She asked when I am coming back. I have been scared of going back to work since the lockdown began. The anxiety is so bad and I have been struggling with the guilt of feeling like my colleagues were trying to get rid of me. And then telling my manager I think this. But I also told her I know this is not true but I am feeling very paranoid. I told this to my colleague she said I need not feel guilty about feeling sick… and that my colleagues are asking how I am and want for me to go back…
This tells me something: I don’t want to quit this job. I want to go back. It will be hard to get there but once I am there I will realise I have nothing to feel scared about. I can’t keep quitting jobs and running forever.
If it gets too much you can always move on. I have been through a lot of jobs and I haven’t really worked for over 15 years now. I’ve done my fair share of changing jobs.
Yeah, well, From the age of 17 to 19 I had about 15 different jobs. None of them lasted more than three months and I got fired from at least 7 of them. Out of all those jobs I literally never gave notice at any of them. I either got fired, walked out, or just stopped going.
Cut to: age 19. I got diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. I didn’t work again until I was 23. But my first job after getting diagnosed I worked at for four years. And from the age of 23 to my current age of 59, I’ve had about another 14 or 15 jobs. I worked another job for four years. I’ve lasted three years at a couple more. I was a Park Ranger for two years. The rest I lasted anywhere from two days to 8 months. I’ve been at my current job for 7 years.
My point is that things change and you may very well find a job that you last at. If I looked at all my jobs and the fact that I only lasted a very short time at most of them, you might predict that I couldn’t make it past 3 months. But you would obviously be wrong. Things change, people change, seasons change. Everything changes. And with a little luck, some hard work and maybe a little help you may very well find yourself at a job that you can tolerate the work, you can tolerate the people and you find yourself staying there for a few years. It ain’t impossible.
Its a good point… maybe it is not the job for me… but I still do not want to leave without going back once to see why I have been worried over something so minor.
It is hard to get back into the swing of things after this quarantine…it was very hard for me to leave the house at first, I had stopped getting dressed regularly so getting dressed seemed like a monumental task. But I pushed through and forced myself to do it until I was OK with it again.
