Tuesday 29 May 2012

Have a baby, lose your career, that is, of course, unless you have maternity leave

Hi there,

I am a mother to one very cute 16 month old but today, as my first blog entry, I am talking about going back to work. 

You see, I used to be a journalist. My mother-in-law would clarify "are" but it just seems arbitary at this point. You see, I have had a few interviews, where the death bell always seems to be "you don't have enough recent experience". 

Well DAHH, I had a child.  Do you want civilisation to continue?  I think to myself. The system is what needs to change, but that is for another entry.

The reality is a sad and true symptom of being a women. It is competely un-fair and has made me lost and sad because of it.  I feel this way because I have been unwillingly thrown into a situation that is mostly out of my control.

In conclusion, because of this sly trip-step of modern society, I can't seem to find any work.

I have decided to start this blog as a way of not completey loosing my mind out of frustration. After looking for work for about six months solid, I hit a wall last night and screamed and cried the walls down in my house late at night when husband came home from work.
"It's not fair", I cried. "I am being descriminated against for having had a child," I lamented. "I am stuck and I am treated as an idiot because I now have a son, which makes absolutely no sense to me," I wept.

My husband just sat there with an open mouth and a burning cigarette in his hand not knowing what to do with this  bunch of un-ravelled wool before him. He knew platitiudes would make me even more upset so he sat speechless and watched me cry.  He knew what I was saying was true.  Everyone does.  It is the sly underbelly of manhood.  They, on a vauge almost undetectable level, seem to enjoy the power in the achilles heel of motherhood, one we have to bear alone.

I screamed and cried for a good 20 minutes and at the end of it felt that most of the melencholy had vacated my sad mummy body.

I lit a cigarette. Had a cup of tea. Wept softly this time, without the drama, as if for the first time in a long time I had said exactly what was on my forever furreging mind and the truth resinated with me, as if I'd watched a film about someone just like me and identified with the character. 

That poor girl, I would have thought in the cinema. Laws really need to change to support women who are 50 percent of the workforce if we are to have a balanced democracy, I would have chatted about to my companion over coffee after the film had ended.

But, alas, the story was just my life and back at my patio I sat there with my tea and felt resigned a little. Resigned is, after all, much better than being blinded by grief.

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