36/ M.

I've been diagnosed with PTSD, as well as GAD. That's how I found this forum.

Sorry this is so long! My questions are at the end if you want to skip the life story.

Between the ages of 20 - 32 I had a full-time job because that's what I was supposed to do, right? Get a job, get out of my parents house, get a car, pay bills, blah blah blah. I went back to school when I turned 32. I didn't like my job and wanted to get my degree, in hopes that that piece of paper would help me find something better. It didn't, of course. I graduated with a liberal sciences degree, which led me right back to another job in the same exact field I was working in before college.

I lasted about three months in that job before depression set in. This was a job I could have made a career out of. They offered great benefits and paid me more money than I had ever seen before. There was a lot of upward movement, as well. Friends and family called it, "A perfect job for me." But the longer I worked for the company, the worse my depression became. I began having suicidal thoughts, began skipping work constantly using my "sick days" and mental health days, started spending more time crying in the bathroom than at my desk, and started seeing a therapist. The therapist didn't help much, though.

Why?

No matter what she said, or asked me to do, it never stopped this from happening: Every night before I went to bed I imagined what my future would look like if I remained in this job. I saw the money, the car, the new house, maybe even marriage and kids. I saw forty to sixty hours of my life every week taken by some job I didn't care about at all. And just seeing my self growing old like this depressed the hell out of me, and I wanted nothing to do with it anymore. At all. Ever again. With ANY full-time job. I promised myself if I ever thought about killing myself again I'd quit my job. I turned in my two weeks a couple days later. I figured I would take some time off, not worry about work, and focus on stuff I want to do. Actions that make me happy. I began working out again, eating healthy, reading and drawing and writing. My days were NOT spent in front of the TV playing video games and / or watching Netflix. So I wasn't being lazy. I was working, namely, on my mental health and some passions of mine.

My depression lifted. I saw light. I didn't know what direction it was coming from, or what route I needed to take to get there, but it was there, for the first time since I was 20, it was there. I ran out of money pretty quickly though, so my mom let me move in with her temporarily. That was last year. She wants me to move out soon, because she thinks getting back out into the world would be good for me. And maybe I think so as well? Don't know. I feel my mentally stable, now, and I'm actually trying to publish a book I wrote. I have a part-time job I don't mind so much, either. I don't want to ruin how healthy I feel right now.

But, sadly, I can't survive on my own with just a part-time.

So the dread has returned. The depression as well.

I have a job offer. It pays well, and will help me get out of the house and on my own again.

But if the depression about even having a full time job again is already upon me, what happens when I'm actually working there? Will suicidal thoughts come back? If this my life now? Is this everyone's life? Just working until they die? How do people cope with it? I obviously can't, and it's scaring the **** out of me.

Is this all there is? Just work work work, with maybe little bits of light (like finding a significant other, or maybe a short story getting published) poking through? It sounds so miserable that I don't even want to be a part of it.

I want my life to belong to me. Not a company. Not a boss.

I feel so lost. I feel like I'm the only person to have these thoughts. Like I'm broken, and everyone around me is not. I read somewhere that close to 80% of people either dislike, or hate, their jobs. Then why do they do it? How do they do it without going insane?

Maybe this can all be worked out with a better therapist, I don't know. I just get a sick feeling in my stomach giving so much time to a job and being miserable when I could be happy, working on my mind, my body, and my book.

TLDR: I hate having a job. Is this all there is to life?