The 3 year anniversary...

So it's been 3 years since I was fired from my job.  So much has happened since then and so many things are still happening but I wish to reflect on this day.

Working in a hostile environment is akin to being in boarding school, as I would imagine it.  There is so much going on in your life but just as every teacher acts as their class is your only class so does each conflict at work become 'the only thing' that is happening to you.  Problems with your personal relationship? Irrelevant because you have to deal with the depression from your work environment.  Having issues paying the bills because you have lost so much pay between suspensions and increased medical bills? Well, leave that behind because you have to deal with working through your symptoms and trying to meet this goal that is unattainable without your accommodation.  Basically all of your problems become moot because your teacher expects that the only problems you have are the ones they assigned.

I had problems with:

• specific coworkers treating me as though I was sub-human,
• depression and anxiety caused by coworkers and management,
• depression and anxiety caused by my declining work performance,
• depression and anxiety getting worse because I hated being depressed an anxious,
• that fear that every Aspie holds because it is so hard to fit in and mine just kept getting worse because I kept getting in even more strife with my coworkers,
• the impossible struggle to leave work problems at work instead of brining them home because you cannot turn off the mental anguish that you deal with at work just because you left,
• the self-hatred every morning when I forced myself to go to work,
• feeling completely worthless in the eyes of everybody because - some how - the rules of decency, policies against harassment, laws requiring accommodation, and everyday human morals did not apply to me...

Think about how devastating that last one is.  Look at your anti-harassment policy at work and ask yourself how it would feel to have your coworkers be openly hostile toward you at work [telling you that they cannot wait until you are fired, that you should quit and make life better for everybody else, tell you that you contribute nothing] even in front of management which has a duty to document and report harassment if they see it [even if the victim does not want to file a report] and just consider how you would feel.  What if that was happening to someone you loved?

It's been 3 years since and I am still on multiple medications to deal with the resulting degradation of my mental and physical well-being.  I have been destroyed inside.  And while all that was going on other parts of my life were unraveling and I couldn't deal with those situations... that pain... Relationships or opportunities that are now lost because I had so much 'homework' from school that I did not have time to work on those side projects that help to keep human beings healthy.  No matter what happens with my lawsuit, there is no winning this situation.  Money, clear work record, being told that this should not have happened and that someone is sorry... those things will never erase what I lived through.  The absolute hell I endured and that is still very real and very much a part of the path I walk even now.  The shadow of that experience still haunts me and probably will for some time yet to come.