What comes next?

Every time I get a little taste of feeling better my mind begins to race...once I'm "all better," how do I start a life for myself?

I worked on and off throughout high school and college, mostly in food service, then by some miracle graduated college (with a BA degree in psychology). At the time I was still pretty sick, but trying my hardest to make something of myself. I worked as a part time receptionist for a while. Then got a job in my field but left after 3 months because my brain turned to mush and I knew that if I could hardly manage to drive myself to work every day, it would be dangerous to drive a van full of patients around in unfamiliar places ( a part of my job description that id managed to bypass for those first three months). Then I spent 6 months waitressing, then a part-time internship in psychology which only lasted about 4 months because I got so sick I could hardly stand up (and collapsed on patients a few times! These were all punctuated by periods of unemployment. It looks terrible on a resume, but it really shows how hard I tried despite being to stubborn to admit that I'm too disabled to work, which is where I'm finally at now.

The thing is I'm a really smart girl and an excelled employee, but how do I convince any future employer of this? I have student loan debt up the wazoo (which, by the way cannot be deferred due to a disability) and I know that once I'm back on my feet I have to put off pursuing my dreams of graduate school and focus on getting any decent paying job to support myself and find a place to live and all of that.

I know it's going to be such a struggle...and that sometimes kills my motivation to get better. Just trying to get a job before I got so much sick definitely had something to do with my getting sicker-the stress of it all! Not to mention all other aspects off my life have gone down the gutter...how do I build a life from scratch, with tons of debt, all the while trying to stay stress-free and healthy so I don't relapse? And how do I re-learn how to make friends? How will I ever get to a place where I no longer have to play catch-up?

I'm just worried. Has anyone had an experience with "getting back out there"? How do you explain why you just stopped living for so long without coming across as lazy and unmotivated? How do we get our lives back? Or in my case, how do I start a life?

You're right to worry about the holes in your resume. Any potential employer is going to know with complete certainty that something was wrong with you during those years. If you tell them nothing then their imagination will run wild. As an employer, the first thing I would think when I saw a record like you've described is that something is being hidden; ie drug/alcohol abuse, laziness, jail time, etc.

Making any reference to an illness is probably a bad idea. They might sympathize with the situation, but unless its someone you know personally, they won't be inclined to take the risk that you won't get sick again. You MIGHT be able to get away with it in an interview setting, where you can demonstrate how you're a stronger person now from the experience (make sure the word CURED is used alot), but in a resume/cover letter it's shooting yourself in the foot.

I don't know how old you are or how much total time you're talking about between graduating and now, but by the sounds of it you might be able to fudge the dates completely by just using years instead of the year + month on your resume.

You can also just make something up. Say you were researching and writing a novel. Say you were the primary caregiver for your dying aunt. As long as it's not an experience that would have lead to a paper trail or involves having to call someone to confirm then you're in the clear.

You've been dealt a crappy hand. Don't worry too much if you need to get creative to even the score. As long as you aren't misrepresenting your actual qualifications or experience I don't see what the harm is.

Two thoughts come to mind:

1: In this economy, with unemployment so high, everyone has a hard time finding work, which makes networking very important. So when you are felling better, you can get back in contact with old professors, who may be able to point you in some directions. But as grace said, this will happen when you feel better, and it will be in stages.

2. At your age, (I'm guessing early-to-mid 20s), most everyone's resume is spotty. I wouldn't worry about that at all. (Though I too worry about everything!) Seriously, for the first couple of years after school, only the keeners have something approaching presentability resume-wise. I basically had a job a year until my mid-30s. There are ways to dress up a resume without resorting to lying; perhaps your university has a career counseling office that can help?