tell them what they want to hear

Just need to get this out of my system before it devours me, bit by painful bit.

I HATE JOB NETWORKS. There I said it, again. I’m sure that I’ve had this conversation with people in the past. I have a new case manager. It’s up to10 , double digits. Wonder how long this one will last before he gives up on me and hands me off to be someone else’s failure case. It seems to be the fashion. I’m sort of a job agency pass the parcel where the layers that they remove are layers of my already fragile sanity.
They always make it seem like I’m not trying, when I do. I get up every morning, go to the library and apply for jobs. Just because I don’t have the time to sit at a computer for an hour per job, suddenly I’m not trying. If I’m in town, I don’t want to get a parking ticket because I’m applying for a job. If I don’t get the job, I’ll be the one with the parking fine that I can’t afford (and need to beg money from the parental figures).
I always say that you can gauge how bad a session is by how many tears I shed, and how long the negativity lasts.
Reason 1 for the tear explosion: My resume. He said it wasn’t good enough. Now, this was after I had pointed out that I have an incredibly low self worth and low self-esteem. You would think that someone who had been in that situation before (as he repeated several times), would have thought better of ripping my resume apart in front of me. Maybe I wouldn’t have been quite so emotional if he had of just given constructional dot points. No. Instead he made me feel like a complete fucking idiot. Which seems to be a condition of their employment, written on their position description in invisible ink.
Reason 2: He brought up the big No-Go zone – work for the dole (or government sanctioned slave labour). He went on and on about it and how eventually I would have to take part in it. This was about 40 minutes after he had ripped through my resume and said that I have no ‘experience’ because all my admin skills are from volunteer roles and also from Work for the Dole. I asked him how they could justify work for the dole if he thought that (as a fake employer) would not have given me a job based on my experiences in these programs. He couldn’t answer me.
It ended with me saying that, if the time comes, I’ll be going to a doctor and getting a certificate saying that I cannot attend work for the dole because it tends to make me want to hurt myself. If something damages my self worth and my self esteem, I will not participate in it. I couldn’t even get the words out, I was that emotional, about how it made me feel to be forced to take part in it.
Reason 3: I asked for some help, like a referral to someone who could help me make sense of the paperwork I got from Centrelink. Instead I got a lecture how, when he was on the dole and a sole trader it made things complicated. I won’t be making his mistakes. It really annoys me when people try to tell you that just because they failed doing something means that you shouldn’t even try.
When I walked in, I was willing to give the guy a chance. New people deserve that. If every meeting ends with me in tears though, I don’t know what I’m going to do.
I can’t go through this again.
I won ‘t go through this again.
I can’t be made to feel like I’m nothing more than a thing, completely void of emotions, or the ability to say ‘no’ if something makes me feel uneasy.
It’s my life. I want a say in how it goes, no matter how little the path seems to be.