I (26F) quit my last job in December due to mental health and the fact that the company was putting workers at risk during the spike in covid cases. Despite my age, I still live at home with my mom and grandma, for a few reasons. 1)it’s the most affordable option where we live, 2)they are both ill with chronic physical illness, and a third reason. They are both significantly immune compromised, and even being fully vaccinated, covid is a high risk, possible death sentence situation. I can barely live with myself now, I can only imagine the guilt that giving them covid would bring.
I have had problems with mental health since my youth. Chronic and persisting despite multiple medications and years of multiple forms of therapy kind of mental illness. Working (in general, no specific job is the culprit) has made it so much worse. However, disability deemed me unworthy of support, even with a stack of documents showing I’m prone to long episodes of being incapable of taking care of myself; the third reason I live at home lmao. However, as I live at home, I’m not eligible for welfare either.
I put myself in massive debt for an education that turned out to be useless. I literally couldn’t afford the debt that would come if I went back to school to learn a new field. So, no incentive there. I considered bankruptcy at 22, but that was when I learned that bankruptcy doesn’t effect student loans. So many people have chosen death over the struggle to pay back loans, just thinking about it would make me depressed if I wasn’t already.
I haven’t had a single job where I wasn’t exploited or harassed (customers and/or management), which isn’t something I just made up in my mind or am exaggerating. I think most users here would agree that there is no company or business free of these things, be it one the other or both. I’ve yet to see evidence of it.
People say to pick a job you ‘tolerate’ so you can focus your life around something else, but how can I do other things when I have to work a full time/40 hours a week and use all of my mental strength just to be able to afford basic necessities like groceries and shelter? There isn’t a job out there that sounds tolerable.
The savings I put away during my last job and my tax return is dwindling down to zero. I’ll have to find another job soon, which will land me in another crisis situation where I’m an active risk to myself, and then I’ll have to quit so I can repair my mental health as I can until I’m broke again.
The real kicker is that, when I’m not working, my mental health does get slightly better. I’m still depressed and passively suicidal, but it’s a manageable depression. I feel lighter, like I’m able to do things, like shower and brush my teeth, maybe even cook something instead of letting myself go hungry until I can’t take the sick feeling anymore. Things are survivable, if I have the money to pay bills and for therapy while I’m doing it. If I didn’t have to work, if there was a universal basic income for everyone, so people who keep getting rejected by disability or welfare didn’t have to worry about having their basic needs met, maybe I would think life would be okay. But life isn’t like that, and if we were ever to reach something like that, I’m not sure it would ever happen in my lifetime.
Life is looking bleak. I’ve reached a point where I would rather die than work. I’m desperately grasping for anything worthwhile, but I’m struggling to find anything that isn’t ‘work hard, bootstraps, better education equals better work, just work for better companies’. None of it works, and more importantly, none of it is worth living for.
My mom and grandma won’t let me be homeless or without medications (no insurance, too old for my meds to be covered by the government) when my money does run out and I’m so grateful for them. I know I offer them a level of care they can’t get because the cost of in home care is high even in Canada in exchange for shelter and groceries, but I also feel like a leech on their kindness. I can’t keep doing this to them.
But hey, maybe the government won’t offer me disability or welfare or other forms of assistance. At least my mental health is severe enough so that, come next year, I can apply to Commit Suicide with Extra Steps(TM) for free and with 100% success rate by the Canadian government. So, I’ve got that going for me.
Thanks for letting me rant, antiwork. The relief I feel is temporary, but at least it’s relief.