I'm really really nervous about sharing this, but I don't want to be in the closet about it. Plus it would be wonderful to find other people with similar stories, and if I'm ever going to, it's likely to be here. So here goes:
I've drifted into everything I've ever done with my life. I've done a fair bit of travelling, but it was always initiated by someone else. And every job I've ever had I got through friends or family.
School was fine because they tell you what to do, and I graduated top of my class. Then I went to work as a software engineer at the company I'd been interning at. My lecturers gave me a hard time for not shopping myself around, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.
I kept getting landed with more and more responsibility. And you don't get much feedback in the real world. I never knew whether my work was good enough. I was little Lisa Simpson wailing, “Grade me!”.
Eighteen months in, and I was desperate. I felt like I was drowning. I was vomiting I was so stressed. All I wanted to do was go home and hide in a cupboard, and sometimes I bunked off work to do just that.
Then an old boyfriend invited me to come live with him in San Francisco. I didn't even consider whether I actually wanted to be with him, I was so blinded by the hope that he'd airlift me out of my life (something else I'm ashamed of). And of course, wherever you go, there you are. You can't run away from it.
I managed another three years. Parts of it were awesome, and I got to work with some amazing people, but the cracks were beginning to show. After an idiot VP borked our project, everyone left, and in my new job, I just couldn't gain any traction. I was paralysed by the fear that I wasn't doing a good job, and the paralysis meant that I wasn't. Eventually I stopped leaving the house, I lost my job and my mother had to come physically pick me up and take me home. I didn't even tell my boyfriend goodbye.
I didn't get out of bed for the rest of the year. By the time I regained some semblance of functioning, my resume was severely broken, and I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to hire me. I still can't. And if by some miracle I did land a job, it would squash me flat in no time. I feel that I'm so fractured by stress I'll never be able to lift responsibility ever again.
So I avoid avoid avoid avoid avoid and waste my life.
Don't be me.
