I was always a happy kid. I was born with congenital heart disease and have lived through multiple open-heart surgeries and have a pacemaker. I had a normal childhood, great friends, made some mistakes, still fun.
I have worked at this call center for 9 years. before covid I had enough money to pay bills and buy stuff for my hobbies. Being yelled at by customers never affected me. For some reason during covid this changed, and I started getting depressed. I am guessing due to the once in a lifetime pandemic and getting yelled at by customers finally started affecting me. I had a massive panic attack back in 2020 and life has not been the same since.
I have accrued thousands in bills due to er visits because my panic attack had me thinking I was dying and with heart disease you really can't take the chance. I had many visits and tests done and everything was always fine. I was told it was anxiety. so, I saw a therapist who had me do breathing exercises and shit. never helped. tried cbt nothing helps. stopped going since I was going into debt just seeing this person. tried another therapist over the phone for a while. didn't help.
I can sit and focus on my breathing for hours. doesn't help the anxiety or my body constantly being tense. combine this with working on my butt all day i have horrible posture. horrible back pain and still constantly stressed all the time.
Cardiologist suggested anxiety meds wanted me to go to go to therapist to get meds. therapist wouldn't do it wanted primary care doctor to do it. primary care doc wouldn't do it either, so I dropped useless PCD.
I didn't want to live anymore and last year after a 2-week vacation from work I had pills in my hand ready to kill myself rather than go back to work. Before doing it, I decided to just yolo life and enroll back into college and get a computer science degree. I enjoy coding and love math but with AI and stem job layoffs I am worried I will have a job to go to by the time I get my bachelors. I have 6 classes left before getting associates.
the downside is working at this call center is draining me. During school I have barely anytime for homework with this job. I feel with this job I am just wasting my life away. the job depresses me I still have thoughts of killing myself all the time and with my heart problem my options of other jobs are very limited. I wish there was a job cs majors could get so I am spending time at work learning things that will be useful for me in my career. I am surprised I have not been fired from my job yet. it's only a matter of time before I snap at work and say the wrong thing to a customer and get fired. The only thing I think that is saving me is I am super-fast on the phone and take more calls than anyone on the entire team. It's because I have been here for so long the job requires zero effort other than dealing with mean people.
I am 55 lbs overweight constantly having trouble breathing because of anxiety. I eat 2 meals a day, walk 8 hours a week and lift 3 times a week. somehow, I am still fat. I don't eat junk and if I feel the need to snack i heat up a bag of mixed veggies or eat fruit. I never feel like I can get a full breath in but when I lift weights or walk, I am fine. So i assume it's not heart related. I have to wait until December to see cardiologist. To add on to this my pacemaker battery is running out I literally have 4 months left and all summer I asked to have the surgery during the summer. they just say we will see what we can do and when I follow up, they tell me the same thing all fucking summer.
Now I just expect I am not getting pacemaker changed until it fucking runs out and I just drop.
maybe I am just a baby and I should suck it up. Many people have it way worse than me. I feel life should just be better than this.