New Girl

At home today, feeling a bit on the blue side. Not sad, just slightly off-kilter, like when you know you're not sick but feel somewhat nauseated, and you're not exhausted for any particular reason but your body still feels a bit too heavy to be coping with anything other than just laying around. I think to some degree, I'm also mad.

Lately, I just feel like I'm stuck. I think it's partially the season; fall always makes me quite desperate for change. I have a friend I've known for years, and a running gag between us is that she's always the one to say that she wants a change, that she wishes "something would just happen". And I'm always like: "Hell no, only bad things happen when you go looking!" But during autumn I always get this craving that comes out of a strange boredom, like I realize that yet another (school year) has started and I haven't really moved on or in a direction I've been hoping for or something like that.
I used to dye my hair around this time of year. That's usually the case actually, small changes. If lucky with work, I would go on a trip, travel somewhere on a cheap ticket and perhaps live with friends to keep the costs down. It was always fantastic.
Last year I moved. And met my boyfriend.  And got a fantastic internship. Lot of things were new, and I didn't even feel like I was ready for half of it. But I guess I was. You're usually capable of handling more change than you assume. And all in all, it's been an OK year. Some things fantastic, some things absolutely awful, but I feel like I came out on an overall plus-side of life this past year.

This year, I just feel that on an emotional level, when it comes to personal growth, I'm in a good place. But it's in the more work-oriented field my troubles lie. It's not even like I've stagnated, it's like I'm moving backwards. As an example: couple of years ago, my finances would be something I would complain about to close friends. At its worse, I would tell acquaintances that I was low on cash and couldn't go to a concert or what not at the moment.
These days, I feel like I cannot hold a random conversation without talking about money. And honestly, it pisses me off. It upsets me that I still have to scrimp and save and borrow some months to pay all my bills. It upsets me that there are loads of people, many of them young people, in the same situation as I. It upsets me that I went to the unemployment office last week to get signed in, as a smart measure so that I would be in the system when my studies finished, in case I didn't find anything on my own, and it took them 45 minutes just to tell me they wouldn't have time to see me that day!
It's fucked up that I have three, three goddamn part-time jobs and still that's not enough to always pay my bills. What is this?! I'm always tired and moody, worried about my home work, and regular work, and finances, and trying to find a new job that covers the bills.

The only thing I got if ever in an even worse economic bind, is that I with the help of my generous parents could afford a loan to get my own place. (And that apparently makes everything fantastic, because how can you possibly be poor and have your own place?)
So, if I want to make my finances work, I have to take this apartment, for which I am indebted forever to the bank, and rent it out to someone else. Which could work. Except I would then loose perhaps one of the few things in life that I've got going for me right now. So I won't do it. I'll just keep working and saving and borrowing and complaining and wondering when the fuck I'll stop being a second-class citizen in my own fucked up country. I'm a poor person. Yes, I'm not unemployed without benefits, or a struggling single parent, nor am I retired and elderly and excluded by the system. I'm not homeless and I am certainly not without a safety-net: I have loved ones who can support me if it ever came down to that, but I don't want to put others in that spot.
But that doesn't mean things are good. They're not even mildly OK. It's not right that I work so much, get no benefits, study at the same time, and plan any bigger purchase or expense (like buying winter boots or going to the dentist) months in advance. Just constantly getting by is still taxing on so many levels, it's ridiculous that I would be considered lucky because I could get a loan from the bank.
And whatever excuses our government makes about our situation not being as bad as our southern  EU-neighbours, the truth is that 9% of the Swedish population is unemployed, and a whole lot o them are young, educated people with very little experience cause there's no place for them to go.

So apparently I have to stop thinking that if I just keep working, and trying, things will perhaps turn around and I'll get to feel like a new, less tired and more happy version of me for the first time in a long long time. Cause that's all very lovely, but about as plausible as if I suddenly struck oil in my co-op's backyard. I'll probably keep dreaming til I die, and don't get me wrong - it's good to dream. But it doesn't pay my bills. At the end of the day, there's only work and nothing for it.