It’s not so easy to just say, “Move out”, because believe me, I’ve tried. Two years ago I moved to a different town on my own for a job I got hired for, a two week trial period, and even though I tried my very best and was so stressed out, they wanted to fire me after only one week, because I couldn’t follow their verbal instructions. They didn’t seem to like me in general. I pushed through for the second week and came back home. Of course, I didn’t get the job.

I was super determined though, so I applied for another job while I was still there and got hired for it. It was a landscaping job. I tried my hardest and REALLY needed the reassurance that I was doing a good job and doing everything right, but of course most coworkers and bosses are vague with their feedback and directions, and then get mad at you for not living up to their poorly communicated expectations.

After two weeks my boss called me and said she was concerned that I wasn’t keeping up and it was only going to get harder as summer approached, and she asked me what I thought. I took it as, “I’m firing you, but I’m too chicken to come out and say it because I need you to quit first.” I broke down and absolutely BAWLED uncontrollably over the phone with her, for quite a while, until she finally tried to tell me “lovingly” to buck up and stop crying.

I cried so hard because I had failed so miserably, not once, but TWICE over the course of only one month, and that had never happened to me before in jobs. Such quick rejections. It was so ultimately humiliating and discouraging. I didn’t even know if anyone else failed as hard and frequently as I did. I felt like this was my one last chance at proving that I was capable of making money and moving out, and I failed so horribly at it that I never wanted a job again. It was the nail in the coffin for my self worth and capability of being independent, so after that point I kinda gave up. I tried some at home business ideas and had some interest, but I got this scary empty feeling and stopped. Feeling like I wasn’t good enough to act like I knew what I was doing. Feeling too exposed, trying to market myself.

Right now I’m working for my mom doing pet sitting, which has gradually become a viable day job as we’re getting more and more regular clients. She said she picked this business mostly for me and my sister. It’s comfortable to stay with her, to be honest. To not get yelled at by cold, demanding, unfeeling bosses who make me feel like crap about myself. My mom is so compassionate and understanding about me and my problems, because she actually knows me. She knows I have a hard time understanding verbal directions said once. She’s patient. The problem is, that just creates more strings connected to her.

I went to a therapist last year who was really great and helped me out a ton (believe me, I was much worse then). I regret not telling her the real reason why I quit trying to move out after that landscaping job. I just said “I don’t know”. I wrote it out clearly and thoroughly now. It took all the wind out of my sails, experiencing an unusual amount of rejection. I’m probably just a baby about it though. Half the battle is not knowing that other people struggle like this too, because I’m so introverted and never get to know people that intimately. To understand that I don’t fail worse than literally everybody else around me.

Half the time I still have this underlying feeling that I’m a failure as an adult and the knowledge of that failure is so painful and difficult to cope with, the other half of the time I blame my parents for not teaching me how to be confident and well-adjusted so that my life would be so different by now... and sometimes I realize that I don’t know what I want to do with my life, and I’m scared to try. Blaming my parents feels better than blaming myself, which I did so many times before therapy and was constantly self harming and suicidal because of that self blame.

Through therapy I came to realize what a messed up upbringing I really had, and how that contributed to who I am today, which has fueled my new feelings of anger and resentment towards them- sometimes even hatred. I’m so tired of being so hard on myself, like I chose to be this messed up in the head, and so afraid of success. I just wasn’t raised right. That’s the stage I’m at right now. At least I don’t have any suicidal ideations anymore. They used to be daily, frequent occurrences before therapy. I’ve been practicing self love and patience, but it hasn’t been easy.

Here’s my real conundrum, boiled down to the core: I’m always so disappointed in myself for not living up to my expectations of myself as an adult, especially with all the gifts I have and how sure I was that I’d have a bright, successful future ahead of me (like most millennials it seems). Yet at the same time, I’m so scared of success. I’m so scared of getting what I want that I self sabotage daily. There’s always something that gets in the way, whether it be procrastination, panic or a sudden and unexplainable loss of interest once I’ve jumped a hurdle and had a great triumph. I am the negative definition of perfectionism.