Officially Unemployed

When I talked to my dad about my resignation, it was difficult to bear the disappointment in his voice when he said:

“So, what, you’re officially unemployed now are you?”

He didn’t say it at all cruelly – it was just the statement of the awful truth that hurt. It was qpainfully real.

I hit all kinds of low when I took myself along to the Job Centre before Christmas to register as unemployed. It was my fiancé’s idea – he did it when he graduated until he found his first job, and didn’t see any shame in it.

“You might as well try it,” he said, “You might not get the allowance anyway because you left voluntarily, but it will be a new experience for you.”

So I went along with some reluctance. It was so strange. As I went through the doors, narrowly escaping a dubious-looking guy at the front door who was attempting to sign people up for something, I felt an extreme sense of shame. It’s hard for me to write about it now, in fact. All my hard work and good grades had come to this.

I took a seat inside and waited to be called. They were running late by quite some time, so I had a good opportunity to look around at my fellow claimants. I live in a fairly run-down part of London, so I wasn’t surprised that many of them looked unkempt and down-trodden. We all kept our heads down and avoided eye-contact. This wasn’t a situation that encouraged chit-chat. A loud argument broke out between a claimant and an irate employee nearby. It seemed he hadn’t brought any paperwork at all with him and expected her to simply believe he was who he said he was.

My name was finally called. My assessor was a Muslim lady who did a double take when she looked at my application. She was (quite rightly) astounded that I was a qualified doctor. Why on earth was I here?

“What happened?” she cried.

I began to speak, and as I did, I think I was more honest than I have been with anyone for a long time. I told her how I simply couldn’t face going in anymore. I told her about my illness and how it knocked me. I told her about the anxiety I felt about working as a doctor. As I spoke, the reality of how little I valued myself began to sink in. I felt completely pathetic – a broken woman – crawling along, a shell of her former self. Without Medicine I felt totally worthless.

Her eyes softened as she listened to my story. She then talked me through my options, and told me about the process of claiming the benefit. She said we would need to meet at least once or twice a week, and that I would need to keep a log book, and how I would need to prove that I was trying to get work by signing on to a specific forum and spending 35 hours a week actively looking for work. It felt very demeaning and paternalistic, like I was a prisoner on parole.

At the end of our meeting, she noticed it was my birthday the next day, and asked me if I was doing anything nice. I told her I didn’t really feel like there was much to celebrate this year.

“Oh, don’t say that,” she said, kindly, “Sometimes when thing like this happen, it works out for the better in the end.”

She told me about how she had trained and worked as a dental hygienist many years ago, but something happened that made it impossible for her to practice.

“At the time I thought it was a disaster, but now I realise it worked out for the best. My nephew is quite seriously unwell and is often admitted to hospital, but my brother doesn’t have the time to look after him because he’s a GP. There’s no one else but me who can be there to pick him up from school when he’s ill, or sit with him for hours in A&E. Some of my family still say it would be better for me to go back to my old job, because it’s a better career, but sometimes you just have to look at the bigger picture.”

She told me to go out with my friends for my birthday and have a good time. Despite my desperate state, she saw someone deserving of a celebration, and I will never forget that. The kindness of a stranger can be incredibly touching, and for a moment I had a weird feeling that I was meant to meet this good lady, that there was a reason it was she who saw me that day.

As I walked out of that building, once again dodging the guy with the clipboard, I knew I would not be coming back. I realised that behaving like the pathetic and helpless person I felt I was only propagated the idea, and I was better than this! In some bizarre way, I was living up to the new expectations that were placed upon me: weak, dependant and needy. Other people had given up on me, so now I had too.

I decided I wasn’t going to do this anymore. From now on, I was going to define myself by what I knew to be true. Regardless of whether I would be approved for unemployment benefit or not, I resolved to withdraw my application, and not to take a penny. (Just as well, really, because I was not approved!)

When I got home, I sent off my paperwork to the locum agency. Previously I’d felt incredibly anxious and scared about walking into a hospital again, so I kept putting off applying for locum work. I guess I still feel a bit anxious, but I no longer feel crippled by it. My fiancé laughed when I told him about my change of heart.

“Haha! It’s because I’ve shown you the alternative!” he said, referring to the process of claiming benefits.

I stuck my tongue out at him, and denied it, but he was right. By making me do this, he has shown me a very alternative way of thinking. An alternative where, instead of thinking about what I can’t do, I think about what I can.