Just Check the Box

I was filling out another job application, when my frustration grew to a boiling point. It seems every time I am required to fill out an application I have trouble trying to decipher how to input my information. Either there is not enough room, since I am now a woman of a certain age and experience, I need a looser, roomier platform, and these applications never have enough, yet, want me to describe in detail my life, for the last fifty years. Oh, sure, it sounds easy enough, just fill out the application. Just fill in the box. Michael never wants to be in the same room with me when I fill out these brain teasing, exasperating, mind traps. He runs, sometimes literally calling out that he just wants to go for a short jog. I won’t see him again until dinner. I don’t blame him. Each designated day I have for job searching, I make it cuss day. My cuss days are a little more often these days, but it is my purposeful, designated day to let my mouth fly. I try to watch my “P”s and “Q”s, but on application day, I don’t have the restraint. I am hunched over my keyboard, screaming at the page that just changed before I could finish typing, or grabbing my screen with both hands shaking it, trying to get the appropriate box to tumble down as if it were an Etch a Sketch. I miss paper. I miss the days when I was viewed as an adult and my cover letter, resume and recommendation letters were enough information for me to get an interview. I often feel these applications suffer from ageism. I am being set up to fail. A few years ago I was sitting at a kiosk in Walmart trying to apply for a job. The screens came up and if I had been 16 years old without any education or job experience, it may have been a bit easier, although my grown kids have assured me they had trouble with it also, but as an older person who has a long list of educational institutions, licenses, multiple career changes, yeah, I wanted to do myself and that machine harm. I nearly broke down into tears right there in the layaway department. The only other time checking boxes was tough for me was back right after Danny, my first husband died. I was filling out forms when I got stumped. Technically, I knew the answer they wanted, but emotionally, I felt it diminished where I was in my life. The boxes were: Single, Married, Divorced, Widowed. Here is why I got stuck, I was single in that I was alone. Danny had died and the kids and I were struggling to find a way to live without him. I could not have felt more single at that time. We were isolated, and very much alone, so I felt justified if I checked single. The married box was next and I stared at it. Danny and I were no longer married, but we had four children together and a sticky relationship that kept throwing each of us back at each other. Neither of us had really ever let go, so married, was how I had felt, even when we lived apart. Divorced, came next in the line of boxes. Yep, I was divorced. It was a word I hated, an act I despised, and yet there I was, divorced all the way to the bone. Divorce for me meant failure, it meant weakness, and shame. I still wince when people refer to my divorce. I had not filed for it, I did not witness the finality of it, and I carried all the shame of my failed marriage. Divorced is the box I had checked for a couple of years and I hated it more every time I checked it. The last box was Widowed. I sat shaking when I got to that box, holding on to the form, disfiguring it in my hands, as tears fell. With Danny gone and now residing in a fresh grave for me to visit weekly as self punishment, and I was really good at punishing myself for every misstep he or I had, I was now widowed. Since we weren’t legally married anymore, I knew I could never check that box, but I felt as though I deserved it. My partner in parenting was gone. The guy I shared my family with was no longer in my life or in my children’s lives. There was no more hoping that somehow he and I could work things out. He was dead, I was alone, and our kids’ hearts were completely shattered. I deserved a box specific for me. My family in that time was not a one size fits all. I know in my heart, every family has something about them that should allow them a special box. I need a special box right now. I need a box that shows I am flexible, intelligent and experienced. I need a box that disregards age and holds time in a state of reverence. I need a box that indicates I am loyal, hard working and affable. I need a “Hey, listen, I know I am from out of town, and I may not have the college education that you so desire, but I am willing to learn anything” box. I need that box. With all the forms, applications and sundry paperwork I have had to fill out since I moved, one would think there would be some kind of universal method for providing information to all who require it. I believe it was called a resume, but don’t quote me on that. When I worked as a nurse we used to fill out information longhand. We had to, because no one patient was exactly the same. Medicine had that part right. They allowed for all the idiosyncratic things about being human. My applications often make me feel so much less than human. The way I have to reduce myself down to a two dimensional, no less than two pages, but no more than three, description of justifying my life, makes me feel despondent. I know I am in a large company of folks out there who are in much worse situations than I am. Nearly daily, I type my most basic information into the boxes and then wait to hear anything back. Most jobs never respond. It is as if I had tossed all my personal information into a black hole in the universe where my chances of even being seen are a lightning strike. I haven’t given up. I didn’t the last time I was in this situation and I won’t now. My Michael and friends love and support me by saying, “They just don’t know what they missing out on.” I nod my head in agreement, but wonder if the storm I am in will produce a one in a million lightning strike, I think I need. I believe in “All things for a reason”. I think I believe that because if my history has taught me anything, it is to wait for all the crazy to shake out. My daughter, a sage and wise soul said, “Mom, you know how it is for us, things always get really bad, right before they get really good.” She’s right, and I know where her understanding comes from, although, I admit when my kids use my own words back at me, I cringe. It is how things have always gone; they get really bad, right before they get really good. Darkest before the dawn is a theory that is right on the money. My hope for now is to not lose my sense of humor, my sense of adventure and my common sense where I know if I can just hold on, things will really work out for the better.