Member-only story
My Unemployment Journey
I found my first gray hair when I was 22. And immediately burst into tears. While I did briefly think that if my girlfriend ever broke up with me I’d never find another romantic partner as a silver-haired 23 year old, vanity wasn’t the main reason I was ugly crying. No, I was sobbing because I thought I was dying.
I had graduated from college two months earlier, and I still didn’t have a job. I was working a couple of part time contracts, but I didn’t want to be a freelancer; I wanted a steady paycheck that I could stand on while I got my adult legs under me. But after two months, all I’d gotten was ignored and ghosted by as many employers as I could apply to.
Every other week, my girlfriend found me crying over my laptop. Why wasn’t I good enough? I was such a failure. I’d never get a job, I thought, as everyday seemed to make me increasingly unemployable.
When I found my gray hair, I was convinced that the stress of the past two months had caused it, and that it was a signal that my stress was taking years off of my life. Once I was slightly more coherent, some quick Googling revealed that the link between stress and gray hair is tenuous, at best, and I felt a little better.
