Work

It's Sunday. A day of relaxation, tranquility, and in today's case, rain. Normally I enjoy my Sundays, but lately I've noticed a slight edginess around 7 pm, when it hits me that the week is about to start anew and I have no control over its arrival. Deep down, I know I ought to be grateful for work in these difficult times, but given its effect on my mental health, it's like trying to be grateful that your stove works while it burns your arms.

To give a little history, I was hospitalized in January, threw myself back into work for a month, had a relapse, got into a day program, and returned on shortened hours 2 weeks ago. Normally, I've been told, most people don't go back to work so quickly. I know that I've propelled myself to go back out of guilt, guilt that my bosses are being so nice and accommodating of my condition and doctor's appointments. I can see now why people don't go back so fast - regardless of whatever factors you're dealing with, adding the stresses of your job don't seem like such a great idea. In my case, I deal with negative thought, passive-aggressiveness, low self-esteem, low self-confidence, memory/knowledge loss, and dozing off.

Last Friday, I experienced a classic example of what tends to make me depressed and off my rocker for a while: a difficult client e-mails in to me and my teammate for help a half hour before my shift ends. After I respond, she misunderstands my words, writes an indignant e-mail to me, my teammate, and our bosses' boss, decrying service. By the time we've calmed her down, it's 15 minutes to my shift's end. My teammate is offering to go down and see her even though she's technically my client. The thing about this teammate is that he makes workaholics look lazy. That day, he had just finished handling an emergency job worth millions of dollars, covered for our supervisor, and looked exhausted. So I tried to get him to help me stave off the visit while we find a solution, except that she just oh so conveniently has everything we need to help her. Finally, after staying a half hour later, I take off to catch my train. I find out afterwards that my teammate stayed till 6:30 helping this client.
Thus, at 6:30 pm, I am feeling: a) anxious from having been chewed out, b) frazzled from trying to find a last minute solution, c) guilty that my teammate took on the job, d) resentful that he handled my client, and e) feeling like a loser because I don't work myself to the bone like him. By nature our department works hard, but not as hard as my team, which includes the super teammate and the two bosses. How does this all relate to being bipolar, depressed or otherwise?

I guess my point is that when everyday is a struggle just to keep things together enough to wake up and walk out the door, having events like that happen is like a gale of wind rush through a rickety house frame. I literally had a brief flash of wanting to kill myself because I was so overwhelmed. That doesn't seem healthy or normal to me. And while these events don't happen everyday, something shakeworthy usually pops up every 3-7 days. During the off days, I'm sitting in a 6x6 windowless room in a basement without any nice small tasks to do, just big scary ones like reading manuals or checking over the entire database for our office. If I had nice small tasks to do for a period of time, I could stop ruminating, have a sense of accomplishment, and maybe just be calm for a bit. I wish I had the ability to tackle the bigger tasks, but for some reason, they overwhelm me to the point where I get psyched out.

So if you're someone out there who is unemployed, mentally ill, and is dying for work and wants to smack me upside the head for being an ingrate, I accept that. But I also hope that there's someone out there who can relate and maybe be brave enough to let me know how they survived a job that would send them into a spiral of despair.