I wrote the previous entry during the night of the 24th. I am a night owl, so I fell asleep around 4 or 5 am, then I woke up around 2 pm and, the minute I woke up, I felt more depressed than usual. It was probably due to the cold I have now, the fact that my period is coming and because I had changed my contraceptive arm implant two days prior. I did almost nothing the entire day, yet I felt so tired. I also got extremely annoyed at my sewing machine, since it was constantly jamming and breaking the thread. I think now I fixed the problem, however I gave up on the project I was doing for now.
The day was so rainy, cold and dark. No pinch of sun could go through the clouds to give me a small dose of vitamin D. But even if it could, I would probably not have left the house. I am leaving the house less and less. It’s probably the weather and the fact that I don’t feel physically well, but I also don’t want to leave. What can I do outside? I don’t like anyone in my hometown or I tolerate some people, at most, but even that is hard to do.
For example, on the 22nd, I had to change my arm implant, like I mentioned, so I went to the local health center and waited for over 1 hour in the waiting room. People waiting there were so loud, even though they were in a healthcare building. Most of the things they would say were pointless, at best, and stupid, at worst. The dumber the thing they said was, the louder they were. I remember when I was a child, the healthcare center had posters saying “Silence is gold”, “Please stay quiet”. In those situations I felt vindicated, because everyone would tell me all the time to speak more or to speak up.
During kindergarten, I had selective mutism, which means I could only talk in situations in which I was comfortable. I would talk a lot at home and with close friends, but I could not say a word to strangers, people I sort of knew, and teachers. I would also usually not speak to peers, but would whisper a few words sometimes. No matter how much someone would try to pressure me to talk, I would not. In fact that would make me less likely to do so.
I don’t know for sure why I couldn’t talk. It was probably social anxiety, but I also remember not liking my voice when I was a child. It was very high pitched, shrill, but equally quiet. I hated the sound of it. One time I went to a psychologist and I remember he said that I was scared of talking and that was it. I never went back for another consultation. Mental health is so fucking great in my country! I don’t know how they expect to help anyone, when you only have to go to a consultation once. But I have only had bad experiences with mental health professionals, so maybe it was a good thing I didn’t have to go there many times. I don’t know why they expect me to talk about my problems and tell them what’s wrong, when I am sent to them due to the fact that I don’t talk.
I would probably not care about talking so little, but people annoyed me or bullied me for it, so I started feeling self-conscious. I honestly think that a lot of talking is unnecessary and annoying. People feel uncomfortable when they’re silent, but sometimes it’s better to not say anything or just say “I don’t know about that”, instead of spewing bullshit.
This is all related to the fact that I don’t like people from my hometown. I was quiet and I wanted to be left alone, so they bullied me. And I don’t care how long it has been since then. They never apologized and they are still nasty bullies, so I feel entitled to not wanting to deal with them in any way.
And this is in some way related to me being depressed. I have been depressed a big part of my life due to bullying and abuse, so whenever I struggle with something, I go back into being depressed. Maybe if people were more accepting of me and didn’t mistreat me, I wouldn’t be depressed or have low self-esteem. It doesn’t matter how much I achieve, the moment I don’t do so well, I think I am a failure. Every single perceived rejection or criticism pulls me down. But I always pull through in some way, so that’s what I will do.

I don’t like new years. I don’t like that they remind me of the passage of time, which reminds me how much I haven’t done or achieved yet.
I don’t like January. It’s the worst month of the year, it’s the coldest, darkest and saddest month. All the holidays celebrations end and the Christmas decorations come down, which makes everything look even more grey. There are no holidays or celebrations, those only happen in February. I don’t want to just write about sad things in this journal, however, it has been impossible in the last few months. I tend to write more when I am sad and lately nothing good has happened at all. It’s just frustration and confusion.
I haven’t found a job yet and it is pulling me down, not just because I want to work and leave my parents house forever, but because I only get rejections. It feels like I have to go through mild traumatic experiences just to get a job. It sounds like an exaggeration and dramatic, but job hunting reminds me of bad experiences in the past with job interviews, school evaluations and bad professional advisors. I think I have Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria or I’m just very sensitive when it comes to perceived rejection or criticism. People say “don’t take it personally”, but that advice does not work for my brain.
If I am not good enough to not be rejected, then I am not satisfied. Whenever I get rejection emails, my day is ruined. I decided to create an email filter to filter out the most common rejection email expressions. They literally are all the same, it is starting to annoy me. A lot of them come only one day or a few hours after I apply, because they are putting my application through an applicant tracking system (ATS) and rejecting me based on that system. It’s even more frustrating when I know I have 100% of the requirements, but I am still rejected just because the keywords in my CV aren’t exactly what they are looking for. And these job ads very rarely mention they use systems like that. And I feel even more frustrated with the fact that I have done many CV writing workshops and none of them mentioned how to do an ATS-friendly CV. They just mention “make sure your CV is readable and has the right keywords”, but there is much more to an ATS-friendly CV than that. I used to think that having some graphics would make the CV more interesting to read and that the best format is pdf. And those are good if your CV is seen by a person, but terrible if they go through an ATS. I had to redo a new CV in Word format, without any graphics and with the correct formatting and layout. It’s so frustrating because, like I said, most job ads don’t mention if they use ATS or if a person will read your CV. You have to look out for clues to know which one is which. Teachers in high school would say that the university we would study could decide if someone would look at our CV or not and then professional advisors would tell us to get the most experience we could, even if unpaid. But then if that experience isn’t exactly what the ATS is looking for, it does not matter. I think now I will focus more on job ads for small companies and organizations and the ones that have a person of contact in the ad.
The only interview I got was a 15 minute one for a consulate. I was glad at first, but then I saw that there were 24 other applicants and I knew I would never have a chance. It went horribly. My webcam stopped working 10 minutes before the interview, so I had to quickly download an app that would connect my smartphone camera with my laptop. But because of that, the microphone and sound didn’t work when I started the interview, but I was able to solve it by unplugging the earphones. But all this stuff made me even more nervous and my voice started shaking and I felt like I couldn’t properly speak my own mother language. I was so glad that it was only 15 minutes and the moment I finished the interview I started crying and feeling ashamed. I didn’t even read the email with the evaluation of the interview, because I knew I did horribly and then I would compare my terrible result with everyone else’s result. I was already depressed, but after that I started feeling even more depressed. I don’t know when I will get another interview, because I don’t get any positive responses, so I am scared I will do a poor performance again. Why does this have to be so hard? I just want a regular job. It’s so ridiculous how hard it is to get that nowadays, especially for someone with anxiety. I got into a good university and got good professional experiences, but it’s still so hard.
Because of this experience, I was reminded of a professional advisor in my university. She gave workshops about how to write CVs and how to do interviews, but mostly focused on the job search for the fields of engineering and economics, which is different from the field of languages and humanities. However, she never mentioned that, so I thought that her advice would apply to my case.
In the last year of my master’s degree, I wanted to apply for an Erasmus internship after finishing the degree. Unfortunately I was not able to do it, because the window to find a work placement is very short. I initially got one, but then it fell through because my internship was not an obligatory one.
The Erasmus office had the option to schedule a meeting with this professional advisor, in which she would go through my CV and tell how to make improvements. So I took time off from a traineeship I was doing to finish my degree just for that.
Instead of helping me, she basically barraged me. My CV had simple lines in between titles and contents for aesthetical reasons and she said it made it hard to understand which content belonged to what. Ok, that was a suggestion, however, I had already gotten a traineeship with that CV, so it was not that big of a deal, but it’s always good to have some tips. But then she started barraging me even more for not having any kind of work or volunteering experience, even though I was already doing a traineeship during my master’s degree. And told me that I would not find any job without any experience. Also complained about me not mentioning any hobbies in the CV, when that's a thing that is usually unnecessary and is only added if it's relevant to the job. She also scoffed when she asked if I played any instruments and I said I tried to learn guitar but I'd given up. I had been really depressed during my bachelor’s degree, so I didn’t have the will to do any extra work or hobbies. I was already glad that I finished the degree in three years and had gotten into a master's degree.
I tried to explain that my hometown has no jobs, which makes it hard to find summer jobs, then she said there is an industrial area in a nearby town. But the industrial area is like over 1 hour away by car and, at the time, I didn't have a car or a driver’s license.
She scoffed at the fact that the traineeship I was doing to finish my masters was unpaid, but then she gave me the "advice" of doing traineeships for free during summer to gain experience. She even had the nerve to suggest some big online luxury company, as if she wasn’t the one telling me that I'd never get a job without experience. How could I get a job in a company like that when I have “no experience”? Also the company was like 80 km away from where I lived, so how could I even go work there without a car. She also devalued my degree and said that I wouldn't find any job, which is always the same bullshit that everyone says about humanities and language degrees. She said that I didn’t have any real world experience besides studying and that the real world is actually much harder, but she never even cared about my perspective of being someone from a lower social economic status and area, by the way she was talking.
After giving me this "advice" she barraged me even more for not defending myself from what she was saying and my choices for my CV and basically insulted me by indirectly saying that I had I had no personality and that would be a bad look in an interview. That hurt me so much that I was trying to fight back the tears. If I was in an actual interview, I would have prepared on what to say and how to act. I was basically listening to her stupid “advice", so of course I was not responding back and trying to “defend" my CV. I just wanted some tips and someone to help me to find a traineeship in another country, not to be insulted and to be told that I would never get a job.
Then she had the nerve to ask me to send her my improved CV. I didn’t do that, of course. None of her advice was any good and I would never want to see or talk to her ever again. When I left I put on sunglasses and started crying immediately. I went straight to my dorm room and I basically spent the rest of the day crying. I felt so insulted and humiliated. I already had insecurities when it came to my personality and my ability to find a job, so hearing those words really hurt me. None of her “advice” helped me in any way. In fact, a lot of her advice, even the advice from her workshops, wasn’t even good, other people had told me that.