Gonna Fly Now

Last week was one of those weeks when the cold, wet, gloomy outside weather mirrors your mood.  What a sharp contrast from how I felt the week before.  Perhaps I should back up and start with the Friday before… wait, let’s back up all the way to Thursday.

            It was a typical day.  I was in my spot in the hallway of our apartment building applying for jobs online.  *Side note: Personal internet is a luxury that we can’t afford right now, which is ok since we can get on our apartment office’s network – unfortunately the signal ends at our doorstep, thus forcing us to go out in the hall.  It’s barely a hall; there’s a table and chairs, a sofa, and homey little decorations.  Plus the bonus of seeing all the other residence checking their mail and chatting with them.*  I saw a posting for a full time pre-school teacher and a part time after school teacher at a nearby child care center.  I thought to myself “could I handle three and four year olds?  That’s what age Jeremiah is, and I do enjoy him.  It’s not my favorite age to teach but I can’t be choosey about jobs right now”.  So I e-mailed them my resume and cover letter because that’s what you do nowadays.  Low and behold they call me and set up an interview for the next morning.  I gleefully accepted the interview, called my parents to share the good news, and high fived my husband.

I wake up with a spring in my step (so to speak) the next morning.  Our programmable coffee maker is automatically brewing a pot of delicious smelling coffee, my interview outfit is laid out, and I’m having a surprisingly good hair day – things are going my way.  I punch the address into my GPS and it takes me to my destination using the most beautiful back roads.  I arrive 15 minutes early and notice there are absolutely no handicap stops in their parking lot.  It’s not that all the spots are taken; they simply do not have any.  I double park so I have enough room to deploy my ramp.  A woman parks in the spot next to me and gives me a puzzled look as to why I’m hogging to spots – once she sees the ramp she understands.  We walk towards the door together and she asks if I’ll be able to get up the curb.  By the time the words are out of her mouth I am half way to the other side of the building where the curb cut is.  She waits and holds the door. 

Once inside we discover that she is the interviewer and I am the interviewee.  After rearranging the office furniture to accommodate my wheelchair (and the three other chairs in the office the size of a shoe box) she squeezes between my feet and the front of the desk to get to the chair behind the desk.  The interview itself went well.  I exceeded their qualifications and proved that I was certainly competent enough.  However when I asked the specifics of the two positions it was clear that I wouldn’t be able to physically do either.  The pre-school position was actually with 18 month to 24 month olds, and the after school position required me to pick up the students from their school in a mini bus. Although both important jobs they weren’t going to work for me.  I had to explain that as tactfully as I could – that felt awkward.

It wasn’t till the following Monday when the discouragement hit.  I didn’t even recognize that it was affecting me, but I did notice that for the first time in weeks I didn’t apply to any jobs that day.  Did I know that my handicap affect my employability? Yes, but this was the first time that it really hit me.  This interview was one of the first that I had gone on where I didn’t disclose my disability in my cover letter (part of a little social experiment I’m doing).  I can’t help but wonder if I had disclosed my disability would they have called?  On other interviews I’ve been on how much has my chair impacted the outcome?  I was talking with my husband Monday night about the job thing, one thing led to another and before I knew it I was having a full on emotional breakdown.  Emotion (ok, crying) and I just don’t mix.  I don’t like it, especially when others see it, even if that other person is my loving husband. 

It was as if this really obvious fact that I have consciously trained myself to put in the back of my mind slowly seeped into my subconscious, and now it was suddenly launching an attack.  Part of what was making me emotional was the thought that if I allow my handicap to impact my thoughts concerning employment would that give it the foothold to start to impact all of my other thoughts?  I am very aware of how my thought processes works, and consciously work to lead my thoughts in good directions.  The last thing I would ever want to happen is for all my thoughts to center around the fact that I am physically disabled, that I am in a wheelchair, and because of that I can’t do everything other people can do.  That terrifies me.  To me that is the most dark, unhappy, hopeless way to live – certainly not what I want my life to be about. 

It’s amazing what a good night’s sleep, chatting with an old friend, listening to some good music, and housecleaning can do to help re-calibrate yourself.  There should be studies done (maybe there already have been) about how physical cleaning can help one to do some mental cleaning –I bet there’s a correlation there.  It’s like I have picked myself up and dusted off my shoulders, but now I have to figure out how to get back in the race.  I live in the real world, where unlike public school where accommodations are made for you because you live in that district so you have to go to that school, employers don’t “have” to hire you.  Or unlike circumstances in my past where I have been given an opportunity to do a job because the person knows that I will figure out a way to make it work because they know me, employers don’t know me.  They see a wheelchair and based upon whatever experiences they have had with people in wheelchairs they judge my ability level.  I understand that it’s human nature to judge.  To an extent employers have to use their own personal pre-judgments to discern who they should take a chance on and hire, that just makes sense.  Is it frustrating?  You betchya but it’s just one of those things in life that isn’t fair.

So after all of this rambling where does this leave me?  Nowhere really.  I think what I can take away from this experience are fresh eyes.  Recently David and I watched the entire Rocky saga (I know.  What’s weird is I think I enjoyed it more than my husband).  I feel like it’s a later round and Rocky has been beaten on by the engineered Russian fighting machine.  He’s in the corner getting a pep talk screamed in his ear by the guys in his corner, the bell rings and he’s back out standing toe to toe with an opponent that has been sent in with a mission to kill.  The job market may have gut punched me and made me stumble back to my corner, but it hasn't knocked me out.  I know where I am weak, but I also know where I am strong.  Time to play up my strengths and get back out in the ring – Gonna Fly Now.