The Struggle

My job situation has had the unpleasant fact that it has been consistently bad for months. It really never let's up, and it has not nor will it ever improve. I know I talk about it a lot, but it is wearing me down. Every month, I reach new lows of how much I think I can tolerate. It was back in August that I realized, "this is a situation that I need to abandon and escape from as soon as possible." And now I am here, 9 months later, thinking the same thing more intensely.

This is somewhat unusual for me. Typically when a bad situation like this arises, I have been able to get away from it, if my attempts to change it have been unsuccessful. However, I cannot get away. There is nothing anyone can really say to help because I have no control over the situation, and I simply have to wait it out for about 4 months or so more. I also cannot leave it because it is too late to find another job (even though I looked). So, here I am: stuck. It is one thing to have a bad situation; it is another to be unable to get away from it. Fortunately, I actually have an end date in sight (if I did not...that would be far worse).

Yet, my reaction to this just gets worse. I am not the same each month. I am worse off. I keep getting worse. My blood pressure is sky-high. I become irrationally anxious in mere anticipation that something might go wrong. My work is affected because I can hardly concentrate. It is perpetual anxiety. This is not my normal reaction to stress. Typically, I can do things to fix it. I have just been worn down. It is unhealthy, it is painful, and I always question whether or not I can continue (before I go nuts and blow up).

I seriously claw my way to weekends and to the end of the day...like some man in a desert dying of thirst...occasionally finding tiny puddles of water. In fact, Sunday nights are the worst because of the anticipatory anxiety of the awful week that is always there in front of me. In fact, I am writing this at work because I cannot muster the effort to do any work until my boss leaves for lunch. I need to distract myself until I can feel more at ease when she is not here. I want to be able to do my work, but I just cannot get myself to do it because I cannot allow myself to be caught off guard when my boss brings up something random. I always have to be on the defensive....and I always need to constantly try to calm myself down. This at-work paralysis has just really started to become very frequent.

Four months. I only do this because I am about to take on a mountain of debt to go to school. I need all of the money that I can get. But I do not know if I can make it that long. I occasionally justify cutting that even shorter in my mind as things just get worse (which I have to fight against doing to avoid not having any money).

I don't know what to do. I mean, when I can barely do my work...it's really bad.