Comfort Food

I don’t handle disappointment very well. Never have. I am one of those people who feel things in a BIG way. Every encounter, no matter how large or small, is taken to heart. I feel elation and despair in equal measures. FACT.

 

As you all know Spiderman and I moved to Wales five months ago so he could take up a fascinating post at the UWTSD (University of Wales, Trinity Saint David). We figured I would be able to find a job with relative ease.

 

We were wrong.

 

Five months on and I cannot seem to find work. It is hard to try and fail. It is hard to live on one income, but we have managed. It is hard to have meaning in your life when you don’t have a job (which often seems to define who you are. You know that terrible question that is like a punch in the solar plexus--”What do you do?”)  or a reason to get up and get going in the morning. I know in my heart that Wales is grand and that we are blessed with a fantastic and affordable house to live in, delicious healthy home cooked food (this is thanks largely in part to my budgeting, shopping the sales and planning so that not food gets wasted) and we have friends that feel like the sort of friends we’ve known all our life even though we have just met. I get it that we have lots of good things going for us.

 

But I want a job.

 

Then our lives would have everything we need to feel settled in.

 

After months of searching and being rejected I finally got an interview for a fantastic job that ticked all the boxes for me.

 

I didn’t get it.

 

They were really impressed with me and my personality made a huge impression on them. I got excellent feedback which I know will help me do even better in my next interview.

 

It is tempting to say if I get another interview instead of when I get another interview because we’ve been here five months and despite applying for dozens of jobs I have only managed to get two interviews. I don’t want to wait another five months for another chance.

 

But I may have to. I have to believe that this is all part of God’s plan and that there is a reason I didn’t get this amazing job and that something even more fabulous is in the pipeline.

 

But frankly, it is hard to believe it.

 

Every day I search the job advertisements and very rarely is there anything I am qualified to do. On the other hand there are many jobs I am overqualified for and can’t seem to get hired for either. It is discouraging to say the least.

 

But I’m hanging in there. I love Wales and I don’t want to leave. I just want to find a job.

 

So I was feeling rather down (which is a polite way of putting it) and I needed some comfort food. Some down home country cooking.

 

So we ate this:

Vegan sausages, mash, peas and carrots and onion gravy.

 

Mmm-mmm.

I do not normally buy processed convenience foods as they are super expensive and often full of crappy ingredients. But I saw these Linda McCartney Vegetarian Red Onion and Rosemary Sausages on sale for 99p a box (6 sausages) at Lidl and I thought I would give them a go. 

 

Many processed vegetarian meats have wheat gluten in them but these don’t so they are kind to my tummy. They have five recognisable ingredients plus a list of five spices so that seems less bad than many I’ve seen. They are low in fat but high in protein and fibre.

 

Plus sometimes you need some comfort food that is smothered in gravy.

 

Mmmmm….gravy.

 

Surprisingly, it did make me feel better.

 

There are lots of good things about my life--if I listed them all it would take pages and pages of writing. There is only one bad thing in my life so on balance it is not so bad.

 

I still want a job.

 

I still need a job.

 

Something good has to be coming. Doesn’t it? I just need to be patient and that has never been easy for me. Five months unemployed seems like forever. But I have to remind myself that we have a roof over our heads and we have never gone hungry. Dealing with this crushing disappointment (and it is crushing. People use that term loosely but really that is how it feels—like I am Giles Corey being pressed to death in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Like all the breath has been taken out of my body) has reminded me how much I am loved by Spiderman. He keeps my grief in balance. When I in anger throw up straw arguments, he calmly and kindly points them out and helps me let go of them. When I cry over real disappointment he holds me and lets me grieve.

 

So right now, my life is not good or bad. It just is. To quote the band Youthmovies and their song If You’d Seen a Battlefield:

It's not going well and it's not going badly it's just going along.

 

I can live with that.