Not being well enough to work feels like failure

When I hit 22, I had a decent bachelor’s degree, some good professional experience and published work in the field I wanted to work in and I had made some great connections to get my foot in the door. I was doing surprising well in working up to where I wanted to be by my mid to late-20s.

However, it seemed as though every job I had was making me miserable, overly stressed and exhausted, forcing me deeper and deeper into a crippling depression and unfortunately this resulted in me jumping from job to job quite often in hopes to find something that didn’t make me want to kill myself. This meant that for a few years I put my career hopes on hold and was working at any job that would take me as I could not afford to jeopardise a job opportunity in my desired field and I could not afford to spend extended periods of time looking for work. I started to work at companies with huge turnover rates for minimum wage in industries I hated.

Eventually, after speaking to many medical professionals it was decided that I should avoid work for a while and focus on my mental health and other contributing health factors. This decision was made around eight months ago and although I have been feeling much more myself and considerably less suicidal generally, it has really got me down in other ways.

It is increasingly difficult to see old acquaintances succeeding and making decent money, starting a family and/or becoming homeowners at the same age as me whilst I have nothing to my name and I can barely afford to rent a tiny flat on my disability benefits. It is difficult to not feel like a failure when all people see is someone who wasted their university degree and is now spending their adult life sat at home trying to catch up on the career experience they missed out on as a result of poor health. I know there is no time limit to success and there is nothing wrong with needing to escape the system for a while when you cannot handle the stress but the way society defines success really affects the way ill and disabled people see themselves.

I feel like I was destined for so much and now I am in a position that I could have been in had I not even finished school and what’s worse is that this is no fault of my own. There are many contributing factors leading up to the demise of my health but most of them were unavoidable on my part and ultimately it is unlikely that this could have been prevented. All I ever wanted to do was prove people wrong and make people proud, including myself, but instead I feel worthless. I feel as if I do not contribute to anything and I know that the longer I have to spend like this the harder it will be to make anything of myself.

Perhaps, as a result of my health problems, I will never have savings. I’ll never own a home or have a decent career or even be able to rent anything bigger than a single bedroom flat. Perhaps I will be in debt for the rest of my life thanks to a degree I can no longer use. But none of this is because I am not trying. I don't want anyone to mistake my inability to work for failure; even if I often do.