LIMBO

I can feel myself going down again. I've done everything in my power and everything in my limited knowledge to get a job -- any job at all -- and yet I have not had a single successful attempt. True, I got on the eligibility list of the Department of Community Services, but do I have a job right now? No I don't. I have not yet reached the point where I am doubting my abilities. But I have reached the point where I am starting to resent Australian society, and more specifically the Sydney Catholic School system.

The last two times I received rejection letters from schools I applied at, I shouted at the envelopes, "HOW DO YOU EVEN KNOW THAT I WOULD NOT MAKE A GOOD TEACHER? Did you even bother to check with my referees? I'm sure if you would even bother to check with Xavier, you'd hear good things about me!" But my guess is, as soon as they see that all my experience and all my training was done in the Philippines, they throw my application in the trash. At least some schools bother to send rejection letters. Others don't even acknowledge that you exist.

This is pretty painful for me. In the Philippines, I was accepted at every single thing I applied for. Once people saw my UP undergrad degree and my Ateneo almost-Masters, they were all lining up to sign me on. But here, it doesn't mean a thing to them.

I have been out of work for 1 year, 1 month, 1 week and 1 day today. And I am going crazy. I have these mood swings where I go really, really low, so low that I start to get paranoid about past issues in my life, then I swing to the other side, but I never swing to supposedly complete happiness or bliss, so I know I am not manic-depressive. But I don't remember the last time I was really, really happy, or the last time I laughed so much that I cried. Migrating to a new country really strips you to the bone, reduces you to the bare minimum, etc etc.

Everything has its season
Everything has its time
Show me a reason and I'll soon show you a rhyme
Cats fit on a window sill
Children fit in the snow
Why do I feel like I don't fit in anywhere I go?

To tell you the truth, I didn't feel I fit in in the Philippines. I sort of always wanted to live in a place where I didn't know anyone, where I could find out who I really was, away from my very prolific family. But now that I'm here, I don't feel like I'm part of the place. Like if I suddenly disappeared, nobody would care, nobody would notice that I was gone. One good thing though, I realized that here, I truly feel like an adult. For some reason, in the Philippines, I still felt like a child. Maybe because there I still lived with my father, depended on him for some of the expenses at home, because everywhere I went, there was always someone who knew either Mommy or Papa, or whoever Tito or Tita, that I was always someone's daughter or niece or what-not. And I always felt I had to live up to my prominent family's reputation.

Here, nobody knows me. Nobody cares that I am my parents' daughter, that I am a Misa, a Paredes, a Sicam. It doesn't mean a thing. In some ways, it's good. But in some ways, like in the it-would-help-me-get-a-job way, I kind of miss it. But anyway, I'm straying. Here, I have my own friends, people that none of my family members have met. I am starting my own circle of people and contacts, however slow the process is for me. I guess I am in the process of building my own identity, apart from my role as my parents' daughter and member of the Misa / Paredes or Sicam clan.

So many men seem destined
To settle for something small
But I won't rest until I know I've had it all
So don't ask where I'm going
Just listen when I'm gone
And far away you'll hear me singing softly to the dawn....

Rivers belong where they can ramble
Eagles belong where they can fly
I've got to be where my spirit can run free
Gotta find my corner of the sky

That is the main reason I came here. I want it all. I want to own my own big house. I want to travel. I want to do what I love and live comfortably. I realized yesterday that my creativity has always been hindered mainly by my lack of financial means. I have wanted to take so many classes in the past -- dance, photography, self-improvement workshops , but I always had to look for cheap ones, or ones run by someone I know, so I can ask for a discount. Thus, I dont' always get to go for all the things I want. I realized I love earrings, necklaces, braceletes, but I never accumulated a lot of them because I always thought the money was better spent elsewhere. There was always something that was higher on the priority list than these things that fill the soul.

But here, once you have a decent job, you can fulfill these things to a decent level. There are still a lot of things I want to do that I feel I still cannot do, but here, it is more I guess out of habit -- the thinking that the money is better spent on necessities. I want to get rid of that way of thinking. I want to buy nice clothes (but I think I still could not take buying an outfit that would be equivalent to a one month of a Philippine teacher's pay -- I could never justify that). I want to buy inexpensive but pretty bling bling. I want to enroll in classes like belly dancing and beading workshops and continue to work on my photography skills. I want to dress up Edge. I want to buy a house and decorate it with stuff that just looks nice, and may not have any other purpose in life. I could never do that in the Philippines. But here, it is possible.

Maybe that is my frustration. I have long waited for this to happen, and here I am, but I still cannot do it fully because that job I have been waiting for forever is just not coming.

So all I can do for now is dream. And sometimes get frustrated. And depressed. I belong neither here nor there. Gotta find my corner of the sky!