What's My Major Malfunction?

I've been fired. I've never been fired before...I feel like shit. I'm 29 in a few days and for the first time since I was 16, I'm out of work.

Well that's not strictly true, before I got this job I had a kind of break down and was out of work for 15 months - I don't really count that as I left my job at the time, and was signed off work. I can edit my life as I see fit. Right?

Well I'm jobless now, that's not in any doubt, I said I'd appeal, but I'm just so tired right now. I hate them for making me feel this way. I was there for almost 5 years, I told them about my illness right from the start, and now I've been turfed out because of it.

I'm just so mad right now, I'm mad, angry, tired, frustrated.

I've never been unemployed through a recession, I'm scared as well, how am I going to survive.

Last time I was signed off work I had to go to that soul destroying benefits office. Just entering the door makes me feel like a low life loser. I don't think people on benefits are losers, but the place is horrific. Maybe they make it that way to discourage you from claiming, I know I could feel the desperation and hopelessness dripping off the walls, when I was there.

It just makes you feel like you've failed at life, the ultimate 'headmaster's office'. You go in there with your head down desperately trying to explain why you have failed, when it seems the whole wide world has succeeded.

'What's your major malfunction!?' You can see the gainfully employed person behind the bullet proof plexiglass thinking this. I then have to reiterate my illness and give them a rough timeline - it has to be rough as time to me is truly relative. Then they nod smugly as the think 'Thank God that's not me.'

I can't do it again I just can't!