Self-indulgent post right here. Feel free to ignore.
I’m not good at anything. Really, I’m not. I’m not fishing for compliments – you guys don’t even know me, so how could you know what I’m good at? So trust me when I say – literally nothing.
But I can understand that, to look at me, you might not think I’m so rubbish. I did well at school. I did well at university. My CV looks pretty good.
The school years
I worked hard at school, because I thought I was supposed to – doing well at school was my only aim in life until I finished at 18.
I moved around a lot when I was young, and missed lots of bits of education. This was embarrassing (everyone knew things I didn’t, really basic things), so I hid those gaps – my ignorance – somewhere deep inside me. I’m not naturally academic, I just imitated others who were and swotted up. If I deviated from working hard, I would fail, my education gaps would get found out, and I wouldn’t pass my GCSE’s (British exams you take when you’re about 15 or 16) – which were what was required to do well in life.
‘Having fun’ didn’t come up very high on my list of priorities, because no one said I should have fun. They said I should get good GCSE’s. So I got good GCSE’s – not amazing ones, but pretty good. Enough to mask my incompetence.
Uni
Same at uni. I wanted to do well (because that’s what we’re supposed to do, right?), so I imitated the clever people and worked hard to cover up the fact that I knew nothing at all. You know people have those stories of wild things they did at uni, alcohol-fuelled nights, dressing up, hooking up, trying strange things? Not me. I worked hard. I loved the library. I graduated with a good grade.
Work
I always thought things would get better once I started work. I’d get taught how to do things properly, so my ignorance wouldn’t be an issue. I could work hard, and that would be rewarded (working hard does seem to be something I’m good at, even if I’m shit at whatever it is I’m working on).
Little did I know that everyone seems to bullshit their way through jobs, and that being good with people gets rewarded way more than working hard does. But that’s another story.
My CV looks good because, at one place I worked, the company decided to change some job titles from being mediocre to being interesting, to make it sound more dynamic and modern than it really was. The job was still the same. But from then on, my ‘career’ looked as though it was going places – based on job titles alone. Never mind that I didn’t know how to do the things associated with the title, or that every day was getting more and more terrifying as I worried that I would do something wrong (something I should know how to do, but didn’t) or my lack of competence would be found out.
I couldn’t take the pressure, so I quit. Well, that was one of the many reasons why I quit my role last year.
And since then, I’ve struggled to find a job. My CV looks too good. Would you believe it! I want to explain to recruiters and employers that it might look good, but I was incompetent… but I don’t think that’d help my cause.
To make things worse, some of my symptoms of depression are things like brain fog, slow mental processing, not putting two and two together sometimes, forgetting words. It literally impairs my ability to do stuff. Even now, writing this, my brain is hurting. Does it make sense? Am I writing sentences properly? Am I using the right words?
I can still work, that’s for sure – and I need to, because life costs money. But don’t give me complicated things or things that affect lots of people. I want to help people so, so much, but the likeliness of me fucking things up is pretty high, so it’s probably best that I keep away.
I don’t really know what I want to do, or what I can do. My incompetence seems to be a roadblock on everything.
I’m applying for entry-level roles because I just want to start again. I need to go back to the beginning and learn everything that I’ve missed over the years. But no one will give me that opportunity. And I’m stuck.
My Honest Recovery 