I never wrote cover letters. At the beginning, I applied for jobs that only required filling out a form (mostly retail) and waited until I had had a couple jobs to write a resume. I had worked the summer between high school and college and my college summers and did have a resume when I graduated college but it wasn't anything that could get me a job at that time.

I would see about getting some useful skills, take a practical class or two and volunteer in positions that would use those skills so when a job possibility did come up it would be easier to move "sideways" into it instead of thinking of working as a great leap up.