I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about things recently until I got pretty sad and upset. So I thought to myself, why not write a blog post expressing how I feel?!

Since leaving school and college, I have had a few jobs. I worked in the cinema, a gaming shop and in a hotel. I even volunteered in a few charity shops. However, I haven’t been able to keep any of my jobs or volunteering experiences.

If you know me then you should know that I struggle with mental health issues. These problems developed at around age sixteen when I was leaving high school and heading to college. I didn’t quite manage to complete a college course because of these mental health issues.

As I mentioned, I have had plenty of jobs but I never managed to keep any. I was fired from one and quit the other two.

That’s when I discovered that working just wasn’t for me. Not for being lazy or anything but trust me, I tried to work, just because of my health.

Not being able to work makes me feel like such a failure. I feel like I can’t do anything right if I can’t even keep a job like ‘normal’ people. There’s many opportunities that arise when you work. You can learn new skills, work in a team, build your confidence and you can feel a sense of fulfilment from working. Sadly, I don’t get to experience those things.

It makes me sad that I’m missing out on these opportunities and often this makes my mental health even worse. I feel as though it’s a vicious circle.

I have career dreams and goals and I want to live my dream life. When I think about the future and how that might never happen because mentally, I’m just not strong enough to work, I feel deflated. I want to be doing more with my life than what I’m currently doing. I want to help in some sort of way and to me, getting a job feels like the only way that I can do that.

When you can’t work, people tend to assume that you’re being lazy which isn’t always the case. Sure, I’m a lazy bum but that doesn’t mean that I want to be sitting around doing nothing while you work your arse off doing a 9-5 job. I want to be there too!

Not being able to work makes me feel like I’m wasting my knowledge and everything that I worked for when I took my exams in school. I feel I should be doing more but I just can’t.

You know when you’re scrolling through social media and you see all those people that are dreading Monday morning because it means that they go back to work. Well, I want to be in that position. I want to wake up every morning and feel a sense of purpose and fulfilment.

People judge those who can’t work. They say things like ‘wow, you’re so lucky’ and ‘I wish I didn’t have to work’. It makes me feel so angry. It’s like, yeah, I’m super lucky that I can crippling anxiety when I leave the house. Lucky me! It’s not like I have a choice. I’m just not capable of working at the moment.

I look forward to the future. I hope that one day, I will be able to get a job. Even if it is just working in a supermarket or something. One day I will be strong enough to work and not have to worry about people judging me for ‘sitting around’.

Do you work at the moment? If you have mental health issues, what’s the hardest part about working for you?