Cruel Joke

I know it’s not personal, but my life trajectory seems to keep take turns of cruel jokes.

When I took a job for half the salary at a tiny org, to escape a corporate-like workplace, bullying and toxic environment and too long work hours, my boss bullied me and let me go the Friday before Thanksgiving, just one-week shy of my six-month probationary period, without warning and after she confirmed a raise and paid for a training course for me to attend the following month and complimented my performance. When I became severely depressed, and was on government insurance, I could get an appt with a psychiatrist for three months, so self-medicated on opioids and self-harm, too scared to get any help that would lead to my commitment and interrupt job interviews I needed to go to find employment. Then on the day of my long-awaited appointment with the psychiatrist, they didn’t show up without any advance warning and they said next available appt was another month away.

When I finally found a job and had to move the first thing I did on my new health insurance was try to see a PCP to get referral to a psychiatrist and the nurse who took my intake looked appalled that was my reason for the visit and told me “they don’t do that.” I almost left, but the PCP felt so bad he made a call for me to avoid the three month waiting list for a psychiatrist. When my new job, hired me without an actual office or workspace to work from, and i was essentially working from my car or the basement of my sister’s house where I could hear the kids running upstairs, without a printer and scanner and basic things I needed to do my job, i got depressed and still self-harming, I became emotional with my new therapist, who called in the new psychiatrist and who told me if I didn’t commit myself to the mental hospital he would call the cops on me. I had to get my sister to pick me up, when I had tried to hide my mental illness from my family who didn’t believe in it and was worried I was about to jeopardize myself at another job.

After being hospitalized again a year later, and realizing that while I loved my job, it as harming my health and the salary wasn’t livable with my health care bills, I found a new job. This job was fine, there was mild discontent, the work wasn’t particularly interesting/challenging, and a white woman manager screamed at me in racist manner and I had to educate the org on how to handle a human resources complaint, but i had a good community in the workplace. I was in a lot of therapy, and thought I was finally out of the ditch I had fallen into.

And then a job opened up, my dream job. After waiting 10 years, there was finally an opening. But the first round of hiring came and went and I said no, I should stay, things may be boring but I’m stable and I should stay. Then a second round came and I decided to go for it, there were vague warnings that the org had become problematic and that the new supervisor was difficult, but I was treated so well during hiring process, I was convinced I was MEANT for this job.

My dream job was a NIGHTMARE. The org was a chaotic mess, and everyone was unhappy. The supervisor had been accused of anti-black racism the month i was hired and was hated by nearly everyone in the org. I thought I could walk on the tightrope to make things work, I wanted to do the work, but the supervisor was probably borderline and engaged in splitting and the moment she thought i had turned from a friend into a challenger she waged a vicious campaign against me, and even engaged in illegal action, which this time, I had the ability to challenge successfully. But I was ruined psychologically. And after a year off meds and stabled, I feel face down first back in the ditch. Back in the hospital. This time hopelessly suicidal. Treatment wasn’t working at all.

Then I decided to move halfway across the world and embarked on an nontraditional path for working. And the first place I went, I got work quickly, but the racism entrenched in the country didn’t escape me, and quickly I felt the hostility from coworkers, from my security guard, my domestic worker, and from the public. They trashed the work i had done and then I lost the continuing contract – told it wasn’t personal, and then didn’t know where to go next, how to start all over again.

But I did, I found a new place, and even though suicidal ideations and even an attempt kept happening, I was making progress. I found a place to live that seemed safe and secure and work was bumpy but had good moments. I was tentative at first, not wanting to nest in case I got uprooted again. But when 2019 closed, I was hopeful I had started to set up a life for myself that would make sense.

2020 started with illness… with diagnosis of autoimmune disorder… my body betraying me in utterly new ways…. self-destructive behavior…. hurtful friends….. but i pushed through went on travels with the money I had saved for a rewarding vacation…. covid left me stranded at friends house in lockdown and now i’m unable to get back to the place i tentatively called home, i have no secure income and in a place that’s costs of living is 25 times where I was before, and i have no idea how long i’ll be here. I have no friends where I am, and it took an insane amount of work to get healthcare to get access to the medication i’m on for both my chronic illnesses.

Everytime I feel like I have my feet on solid ground, I fall back in the ditch. It feels like a recurring cruel joke. I am not sure how I’m going to be able to ever break this cycle.

And now when i’m tired and upset, i get physically sick and i’m bed ridden, and when I’m bed ridden I get depressed and I can’t get out of bed to uplift my mood.

This is a perverse sense of humor. I know others face far worse and unrelenting oppressive circumstances and that the world is all suffering during this global pandemic. But right now. In this very moment, I am throwing myself a pity party, I spent the whole day crying…. crying b/c doctors don’t give two shits about my actual well being, crying b/c i trusted my mother who betrayed me like she was bound to and I hate myself for trusting her and not policing strict boundaries, crying b/c i don’t know how I’m going to financially survive going forward, and it’s impossible to know how to make good decisions and not throw myself into another suicidal frenzy. Crying b/c when I’m this physically sick I have no idea how to self-soothe and talking to friend after friend still leaves me feeling like shit.

Universe you keep laughing, I keep crying.

All i want to do…i just want to sleep… i just want to sleep forever…