Quote:
Originally Posted by sideblinded
insertname, I can so relate to your story here. I have also been where you have been. I lost my career to mental illness. I struggled before and during my career but at least I had some purpose. I feel lost now that I am on disability due to depression. I am very disappointed as well at how my life turned out. It isn't irrational to feel a huge loss because of what mental health disorders have done to our lives. It is ok to feel what you are feeling. It is grief. It is loss. It is so very sad. I really feel for you.
There is always hope, though. I feel that there is always a remedy to a problem. Thanks for sharing and helping ME to know that I am not alone.  |
Thank you for sharing. I can't even begin to explain how much my career meant to me. I had been so driven - I still am really - and I used to excel at a bunch of things because of that trait - i.e. I just worked really hard because success was so important to me and I believed in myself. That was such a part of my identity that I feel like my whole sense of self has been taken away.
I'm really glad you shared actually, although I'm so sorry to hear you're in a similar place, because all year I've been saying to myself 'yeah, first world problems'. I mean, I have a job and in other people's eyes I have success, I have my health back, I have friends, I live an active life, there isn't actually anything wrong, it's just that I didn't have the success I believe I could have had. I don't have the high flying lifestyle I was vying for and that I worked so hard to achieve. It's what I wanted since I was 10 and I knew I had to work hard to get it so I put my all into it and then as soon as it was within my grasp I got ill and it was all taken away. I've always felt that nothing says 'middle class problems' like 'I wanted to work in TV but I've had to settle for PR!' - haha - but for me it really does hurt...
After I wrote that last post and it was out in the open, though, I did think to myself - hey, you can choose to look at it that way if you want, or you could choose to accept that there's no telling what will happen in life and if you love doing something you should just keep at it without needing the success, because it only makes you miserable. Maybe I will become the high flier I wanted to be, maybe I won't, but maybe I will find happiness another way. If I stop thinking 'nothing is going to turn out how I wanted it to' and start thinking 'I don't know what's going to happen, something great might happen, isn't life exciting?' then I'm sure I'd feel very differently...
Would that help you or do you think your situation is very different?