Hello 🙂
Sorry I never posted here before and have always only been a silent reader. I thought a long time about posting this, but never found the courage. Yet I’ve reached the end of my tether and need some outside opinion on whether I’m overreacting.
16 years ago, my husband found a job abroad and persuaded me to follow suit with a one year old in tow under the false pretense that it would be easy for me to get work in the new place, and that I would get lots of help from his workplace. I was stupid enough to believe him, moving to a place where I didn’t speak the language and knew nobody and where his salary could not support the family but required me to work full time from day one.
Unsurprisingly, it was very difficult for me to get work and his work place didn’t help one bit, but I managed to find a job in the end. I was severely overqualified for the work, but used the time to learn the language and to finish my PhD thesis, in a foreign country, with zero support, a full time job, and a toddler 😄. After everything was done and dusted, I started looking for new work and managed to get a postdoctoral position in a less than ideal place. But I saw it as an opportunity. I worked hard and in the end managed to carve out a little niche for me.
Then disaster struck. I got a new boss and she hated my guts and bullied me out of my job.
It quickly became apparent that I was unable to find work in my field in this country again, and as my husband still earned so little that I needed to chip in full time, I grabbed the next job opportunity that offered itself - and hated every minute of it.
I became severely depressed to the point that I ended up in psychiatry because I was suicidal. The little career I had had was in tatters with no chance of revival, my family and friends were far away, and I had no social support in this very unaccommodating country, where I was just the foreigner to the locals. To make matters worse, my husband was totally overwhelmed by my depression and had zero idea how to cope, so he just kept pretending that everything was fine. I have never felt more alone in my life.
I have since managed to get another job with better pay, but am still very unhappy with my work situation. I feel that I never had a chance to actually create a career that I enjoy because I was always forced to take the next best thing due to financial pressure. I fear that my higgledy piggledy CV makes any change impossible now. So I’m doomed to just take whatever work is offered, which given that I’m the expat wife isn’t always great opportunities. I feel that I have given up all chances of professional fulfillment to support my husband’s dream and that I am paying the price through declining mental and physical health. The worst part is that I no longer know what I want and feel very little joy even over things that used to make me happy. Additionally, I feel that my husband just takes my input for granted and offered very little support during the darkest periods, when I was falling into deep phases of despair where I started physically attacking myself because I no longer knew what to do with all that pain and loneliness.
I found a very good therapist who has helped me a lot, but I feel that she can only do so much. She can’t change the fact that I hate waking up every day, going through another 12 hours of drudgery, having no one to talk to and a partner who has shown little care for my wellbeing over the last 16 years. I feel bitter and resentful and really angry. I feel exploited and taken for granted and trampled over by someone I once believed cares for me. And yeah, I feel a lot of self pity 😌
Please give me your honest assessment. Am I exaggerating? Am I just a spoiled child? I know that many people have it worse than me, yet having no dreams and goals in life anymore and just going through the motions day in day out, has been my personal definition of hell. I once had dreams and plans and ambitions and worked really hard to turn them into reality. They are all gone no and so has my motivation to make any effort.