Unemployment Depression

After I'd moved in to my new apartment, I decided to take it a little easy on trying to find work and enjoy this period of my life in which I would have no responsibilities except cashing my unemployment check every two weeks. I wanted to concentrate on my music and work on an extended piece that I had a great idea for, but never had the time to devote.

So, life was pretty good for awhile. I would stay up late every night and watch TV. I'd go to sleep and wake up whenever. I'd hang around the apartment and work on the music. I tried to drive very little so that I wouldn't blow most of my money on gas. I had to watch every dime very carefully.

One of the things that became rather apparent after a few weeks was that, since I had moved to San Diego, I hadn't made any real friends. I mean, when I had moved to Denver, I was lucky enough to run into someone who wanted to be friends within my first few weeks there. But since I had moved to San Diego, my life revolved around work and later, that terrible situation at home. I didn't have any time to make friends outside of all that. And I wasn't really friends with either of the guys I was roommates with since I'd moved there.

In addition, I didn't have any money, so I spent a lot of free time walking to the Hillcrest Business District and browsing the stores around there. Sometimes, I would go into Ralphs and look at all the food that I wouldn't be able to buy. I couldn't believe that I had nothing better to do all day. It was certainly driving me crazy.

And crazy was almost a good description for what was going on inside my mind. However, a more accurate term would be "depression." I found myself caught up in these thoughts that I felt like I had no control over. I knew that what was going through my mind wasn't right, but I had no idea what I could do.

It seemed like little innocuous things could just set me off without any notice. One night, I was talking to Bid about some music I'd written. During the conversation, he said, "Hang on, I have to go to the bathroom." I waited for him to get back on the phone for about 15 minutes. I could hear him moving about the apartment and wondered why he wasn't picking the phone back up and talking to me. Then I heard him pick up the phone and hang it up. I called him back. He answered. I asked him what happened. He said, "We were done talking. I'm going to bed."

As soon as I got off the phone, this rush of negative thoughts took over my mind. I worried incessantly about what he thought about me calling him back after he'd hung up. I seriously could not get out of this pattern which seemed to not have any end in sight. I stayed up for hours that night concerned about how Bid was going to see me from now on. It was going to affect our friendship.

And at the time this was going on, I knew it was all irrational, but the logical side of my brain, which is usually in control, could not fight this off. I was a victim of my own neurological self-abuse.

I had a minor breakdown one day as I was fixing lunch. Since I didn't have a lot of money, I couldn't get pizza as often as before. And when I did get pizza, I had to settle for the frozen version from the supermarket. The oven in our apartment had a pre-heat function. I found it very useful as it quickly heated the oven up in a couple of minutes instead of having to wait close to ten minutes. You just had to remember to switch the oven to "bake" and set the temperature. Well, you've probably figured out what happened: I forgot to switch to the "bake" setting and after 20 minutes of sitting in the high heat, the pizza was completely scorched and inedible. I cried as I took the burned pizza out to the trash. That was $4 down the drain at a time when that amount was considered splurging. I couldn't believe I was getting that upset over it. I had another pizza in the freezer, but I didn't like that it meant one less pizza that I could eat until the next unemployment check.

Another incident came when I was watching David Letterman one night. This was a show shortly after his debut on CBS. During the monologue and throughout the program, David would say who his guests were that night. But every time he did the promotion, it was apparent that they edited out the name of a comedian who was supposed to be on the show later on. And it wasn't something they bleeped out, it was an abrupt cut. They didn't even try to cover up the fact that it was edited out. This really bothered me, because I felt like those edits were not made for the general viewing audience, but specifically to keep me from knowing the name of the person who was supposed to be on that show. I felt like they were hiding something from me that I needed to know. And again, I knew that this was an irrational thought, but it still kept me from falling asleep for several hours that night.

(Years later, I found out who that comedian was, but I can't remember his name now. But I know he's dead.)

Of course, one of the problems with me not being able to sleep at night probably had to do with the fact that I was sleeping so much during the day. But this is symptomatic of having depression. As I mentioned earlier in this article, I also didn't have a real support system in place due to the lack of real friends in San Diego.

While all this was going on, I knew that the one thing I needed to make me better was a job, something that would brace up my self-esteem. But even though I was depressed, I rather liked not having to go to work where people would tell me what to do.

But that attitude changed when I asked my Dad for financial assistance for the umpteenth time. He told me that this was going to be the last time he was going to give me money. And if I asked for money again, he was going to make me move back to Artesia and go to work for him. If there's anything worse than dealing with depression, it's the possibility you may have to move back in with your parents and live by their rules.

That more or less gave me the incentive I needed to go out and find a job. I lucked out and actually landed TWO jobs.

I'll go more into detail about one of them tomorrow.