Trigger Warning: Pessimism, Negativity, and Victimhood
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I'm wallowing in self-pity, which in itself makes me sick.

I'm 'normal' well over 90% of the time. The problem is that I live 100% of the time with the consequences of when I haven't governed my behavior.

In a fit of mania a couple of years ago, I slugged a guy in the Charlotte airport. Never mind that I was defending someone. I was taken off to jail and was faced with the decision to either use my corporate Amex to bail myself out, or to be lost for two days until Monday. (Nobody knew where I was. My phone was dead. Cell phones don't take collect calls and my family doesn't have a landline.)

As can be expected, my company didn't like the Amex thing very much and fired me when they found out about a year ago.

Even though I was only out of work for a couple of months, this knocked me into Chapter 13 bankruptcy. Chapter 13 is like a jail sentence where you give all of your 'disposable income' to a trustee for five years. For me at least, this was a big stressor.

I ended up taking a job with a small consulting firm. In that I've spent my career with ethical companies like Vanguard and J&J, it was a struggle from the jump, as I immediately began to see unethical (and borderline immoral) behavior from management.

I would quickly find out that the engagement manager has all of the symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (or maybe even full-blown psychopathy), and was more than happy to treat me as nothing but a commodity.

Because of my technical aptitude (and the overall weakness of the rest of the team I was on), he dumped all the work on me. Why not? He figured he had me in a captive situation given that I had the black mark of being fired from my previous job, and was in Chapter 13 bankruptcy.

Everything came to a head in June when I had the nerve to go on vacation with my family and things blew up in my absence. Being attacked for exercising a right triggered a blowup and I lost my cool in a closed-door meeting. In spite of all of my productivity and my very strong relationships with my colleagues and our clients, it was lights out for me.

So here I am a few months later, without medical insurance. I can't afford therapy or medication, but I also can't qualify for medicaid. I'm spiraling down and down and it's only getting worse.

The pain is unbearable, but I have to find a way to hang on. I have a very sensitive 9-year-old (one of my triggers, if I'm being honest), and I know it will destroy his life if I do what I so desperately want (need?) to do.

I'm not sure how it helps to write these words, but I don't figure it hurts either. I dunno, good reader, I hope you're doing better than I am. I hope even more that just one of you who reads this happens to be looking for a $125K talent for the reduced price of $75K. (I can thrive in any white collar job as long as I work for a company that values me, as evidenced by the fact that I've had two different six-figure careers.)

I hope this hasn't triggered any anxiety. I hope my trigger warning above was unnecessary. I hope nothing but the best for all who choose these boards for support and comfort.