It's life again

My probationary period at this job is coming to an end, and they’ve already told me that after September 3rd, I won’t have to come in anymore. I’m incredibly stressed thinking about how I’m going to find another job, especially when I see how fucked the job market is right now and how empty my résumé feels. I genuinely don’t know what I’m going to do. I keep thinking about how difficult it was to get this job in the first place, and now I’m supposed to start all over again. I’m really, really worried.

I spend entire nights lying awake thinking about it. And on top of that, I’m still worried about university and what I’m going to study. Now that I’m getting ready to enroll in a private university, I’m terrified of making the wrong choice and realizing later that I chose something I don’t actually want. It feels like there’s so much pressure to get it right because this time it isn’t just about choosing a degree, it’s about spending money I can’t afford to waste. What if I choose wrong? What if I realize halfway through that I hate it? What if I end up having to start over again? I keep thinking about all the different possibilities and all of them feel wrong.

I think I’ve become a really negative person lately. Everything bothers me. Even when things go exactly the way I want them to, I immediately start thinking about how they could have gone better. I think about how maybe, if I had chosen a different option, the outcome would have been different, maybe even more productive or more fulfilling than whatever I ended up with. I can never just accept something as good enough. There’s always this little voice in the back of my head telling me that I could have made a better choice, that I somehow messed up without even realizing it. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I genuinely don’t know how to turn it off.

I try to distract myself with the things I normally enjoy, like going for walks or solving Sudokus, but nothing really helps anymore. I can’t even sleep properly. I barely dream. I spend the entire night waking up every couple of hours because I’m convinced I’m going to sleep through my alarm. Even when I know I have hours left before I actually need to get up, I still wake up panicking and checking the time. It feels like my brain refuses to shut down. I constantly have this feeling that there’s something I’m supposed to be doing, something important that I need to take care of before it’s too late, but I have no idea what that thing is. 

I think I’m going crazy.

I live with this constant anxiety that something awful is coming, that things are about to get worse, but I don’t even know from which direction it’s going to come. Maybe my friends are getting tired of me. Maybe they’ve already had enough and I just haven’t noticed. Or maybe it’ll be my parents who give up on me first. Sometimes I wonder how long people can put up with me before they eventually decide that I’m too much work. 

It feels like I’m dreaming that I’m falling, except I can’t wake up. I’m just stuck in that horrible moment of falling, knowing something is going to happen but having absolutely no control over when I finally hit the ground. I feel overwhelmed all the time. Even when nothing particularly bad is happening, my brain is already preparing me for the worst possible outcome.

And my pharmacy assistant course is almost over too, which is another thing I’m worried about. What happens if, even with the qualification, I still can’t find a job? What if I finish the course, put the certificate on my résumé, and it still makes absolutely no difference? What if nobody calls me? I don’t know what I would even think about myself after that. I’m already struggling with the feeling that I’m not doing enough, that I’m falling behind everyone else, and I’m scared that even after putting in all this effort, I’ll still end up exactly where I started.

Every possibility turns into another problem, and every solution somehow creates three more things to worry about. I’m exhausted from constantly trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do with my life, how I’m going to support myself, what I’m going to study, whether I’m making the right choices, and whether any of the effort I’m putting in is actually going to lead somewhere.

I just want to feel like I have some kind of direction again. I want to be able to make a decision without immediately wondering whether I’ve ruined everything by choosing it.