First some context: The last few years weren't easy. I've always been working as a nurse. Because of a medical problem on both of my eyes, I needed to have a cornea transplant. Long story short, it went terribly wrong and ended up with four more surgeries to repair and make the best of it. This resulted in getting the message from the surgeon that his advice would be to give up my job as a nurse. The risk of getting poked in the eye by a confused/angry patient was a risk I better did not take. I was a year home sick, with no eyesight. Slowly, my eyes started to heal, and I put on my big boy pants and searched for something I wanted to do. After some research, I was considering IT. A search on the internet provided me with some companies who work for hospitals. I applied and was very enthusiastically welcomed to my new job as a sales consultant. My job was to specialize in software used in hospitals and to give demo's on it. At the beginning, I made perfectly clear I had never worked in a company. I study to become a nurse and had been a nurse almost 15 years. So I was a little nervous about making the switch. They ensured me I would get a chance to learn the job and to just take my time.
Starting the new job was not easy on multiple levels. First I had to adjust starting again after a full year home. Secondly, I also needed to learn something completely new in a complete new environment. Together with me, somebody straight from school started with me. She was brought up in a household where both parents were business owners. She was born doing this and learned everything from being a child. Straight from the beginning, I felt uncomfortable and saw my starting co-worker take off like a rocket. She needed almost no explanation and was just instantly on level. Me on the other hand was struggling. Only the adjusting took me some time. After two weeks, I started feeling physical very bad. I felt something was terribly wrong, but I blamed it on just being nervous. This continued until I was in my second month. I crashed my company car against a pole on the car park of the company. I asked to speak to my superior and just broke down and started to cry. I told her I didn't know what was wrong with me, but I felt all the time on edge. She told me to go home. I was taken to emergency and was diagnosed with severe heart failure. I told this in a message to all my co-workers and called my superior, telling her the news. I told her that the doctor told me to at least take 1 month off, but he actually wanted me to take more off. I told her this and felt through the phone that she didn't like it, but if that was what the doctor said that I should follow his advice. I didn't and went back to work after two weeks.
And that is where everything went wrong. I felt much better and also communicated this. But somehow the damage was done. The vibe was different and more tense. I felt I couldn't do anything right. Which had some truth, because of my condition and the adjusting I just hopelessly fell back. Couldn't make my deadlines because I was absent for two weeks. When I asked about moving them, she told me “a deadline is a deadline”, just make it work. I worked constantly, but I forgot so much of what I learned in the beginning and kept on needing to do research that cost me much time. This went on for two weeks, and then I was called in for an evaluation with my superior and the recruiter that hired me. I was expecting feedback, and I was expecting it not to be good. But I knew all the points and was just hard working to make up for all the lost time. Basically, they told me I just wasn't fit for the job, and they made a mistake hiring me. I tried to explain the condition and everything. They just told me this was my problem and that they are a company and can't deal with personal life problems. They asked me how I would do better and if I could. I told them I felt like I was only at 10% of my capacity and I could definitely better. At that moment, I just asked what they expected from me, like give me a few things I need to get sorted, so you believe I can do it. The recruiter got into a rage with me and said that I didn't listen, and they already told me. Which was absolutely not true! At this moment I had enough being treated like a child and I stood up for myself. I told her that in my world, a conversation like this comes from both ways. And if it is just me taking every hit from them without me, asking for some clarification, than we indeed cannot work together. She was taken a little back from my comment and calmed down. They gave me what I asked and only two weeks. No result, I was on the street. Of course, the recruiter could not let me go without giving me one more kick when I already was on the ground. She told me to work on my communication because it was aggressive. Mind you, I was a psychiatric nurse with a psychotherapeutic training. Trust me, communication is my skill. I was not aggressive, just assertive and frustrated. She, on the other hand…
I just don't know where to go from here. I'm giving everything I have, but it seems what I do it just is never good enough. Furthermore, I feel it is terribly unfair to expect from me, after only three months, to be completely adjusted. I feel like this is the job I really want to do. I had some misfortune to start with, but give me some time and space and I will get there. Other thing that is really working against me is that I just lack structure and planning. It's something I always had trouble with. But also this is something I can learn, just give me the god-damn space to learn it. 3 days before the meeting with them, I followed a training of time management. I'm perfectly aware of my flaws. But you can't expect me to fix it in just a second.