It always seems that everything happens all at once: four job prospects just as I started college, with one job secured and the others still unknown.
I had applied to so many jobs over the past year with very few results, none of which led to a position that I could perform, physically or mentally. Now, I find myself starting yet another job that I doubt I will be able to do, mainly physically, but also mentally as it is a large corporation and I just returned to college. It’s a lot to expect my anxiety to handle: going from an open schedule to do anything to having to make time for both schoolwork and another terrible job.
I know some people can juggle work, school, and a household, but I cannot. It is a struggle for me on random days to just complete daily tasks, either from a feeling of being overwhelmed by the number of tasks I am expected accomplish couple with our bleak financial outlook, or from crippling depression that makes just getting out of bed extremely hard.
Truthfully, my anxiety fits all qualifications for disability, with the exceptions of having a specialist and prescribed medications. My family doctor prescribed one only once—it made everything worse and I stopped taking it when suicidal thoughts started entering my mind, along with my first ever real hot flash. I have not been able to afford a specialist, especially now since I do not have health insurance of any kind. My anxiety makes life hard—an unfair burden that I did not choose and that gets worse every year.
As for my occasionally overwhelming home life, no, I do not have kids. What I have is a husband who is basically a child and an elderly mother who sometimes acts like a child. When something is broken, I’m the one who needs to fix it, whether that is tech or a door hinge that falls out of the rotting frame. Yes, we rent, but who wants to wait around for a stranger to come inside your home to half-ass a job that really isn’t that hard? And the tech…anyone who has an elderly parent can probably relate to hearing someone bitch at the computer and repeatedly assault peripherals for an issue we know is almost always user error.
I start working at Home Depot tomorrow, making today an extremely depressing day, though more so than usual because it is also my birthday. It is the one day of the year when suddenly people leave generic comments on my Facebook page—people I never hear from the rest of the year. They don’t read my books or posts, they don’t support Addicted Geeks or Sullivan’s Treasures. They just see a Facebook notification and feel obligated to pretend that they are a friend, or that it is okay to wish a random acquaintance a happy birthday and then continue to ignore them the rest of the year.
Birthdays have not been fun since I was a kid. Every year I just get older, meaning more aches and pains and less tolerance for things I love, like winter, sugar, and garden work. There is nothing happy about it, and yet our society pushes this idiotic idea that we should all celebrate with a cake. I would rather celebrate with a day off from all the stress, but I cannot. I spent today trying to get farther on my schoolwork before my horrible new job starts, taking a break only to eat, take a nap with my cats, and to write this post.
I would rather just focus on getting my Bachelor’s Degree as fast as possible than trying to juggle another corporate job and schoolwork. Unfortunately, we have to pay the rent and we need to eat, so I do not have a choice. I wish we lived in an area that had more small businesses as the idea of working for yet another corporation depresses me more than our financial situation.
It will have to do…for now.
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