On the facing of fears

Three years ago, I finished my masters degree and fell into the black hole that is unemployment. I lived in an eight square meter student room, was ill and borderline burned out to start with, sent out job-application after job-application after job-application. I received no unemployment pay from the government because I was under 26 and apparently when you're under 26 you're magical and capable of existing on air determination alone. I felt utterly, completely useless and, this being only the start of the crisis and the rise of the unemployment-rate, got told by many people that I wouldn't have any trouble finding a job if only I just 'worked harder' or 'got better at job-applications'. It was one of the darkest winters in my life and, when I finally did start finding both meaning and employment late that spring, the one thing I resolved never to do again.

This week I found out my contract at my current job might not be renewed due to unexpected, unrestrained, unnecessary budget-cuts. It was like the ground opened up and swallowed me whole.

I'd taken this job for the job-security of it. While IT-helpdesk work was never my dream-job, it gives me a steady income upon which to built my dreams and a group of people that I love working with. It gives me the certainty that even if the yellow-brick-road leads nowhere, my ruby slippers will still protect my feet as I follow it and my companions will catch me when I fall.

While I still think back to that winter three years ago and shudder, I hadn't realised how much I fear it returning until, this Monday, it became a very real possibility. Suddenly, it was like my throat closed up and I couldn't breath. Like I was back there in that tiny room with the walls closing in on me and nowhere to go. Like I was once again utterly useless, utterly worthless and utterly helpless to do anything about it.

Like I was stuck in a nightmare with no way to wake up.

It's an odd thing, fear. I know that this time around, things are different. I live in an apartment where each individual room is larger than that one room I had back then. I am much more balanced, emotionally. I have meaningful work that allows me to make a difference in the world, even if I don't get paid for it. I am 26 and thus the government acknowledges that I need food and a roof over my head to survive. Society is much more aware of the fact that not having a job doesn't mean you're incompetent, just unlucky. I am much more aware of that.

And yet, thinking of the possibility that come January 21th, I might not have a job, I choke up and freeze, the sheer terror of being unemployed again taking over my body and incapacitating it. I feel myself teetering on the edge of a cliff, nothing but yawning emptiness beyond. I know this is irrational, I know it's not even certain and I know that things are different now. That doesn't help any. The only thing I have, the only thing I cling to is this: I have survived before. I can do it again.

And only after I realise that, after I realise my own strength and capability I realise something else too; maybe, just maybe? I won't have to.

Listen!

The world darkens, the sun sinks away,
Listen, listen, hear what I say!
I'll tell a story, for everyone to hear,
So listen, listen, lend me your ear.

I tell of the sun, sinking away in the night,
I chirp of the stars, which I call with all my might.
I sing of the moon, her silver face in the endless dome,
And so I write, every night, the greatest love poem.

I live in the twilight, softly singing in the undergrowth,
Always wishing, longing, for just a little less difference between us both.
Always hoping for someone to listen, for someone to see,
You over there, so high and so mighty, do you see me?

I tell of the greatest desires, much too large for a creature so small,
But those are only dreams, hopes lost to time, though I treasure them all.
I tell of things I will never be and never have been,
Please excuse me, for I'm but a cricket, simple minded and green.

I wrote this poem ten years ago, though the original was in Dutch. Through the years, of all the poetry I wrote, this was the one I kept coming back to.

I never thought to question that until one evening, years later, I talked to a very wise young woman who told me that every person has a story, and every story has a message. A few days later, we were talking about expressing feelings through art in a training and I felt the urge to read out this specific poem. It was only as I was reading it to the group that I realized why this was the one poem I kept coming back to.

This, right here, is my message. The moral of my story. Since then, I've gone on to advocate youth participation on every level where ever and whenever I can. I've had a say on numerous meetings and panels, I've given talks to audiences and spoken up to numerous people who think themselves far out of my league. It's terrifying, every single time.

'Please!' I'll say, 'If you want to know what they think, just talk to them! Ask them what they feel!' and 'Of course they want to have a say! It's their life! It's just a matter of asking the questions that allow them to answer!'. Time and time again, I've felt like that little cricket: Someone trying desperately to be seen, to be heard, to be listened to, but too little and too unimportant for the high and mighty to notice.

Last night, I got asked to go to the Unicef International Children's Rights Summit in November, to take part in a round table discussion on fostercare and it suddenly sank in. People are seeing. People are listening. People are hearing my pleas and my story and they think other people, more important people, should hear it too.

Now, I am 26 years old and I have a masters degree in psychology. I have learned to be eloquent and well-spoken and was raised in a way that allows me to move in circles like that. I walk the walk and talk the talk. And in a sense, that makes it not half the victory that it should be, for I am not the one they should be listening to. They should be listening to the six-year-old with the stutter and the glasses, to the ten-year-old with the temper tantrums and the torn clothes, to the fourteen-year-old with too much black eye-liner and too much feigned indifference, to the eighteen-year-old with the unwashed hair and the joint between his lips. Those are the people they should be talking to.

Instead they are talking to yet another person just like themselves. And all I can really do is go anyway, tell my story and hope against all hope that just one of them will one day hear a cricket, and instead of dismissing it, will go down on their haunches, listen to its story, and make it feel heard.