Toxic Positivity
At my own pace
- Feb 11, 2022
- 95
Work is a puzzle I have tried to solve my whole life. For perspective, I am 31.
I dropped out of college because I did not care about anything. I was met with the harsh reality of what economists call the market for unskilled labor. However, I was still in my 20's, and in love, and I thought things would work out.
I burned out hard. Some of that was literal. I worked food service, and after one too many burns, one too many late nights washing dishes alone with my thoughts and my likeable dwarf of a manager (who nonetheless I didn't want to become)---I broke. So eventually I tried something else.
I tried living for other people, working for a higher cause I believed in. I worked as an aide at a mental hospital. I'd been once before, for wanting to kill myself, and I was in an OK enough spot, so I wanted to test the theory that helping others for a living would make me feel good. For a while, it did, and I could ignore how little I was being paid and how low on the totem pole I was compared to everyone who had some business degree or did something worth more to the hospital company.
When COVID hit, though, it became a little too clear how expendable I was. My vacation was denied because of pandemic staffing problems, yet everyone who had gone to college was working from home and making more money than me. It was the only time I had requested off in all my time working there, and it being denied made things too obvious to me, piercing my fantasy of existing beyond workplace hierarchies. It was a good experiment, I learned a lot, but it was time to go back to school to make some real money.
My first couple semesters back started OK---I was even making friends. But all the old habits and ennui came back, and I found myself lonely: too old to relate or reasonably be friends with my peers. I didn't care about my degree program anymore, and ran on fumes until the last three weeks of the semester, where I broke down again, dropping out of college for the second and last time. It turns out that just knowing a college degree gets you more money isn't enough. Well, for me it isn't. I have to be personally invested in something I care about, but the only thing I seem to care about is wanting to kill myself. Instead of doing the last three weeks of work for school, I tried to buy a gun. The background check turned up my previous hospitalization, and the sale was denied.
I feel completely adrift, just looking for the next, what I've termed, "suicide portal:" the perfect mix of conditions to act on my longstanding desire to end my life. These moments don't come often, and I can't exactly force them, but whenever the stage is set, I invariably reach for death. I'd rather die than have to spend a great deal of my adult life somewhere I didn't ask to be for a wage I don't want. And when the only alternatives seem to be homelessness, living with my parents as an adult, prison, or some other fate, I feel trapped. I wish there were something I cared about besides killing myself, but more than a decade of psychiatrist appointments and countless prescriptions I start, stop, and can never commit to---I can't anymore. I'm just waiting for the next portal to open in my life so I can jump through and be done with it all. Thank you for reading all of this, if you've made it this far.
I dropped out of college because I did not care about anything. I was met with the harsh reality of what economists call the market for unskilled labor. However, I was still in my 20's, and in love, and I thought things would work out.
I burned out hard. Some of that was literal. I worked food service, and after one too many burns, one too many late nights washing dishes alone with my thoughts and my likeable dwarf of a manager (who nonetheless I didn't want to become)---I broke. So eventually I tried something else.
I tried living for other people, working for a higher cause I believed in. I worked as an aide at a mental hospital. I'd been once before, for wanting to kill myself, and I was in an OK enough spot, so I wanted to test the theory that helping others for a living would make me feel good. For a while, it did, and I could ignore how little I was being paid and how low on the totem pole I was compared to everyone who had some business degree or did something worth more to the hospital company.
When COVID hit, though, it became a little too clear how expendable I was. My vacation was denied because of pandemic staffing problems, yet everyone who had gone to college was working from home and making more money than me. It was the only time I had requested off in all my time working there, and it being denied made things too obvious to me, piercing my fantasy of existing beyond workplace hierarchies. It was a good experiment, I learned a lot, but it was time to go back to school to make some real money.
My first couple semesters back started OK---I was even making friends. But all the old habits and ennui came back, and I found myself lonely: too old to relate or reasonably be friends with my peers. I didn't care about my degree program anymore, and ran on fumes until the last three weeks of the semester, where I broke down again, dropping out of college for the second and last time. It turns out that just knowing a college degree gets you more money isn't enough. Well, for me it isn't. I have to be personally invested in something I care about, but the only thing I seem to care about is wanting to kill myself. Instead of doing the last three weeks of work for school, I tried to buy a gun. The background check turned up my previous hospitalization, and the sale was denied.
I feel completely adrift, just looking for the next, what I've termed, "suicide portal:" the perfect mix of conditions to act on my longstanding desire to end my life. These moments don't come often, and I can't exactly force them, but whenever the stage is set, I invariably reach for death. I'd rather die than have to spend a great deal of my adult life somewhere I didn't ask to be for a wage I don't want. And when the only alternatives seem to be homelessness, living with my parents as an adult, prison, or some other fate, I feel trapped. I wish there were something I cared about besides killing myself, but more than a decade of psychiatrist appointments and countless prescriptions I start, stop, and can never commit to---I can't anymore. I'm just waiting for the next portal to open in my life so I can jump through and be done with it all. Thank you for reading all of this, if you've made it this far.
