I relate to this. While work is not my primary reason for my suicidality, it plays a substantial role. I am currently unable to work due to a combination of mental illnesses, disabilities and chronic illnesses. I do not anticipate being able to resume employment in the near future, if at all.
What I have observed is that an individual's identity and value is tied to their employment status, from society's perspective. If you cannot conform and be yet another cog in the machine, yet another slave to the corporate masters, then you are treated as subhuman. The system in place means that we are forced to abide by it in order to survive, or risk homelessness, poverty (although many workers still live in poverty despite working hard - even multiple jobs - to manage) and severe disadvantage.
If you have to claim financial aid from the government as a result, then you are perceived as a "benefits scrounger" and subjected to numerous degrading and dehumanising assessments, bureaucracy and red tape - all of which have a shared mission of discouraging the claimant from requesting support and doing everything possible to justify withholding it, even if survival depends on it.
If you see through the illusion of "hard works pays off", the delusion of meritocracy and the myth of "success", this is largely shunned and you are expected to "contribute to society" by working, because apparently that's the only valid contribution a person can make.
The extensive volunteering I undertook to the best of my abilities and the peer support groups I led independently over the years were seemingly insignificant, because I was not in paid employment. Unfortunately, I am unable to volunteer or coordinate my own initiatives anymore, even on my own terms, but it was always a slap in the face to have these efforts deemed less worthy than a role that was financially motivated.
I have been called entitled, lazy, manipulative, selfish, stupid, ungrateful and so much more due to my unemployment. My only crime is being too ill to partake in the rat race of life. Apparently poor health is not a good enough reason, and I have often been told to pull myself together and get myself back to work.
What the very people who persistently ridicule the unemployed fail to mention is the systemic ableism, discrimination and ignorance that candidates like me are expected to contend with while upholding a dignified, gracious and smiling façade.
When I had limited capability for work, I was dismissed from previous positions due to my disabilities. I was denied jobs I am more than qualified for due to my limitations and deformities. I was bullied to the point of mental breakdowns due to being an easy target for colleagues and managers alike.
I wish more people understood that I didn't choose to be utterly incapable of holding down a job that I love, in a sector I am passionate about (or any job at all for that matter). It makes me feel like shit. There is so much I wanted to do. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a mental health advocate. I wanted to set up my own charity that fights for and provides access to better health and social care options available to all. I wanted to work with abused children, showing them the care and consideration they deserved and needed.
Every dream and every hope I had slipped between my fingers, from having a body and brain that I cannot control, from enduring one trauma after another, from unfortunate circumstances and the shitty cards I was dealt, which no amount of "hard work" could change.
Having our humanity and level of value reduced to a mere job title - or lack thereof - instead of having inherent worth is soul-destroying. We are treated like machines that are either "functional" or "faulty", and used or discarded accordingly. No-one deserves to be treated as less than human based on their employment status and income. Wageslave culture is oppressive, outdated and toxic.
