Career Frustration.

Question :

The real problem is that I can’t seem to identify the singular reason for me feeling so out of sorts. I’m twenty years old, recently graduated from a top school with honors…and am new to a job right now that I don’t think I can ever learn to love. I’ve had a history of reacting really badly to stress during my thesis year; I almost dropped all my subjects because I was overly anxious with doing my best–and I always tend to overexert myself because I always believe that if you’re capable of performing a certain task, you can always perform the task one notch higher. I’ve grown up to love the Medical Arts…but for one reason or another, I was only able to take a liberal arts degree, instead of pursuing a field that I believe, is founded upon the pillars of helping others–the very core of which is love and compassion–something I’ve always believed that people shouldn’t deprive other people of. At heart, I am a very passionate and direct person–I work myself to the bone when I can and always try to figure out solutions and add options to existing choices and be a kinetic spirit always on the move. It only seriously bothers me that I only recently developed asthma and have panic attacks–my father was also diagnosed with chronic depression before he died. my mother has hypertension and as an only daughter, I fear too much at the present, more so whatever it might be that lurks in the future. I haven’t always been like this–but I tend to cower–I feel oppressed, mightily insecure and small when I can’t help people–when I tend to sit down too long and doubt my value and worth as a person. It irks me that I’m paid to work…but I have no passion for my job at all. My mother compelled me to work at where I am at the moment–I’m wishing I could just leave and pursue fields which i really want, one of which includes getting a masters either in linguistics or in psychology. As an only child–after living for four years in the city–I’m back, living  with my mother in her home town–I didn’t grow up here, and as such, I feel caged within this place. i hate being static, being without initiative, following people who prefer to take it easy–I just can’t! I’m a control freak and I need to almost always be busy with something challenging and compelling to make me feel alive, that I’m actually more than a waste of space and wages in the office and in other people’s lives in general.

Problem is, I can’t just go out and pursue what I want without taking into consideration what my mother wants–she needs me too much, being the only other person surviving in our family–she explained that she was only too glad that I was back home–her sadness and vulnerability grieve me to no end. Starting her 50s soon, I know what sorts of medical tests and specialist interventions she needs in her life–I am frustrated at earning too little, feeling like I am wasting my time trying–I am worried that by the time that I do earn enough for her  physical, psychological and emotional needs, I’ll be too much of a wreck to be of use to anybody, much less to my mother that needs me; I virtually feel alone most of the time and am only able to get by when I have pleasant intellectual distractions. Sometimes, I feel suicidal, wishing my asthma would just engulf me and take me away–sometimes, happy too, but ever since work, lazy and unfocused, undriven and angry, relishing hate, although I too feel afraid for thinking and feeling too strongly. I am not at all comfortable with the fact that I need to write for a living–I love the written word too much to distort its beauty. Please, if you can find it in your heart to give me advice and any counsel as you see fit, I would very much appreciate it, knowing that you are both a medical doctor and a compassionate man at heart. Many thanks.