...

I'm unemployed again. I briefly tried applying for other jobs earlier this year, but I couldn't manage it. My last job has burned me out so badly.

I was already burning out, to be fair, slowly, since I entered the workforce 15 years ago. But the burnout started getting significantly worse in 2020 when I was able to start working from home and left the literal full-time state of fight/flight I had been in for years.

And that burnout has been rapidly getting worse since then, as I'm no longer able to force myself back into the dissociative state of fight/flight that allowed me to meet society's expectations (and required me to abandon myself, at best, and harm myself, at worst, as a result).

I've applied for disability benefits. I know from experience I have a painful fight ahead of me to convince the DWP to pay me, but I know I more than qualify, and the twice-monthly payment will allow my savings to last longer while I'm unemployed. Because I have no idea how long it'll be until I can work again. It may be never. I hope not, but it's what I fear. I've noticed severe skill regression in myself since 2021 or 2022. It scares me.

It also frustrates me, because, in the past, people have seen I have two degrees and a career and said, you can't possibly be struggling the way you say you are. Things can't be as bad as you're claiming.

Even the fact that I'm able to write this with some clarity could be used against me. Never mind that this is one of my good days; that this is a soothing activity for me; that even though I'm writing well enough to make myself understood, it's a bare, robotic kind of writing, which is all I can manage now.

I did all I did in the past because I had no choice to. I didn't know I was neurodivergent. I knew I was different, but I didn't know it was okay to be different, so I pushed myself constantly past my limits. I had to, at first, or else I was lazy, unintelligent, childish, an embarrassment. Then I had to or else I wouldn't have the money to keep myself alive.

Well, again I have no choice. My body and brain won't let me continue with the farse any longer. Most days, I can't manage the effort of thinking. I pass the days in a stupid stupor - I can't take in any information. What little energy I have is spent keeping up with the true necessities: keeping myself fed, keeping myself clean. I rely on routines to keep even these manageable.

I feel stupid how dramatic this all sounds, but my priority was writing with honesty, and I feel like I have. Does this count as trauma dumping? I'm sorry if it is.