This weekend, I celebrated fourteen years of being employed at the same job. While I did not know what I was initially getting myself into, things in time improved and now my job is something that I enjoy.

When I was approached by the director of my day program to fill a new position that was supervised by my family friend, I was apprehensive about doing it. However, with the family friend being adamant about me coming aboard and working under their supervision, I apprehensively accepted the position.

When I was introduced to what my job involves, it is something that the average person with my challenges would not be able to do. With the way it was initially set up, it was particularly challenging for me. Yet, I did hide that fact very well for many years in the forms of calling off or making excuses to not work. It was the beginning of coming to terms, acknowledging, and accepting that I have at times crushing anxiety.

It also did not help that I was not able to communicate well along with being able to interact with others. Eventually these were things as I became more open and receptive to expanding my social network became more able to be done in all environments. Around this time was when my employer accepted other things I was slowly getting involved in and as such I worked at being more comfortable at extending myself socially, something that is required for the work I do.

As I was able to do more, I was given more tasks and responsibilities, Eventually, I was nominated for the Leadership in Recovery Award for my county that our Behavioral Health Managed Care Organization has every year. I eventually won that award and continued to have the initiative to work. Although there have at times been struggles to understand the social landscape, it has gotten better as I learned within time and after several workplace moves during my employment where I needed to have boundaries.

My tenure of employment has also had its struggles. There have been those times when I was living independently that I was struggling mentally and thankfully they knew how to address the concerns with those that it needed to be addressed with and I could get things on track.

There have also been times when other situations have been anxiety laden, such as affairs that involved my methods of transportation or other factors within my day services. However, in recent weeks, I made the transition to utilizing county paratransit rather than the vans of day services to get to and from work as I have been doing this for some time with the day services. It has been a successful transition and in turn has made my working morale much better because of being able to be more independent.

It has been an amazing 14 years, and I am in a way proud of the advances within myself that having the job that I have given me. It is a unique opportunity that I am proud to have and get to experience. It has opened many doors that I would not otherwise have been able to experience. I am looking forward to the future as I continue to be employed and not become a statistic.