Early this past week, I was busy tutoring 2 people. I worked from Sunday to Thursday.  I was relieved to be done helping one student finish a big project Thursday evening.  But when I woke up Friday, a completely new feeling hit me and has stayed with me ever since.  A feeling of emptiness, despair, anguish.  I have a wonderful girlfriend.

 But what I feel is really like heartbreak.  That I tried and tried and tried only to be abandoned.  This all relates to my lack of employment.  I only work part time.  

I feel so incredibly hurt by my last few years at work. I got fired in July, 2015 and then again fired in August this year, both employers didn't want to give me unemployment.  So we had to have hearings by the Dept of Employment Security.  The hearings were SO AWFUL!!!  :(..... 
Ironically, I won both hearings.  That should make me feel better..........
But the fact was I was rehashing all the painful stuff that happened at work.  When I had my first hearing at the end of last November.  I remember leaving this place I was for the hearing and going back to work.  But I was so deeply hurt at all the things that were said, that I broke down and cried and cried on a busy street in downtown Chicago.  That, by itself, was awful, b/c I hate if I cry in public. So EMBARASSING!!!

The pain is overwhelming.  I just feel like I tried so hard in my career, and then my career chewed me up & spit me out.  & then laughed at me and scorned me after that.  Those unemployment hearings were so hurtful, painful, that I can barely stand it.  & all that happened after the trauma of being fired.  Here's another important point.  Getting fired repeatedly, feels increasingly worse each time it happens!!!! What I means is that being fired once is bad.  BEing fired again feels 4 times worse and being fired after that feels at least 8 times, maybe 10 times worse than the first time.  
pain, pain, anguish, absolute heartbreak.  I know & realize that I'm supposed to shake off my setbacks and move on. I can't.

  For some reason, I don't know why(!?) I can't even be consoled at the fact that I have a plan to solve this problem. I plan to go into teaching & years ago I got my degree in that.  All I have to do is take 2 classes and I will get my teaching license back (b/c I had let it elapse when I was happy & enjoying my paralegal career).  

I feel like crying about my son too.  My oldest son comes to my place a couple times a week. God bless him for doing so, because it's hopeful, helpful and I feel good to be around him.  

The other son chose to live with me (instead of living w/ his mother, my ex-wife) from 2011 until last year.  The reasons he left me last year and lived with his mom, were not horrible reasons or traumatic reasons & the reasons did not have to do with anyone being at fault. They were basically understandable and reasonable. 

But I miss my 2nd son so much!  I spent some time with him this afternoon.  & I talked about some things, but what I wanted to do is cry and cry.  Because it wasn't like when he was living with me.  We live only 3/4 of a mile apart, but it seems like 200 miles !!  That's why I felt like crying when we spent time with each other. I had to think of things to say, conversation felt awkward and to my sadness, my son wouldn't volunteer and talk about things like he used to. I even discussed with him how I felt.  I told him that we were living through the famous, popular Harry Chapin song, "Cats in the Cradle". Some of you hopefully are familiar with that song.  They still play it; it was popular in the mid 1970s.  It's basically about a busy father and his son wants to spend more time with him, then he advances the story 10 years(then 25 yrs) and his son is too busy to spend time with the father.  I used to think it was a cute song.  I remember this woman from another culture heard it while we were at work and saying how sad the song was, and I didn't feel that way at all (because at the time all my kids lived with me, it was before 2011) But now she is so right.  It is sad.  It is an expression of how bad a father feels when life and a close relationship just passed him by!!

So, I told  my son this. I told him tactfully, b/c the last thing a teenage boy @ 18 wants their Dad to be is a drama Queen.  He's so smart, even at 18, he was familiar with the song's lyrics.  & he reacted to me saying our relationship was like that song, by  saying, "Awwww" and having a big smile on his face.  Looking at me with some consolation.  But he could NOT console me.  I can't be consoled right now.  All I feel is anguish & heartbreak.  I am going to crawl into bed and let my sleep hopefully take some pain away.