if the next task will involve a back-and-forth for a week or two. I was also on duty when the entire network of the province fell because some idiotic maintenance guy in the server farm (which might have been located hundreds of kilometers away) pulled a couple of plugs he shouldn't have. As expected, every single head of department in the hospital made it our problem.
I also deal with nurses and doctors. They are almost invariably the extroverted, chatty types. They don't seem to have any "off" time regarding social interaction; if they aren't interacting with patients, they are hanging out in cramped spaces, sitting or standing next to other nurses and such.
I can't count how many times I've gone to some department to fix something, only for them to entangle me, or distract themselves, with some pointless conversation filled with "jokes" to which I have to react appropriately. I just wear a metaphorical mask to deal with them, obviously, but it wears me out and damages my integrity. Also, whether or not I can fake it depends on my energy levels, and some weeks I'm just drained.
I can tell that most of my coworkers appreciate me. Whenever I'm working afternoons, which involves working alongside a single coworker (rarely the same one), they end up talking to me for hours. It's as if nobody in their lives listens to them, while I listen without interrupting, mainly because I genuinely have no interest in saying anything. I never start any conversation nor pry into their personal lives. The moment any of my contracts ends, those people's existence gets erased from my brain.
I'd also live in isolation if I could. Whenever I walk through the hills I have nearby (often after playing the guitar in the woods), I wish I could live in those cottages and farmhouses. But I'd need plenty of money to consider such a change seriously.
Regarding the quote, I've liked plenty of Cioran's stuff on here. I always felt that even getting through a regular day was a maddening struggle. It doesn't help that the moment I'm not alone in a room, my anxiety starts mounting. I've never been comfortable being a human being; it's like I'm wearing something ill-fitting. As a child, and to a lesser extent as a teenager, I thought that people were pretending to enjoy being alive and going along with what this world expects of the average person, that they were just putting on a brave face. But now I'm aware that I'm simply not built to thrive in society.
IT is a thankless job, and yes, you're right in that people expect you to be omniscient. I worked as an officer administrator for a large real estate conglomerate for about a year while also handling most of the basic IT responsibilities. I know I'm going to have to start out as Help Desk as that's usually the entry method into the field and I'm dreading it. I want to work specifically in security, so eventually (hopefully) I'll be with a closer team with less interaction on the human-facing side of things outside of consultations/meetings. If I want to obtain a position that's relatively comfortable in salary and peace of mind, I've got to drag myself through the mud first. I hate that but I also hate the feeling of perpetual 'stuckness' I've been in. They're both going to drag me down but at least I'll be getting paid for one.I can't imagine what the social environment is going to be like for me. What you described is exactly what my friend's sysadmin position is like, right down to giving free, unwarranted therapy sessions to his clients and coworkers. I can mask well, but like you said, it's draining. I haven't worked since 2016 and that was the position I held the longest and was given the most promotions in. I dealt with realtors on the phone and in-person as the main contact for the company. I don't even recognize myself from those times, but I'm hoping I can muster up the strength to put on the mask again and ride it out until I'm in a comfortable position. The self-isolation, introspection and overthinking for the last 6 years have damaged my social skills and resilience.
Well, at least you're in a seemingly tolerable position. Maybe that's all people like us can hope for.
