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Feeling Seriously Behind in Life

User Profile: myaekingheart
myaekingheart October 12th, 2017

For the past week or so, I've been feeling seriously behind in life and it's starting to really eat away at me. I had a dream the other night that I had a job at this high-scale fast food restaurant and I started thinking to myself "This is so easy, why haven't I gotten a job sooner?" and then within the next five dream minutes, proceeded to spiral into a massive panic attack. My hands started going tingly and I was sweaty and hyperventilating and it was this huge reminder like *that* is why I don't have a job. I'm 20 years and old and I've never had a job before nor do I even know how to drive. A couple months back, I finished my associate's degree at a community college and then moved 300 miles away from my parents into an apartment with my boyfriend in the same town as the university I'm transferring to. I know academically I've been doing really well, I've achieved so much already and I'm really proud of myself for that but ever since I had that dream, I can't help but feel like I haven't been pulling my weight and that I'm failing at adulthood. My parents have been sending me money for rent and bills and while I truly appreciate them supporting me, I feel lame and like a failure for still being dependent on them like that, or at least much as I have. I spent all day Monday obsessively filling out job applications and hating myself for having never taken care of this sooner, and wanting to shoot myself in the mouth (figuratively) because I still don't feel like I'm ready for this. I keep praying that every place I applied to is just going to reject me for not being qualified enough or being what they're looking for, which is what happened when I applied for a job at a Halloween store the summer before my senior year and then again a few months back. I'm not afraid of rejection. I'm afraid of getting a job offer and knowing that once that happens, I'm going to be locked in. I can't back out of it. I'm going to be stuck there for a set amount of hours every day in a room full of people who are going to confront me with their problems and complain at me about not doing my job right, about not helping them, about not satisfying their outlandish needs. I'm terrified of the confrontation, the feeling of being trapped, of what's going to happen when I inevitably have an anxiety attack in the workplace. I don't want to think about having to ride the city bus and deal with all the sketchy people in this town. I've taken public transportation to my community college before but never in this town, and my boyfriend is wary of me taking the bus as if the outside world is dangerous and he doesn't feel safe letting me take the bus and be out there on my own. I know he means well and he just wants to protect me and everything but at the same time, the way he's spoken about it in the past has made me that much more nervous. He's expressed mild frustration, as well, that my parents never hounded me enough about learning to drive before I moved up here. He wishes I would've taken care of these things earlier and frankly, I do, too. I was just always procrastinating because I wasn't ready to grow up and take on the repsonsibility of being independent but now that I've waited as long as I have, I know I've screwed myself over. I feel like a failure. I feel embarrassed and ashamed. I silently hated myself every time an application asked me about previous work experience because I have none. This job crap has been all I've been able to think about for the past couple days, like I'm obsessed with what's going to happen. Obsessed and terrified. I just overall feel so behind in life and like I've screwed myself over, like I've dived into dangerously deep water without an oxygen tank or wetsuit. It's gotten to the point where I feel so ashamed of myself and overwhelmed at being so far behind the rest of the crowd that I nearly had a breakdown last night over a stupid cartoon because my boyfriend and I were long distance for a year and while I was up visiting one time, we started watching Adventure Time together but after I left, he went on without me meanwhile I didn't have the means to watch the episodes in order like he did so when we moved in together, he was already six seasons ahead of me. It hasn't bothered me at all since I moved up here up until last night, like we were watching episodes together and it was perfectly fine and I didn't really seem to care that I hadn't seen the previous episodes but we got to a series of episodes where things seemed to tie back into previous things I hadn't seen yet and touch on character development I hadn't been there for and everything about feeling behind just started crumbling down on me and I got irrationally upset. I don't know what to do about this or how to fix this, or at the very least how to make myself feel better about this. I've talked with my boyfriend about it and he did his best to reassure me, tell me that there's nothing I can do but wait and see if I hear anything back from the places I applied to and that I just have to face life and work with the challenges I've set up for myself now in regards to having never had a job or learned to drive, which I know is all true, but at the same time I still can't shake this feeling of absolute shame and embarassment for how much I've screwed myself over like this. If anyone else has ever felt this way or has any solid advice on how to feel better about myself, please, by all means, let me know. I could use all the kind words and reassurance I can get.

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User Profile: GreyPatttern
GreyPatttern May 24th, 2018

So you have achieved your necessary education and are upset that you haven't gotten a job earlier and your are 20? You son't seem underachieved to me, just like you have completed whatever education track you were on and are now getting started. Are you just unhappy about your careerfield?